Author: Inna Golovacheva, a survival specialist in a world where candles are drawn not by people, but by algorithms.
You look at the chart and think: "Aha, there's accumulation!" Meanwhile, the bot throws up a wall, spikes three candles up, and your stop is already part of its victory. How to tell if what you see is not organic growth, but robotic clowning?
Here are 5 signs that a bot is working right now and it's time to grab binoculars, not to enter!
1. Walls in the order book without execution. If you see a large order, for example, for 500 BTC, but it doesn't move or execute, it's not a whale, it's a fake screen. The bot pretends to be liquidity to scare the crowd: "Wow, someone is buying!" And then it suddenly removes the wall and dumps on you like a bartender at last call. Watch the order book. If walls appear and disappear — it's not the market, it's theater.
2. Perfectly smooth movements in a sideways market. When the chart moves like on a ruler, up and down at equal intervals, it's not magic. It's a grid trader laying out orders on a grid and squeezing micro-profits from each candle. And if you jump in with "it's going to shoot up now", congratulations, you’ve become part of the range! You are a link in someone else's take-profit chain.
3. Fake pump in an illiquid coin. The coin has been stagnant for three days, like your grandpa at the bus stop, and suddenly: BAM! +15% in 2 minutes. Wow. You think: "This is insider info!" But no. It's a bot's warm-up. The goal is to lure in the greedy, pump up liquidity, and then dump the volume like hot potatoes. If you don’t exit within 4 minutes, you’re taken out like trash on Tuesdays.
4. Reset after liquidation activation. Classic: bots know where the crowd's stop-loss orders are. They hammer the price exactly there, trigger a liquidation avalanche, catch volume, and reverse.
It looks like this: a sharp wick down - a liquidation hit - instant buyback. On the chart, it’s a candle with a shadow, like a slap on your position.
5. Reaction to news faster than you can blink. Is Elon scolding Donald? And you’re still Googling "Dogecoin + Mars"? The bot has already bought, dumped, and is holding a short. If you see a spike before the news, there’s a high chance it was a pre-launched algorithm. You didn’t lose. You were just born 0.4 seconds late. What to do? Watch not only the candles but also the volume. Keep an eye on the order book, mark "hunting zones" (places where stop-losses are often taken out). Don’t jump into a pump in the first 3 minutes. If it's a bot - you’ll get burned.
Remember: a bot is not an enemy. It's a mirror. It does what you fall for.
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