This is a short introduction of how to participate in pumps and dumps. If you stick to the following rules, you will minimize the chance of getting burned and maximize your profits. Nevertheless, you should be aware that participating in pumps and dumps can be very risky. Some people win, some people lose. The owner of each group always wins. They usually buy the coin and place their sell orders a few seconds before the signals goes to everyone else. That means all participants will buy their sell orders right away. If the group is a legit one, the price will still rise, depending on the coin and exchange, usually between 50% to 300%. Which means you can theoretically still make profits if you act clever. Before you participate in any pump and dump you need to check the group you joined whether they are scamming or not. You can use the following checklist:
- Have a look at the size of the group, but more important, look how many active members they have. Therefore in telegram, take a look at how many people have read the past 20 messages. Legit groups start at around 1k ACTIVE members. Be aware that a big group with 50k members but only 100 active members who actually read the messages, is very likely a scam group.
- Look at their past posts. Do they look legit? Maybe they are telling you something about 1000% gains = SCAM! Maybe they want you to download some software they promote = probably SCAM! Do their posts look professional? Do they do analysis on past pumps (usually legit groups do, scam groups won’t as their pump was probably a huge fail).
- Do they have some kind of VIP or PREMIUM membership, which will give you the coin name before anybody else? If so, they usually want you to pay for that. You should be very careful about these offers, some are actually legit, but most are scam!
- Check the exchange they want to pump on. Is it a well known exchange? Is it legit? Check about it! Also you might just prefer a specific exchange. At the moment most legit groups pump on Binance, Yobit and Cryptopia. This might change in some weeks/months. Be aware that most groups don’t even reach 50% on Binance, because of the high volume needed.
After you have checked the group and have found a suitable one, you still should not participate right away. First we need to do some observing and detailed checks. Therefore we wait until a group does actually pump a coin and check the following list:
- Do they give the signal on time to everyone?
- When you get the signal in Telegram/Discord/Website, check if the coin is already very high. If so, it either means you have been very slow, or they are probably scamming and doing too much “pre pumps”, giving the signal to a lot of VIP members first.
- Afterwards, have a look what happened 1 minute before the signal was given and check if they actually did huge “pre-pumps”. For example if the coin was already up 30% 20 seconds before the pump, they are pre pumping too much and you should stay away from this group!
- Look how much the coin rate rises. On Cryptopia for example, it should be between 100% and 300%, as they have low volume, but on Binance 30% to 100% is already very good, as they have high volume.
- Is the exchange lagging or freezing during the pump? If so, try to use a third party software. Binance has a desktop app for example, use it!
- Have a look at the time from the start of the pump until the rate drops again. Usually it’s between 10 and 30 seconds, unless they do a hodl/hold pump. After the pump, write it down, together with the max rate they have achieved! If the rate drops back and stays down before 10 seconds have passed, they are scamming! It should be stable for at least 10 seconds!
In order to find a suitable group PADL (padl.mine.nu) can help a bit. They usually have the most legit ones. Simple googling will also get you thousands of groups, but be aware that 90%+ of them are scam! (Now you can determine it yourself). So can we finally participate? NO! You need to check the group at least for 3 pumps, without participating or at least with very small amounts. Otherwise you don’t have enough information to determine the quality of the group. After you have done all the checking and found a legit group, it’s time to actually participate. See how it works below:
- Log into your exchange and wait for the coin to be posted. I can recommend 2 screens. One for telegram and one for the exchange.
- On exchanges with the possibility for “market orders” (like Binance), open a market order for buying and put a limit order for selling. On any other exchanges just place limit orders. Why not using a market sell? Well, during a pump there are huge rate fluctuations and if you are unlucky, your market order could get filled right when it just went down.
- When you place your buy order using a limit buy, you need to put the price a significant amount higher, than the current rate. Otherwise your order won’t get filled. I recommend a multiplier of 1.3 up to 1.6. Example: XYZ Coin is at rate 1$, thus your buy order will be 1.6$. You are basically simulating a market order by doing that. Why do I need to do that? Let's assume you want to buy the coin and you see the rate is at 1$, you place your order at 1$, but by the time your 1$ buy order is placed, the rate will be already at 1.3$ or even higher during a pump. Hence your order won’t get filled. IMPORTANT: In the case your limit buy order could not be filled after 3 oder 4 seconds, cancel it right away, otherwise it will be filled during the dump!!!
- Your limit sell order should be 10% up to 30% lower than the current rate of the coin, in order to get filled safely and quickly. IMPORTANT: If it does not get filled after a few seconds and the price is already dropping, maybe even below your sell order, you need to cancel it immediately and place a new one!
Record all data of each pump, so you can see the development over time later.
A lot of people use third party apps and bots to place the their buy and sell orders. They can give you quite an advantage, as your orders are usually placed quicker. Also they usually have less lags and accurately display the rates. You might consider using one, especially, if you are not the “fastest tool in the shed”. Yet, you have to be very careful again, using these kinds of bots, as most of them are scam! Still, there are quite a few bots out there for different exchanges, which are “probably” legit. The safest way is using an open source software or even writing it yourself.
What about the crypto market. Are pumps and dumps actually harming it? YES they do, BUT they don't. People usually seem to confuse things a bit. There is a HUGE difference between whale pumps and dumps (senior groups) and small groups (junior groups). Normal people like us can not participate in the “senior groups” of the whales, unless we have a few millions to spend. So 99% of the groups you will find on the Internet, are junior groups, who actually don’t really do anything. So what's the difference between a senior and junior group?
Senior groups:
- They spend millions to manipulate the price over a long time (weeks and months)
- They do it on the major coins, like BTC/ETC etc. and therefore manipulate the whole market.
- A huge amount of people who want to do serious investments can get burned.
- They can destroy a lot of trust in the market.
Junior groups:
- Have a very small volume, which will rarely exceed 10 BTC, which is basically nothing.
- Done on shitcoins or at least low volume coins.
- It's usually over in minutes or even seconds.
- It does not influence the general market at all.
But what about the people who lose money during a junior pump? There are 3 possibilities:
- You bought/sold too late. In that case either your group is scam, you were simply too slow or you don’t have enough experience yet.
- You are an (very stupid) outsider. In that case you should get burned, as you have to learn basic rules about trading.
- Automated 24/7 trading bots.
A LOT of people confuse these things. In the end a junior pump is like visiting a casino. You might lose, you might win. What you can do is using certain techniques to maximize your chances of winning. You don’t go into a casino, lose your money, and afterwards say: Oh I did not know that I can lose my money...do you?
So are junior groups now bad or good or something else? Well...as I have already mentioned, they don’t really do anything to the market. Their volume is by far too small. Because of that, they have to pick shitcoins with a very low volume. It’s more like a tiny gambling game, for people who are broke.
I encourage you not to believe me, but rather go and have a look for yourself. Otherwise you can never be truly sure about what's really going on.
