What does the minus for exchanges mean?

More was withdrawn from exchanges than deposited: usually for storage. A minus for the "exchanges" group means a net outflow: more left exchanges than came in. Tokens usually go to personal wallets or cold storage, leaving fewer at hand to sell. It guarantees nothing about price.

What is the most common explanation?

A new audience or an airdrop, a free token giveaway. New wallets most often mean new users or an airdrop: a project gives tokens away and thousands of fresh addresses receive them at once. That is not necessarily big-money interest, and selling often follows an airdrop: free stuff is easy to let go.

Open the wallet in DeBank: assets, chains, farming. DeBank breaks a wallet down by assets, chains and farming, meaning the pools and staking where coins earn yield. That shows the whole strategy, not one lucky trade. Double-check the owner's label in Arkham.

What is the sensible move?

Take it as context and check the rest. You see the trade later and at a higher price, the label may be wrong, and the wallet's exit plan is unknown. Example from the lesson: the whale got in at $1.00, you at $1.30, it got out at $1.40 and you were left at a loss. So it is context, not a signal.

Smart money and wallet breakdown

Lesson 8 of 12 in the course “Analytics”. Free, with animations and a quiz.

Who exactly is buying

Last lesson you saw transfers. Now the question is who is behind them. A whale radar built on Nansen data, a service that labels wallets, shows DEX trading volumes on Ethereum, Solana, Base and BNB Chain. A DEX is an exchange with no middleman: a program on the blockchain does the swap. You can also see which tokens whales are buying and which they are selling.

DEX: swaps without a middleman

How a DEX works. There is a liquidity pool: a shared pot of two coins, for example ETH and USDC (a stablecoin, 1 USDC ≈ $1). You put ETH into the pool and take USDC out. A smart contract, meaning a program on the blockchain, does the swap with no exchange in between. Example from the picture: 1 ETH for 2,400 USDC, the rate is made up. That is why every DEX trade is visible on-chain and can be analysed.

Token X-Ray: who moves a token

X-Ray takes a token’s 24h net flow (bought minus sold) and splits it by wallet group. Groups: whales, smart traders (wallets with a strong trading record), exchanges, top PnL (those with the most profit), public figures and new wallets. Plus means the group was accumulating the token. Minus means it was letting it go. Next to it is a plain reading, for example: “more withdrawn from exchanges than deposited”.

Example: reading X-Ray

Example from the picture: whales +$2M, smart traders +$0.5M, exchanges −$1.8M, new wallets +$3M. Whales and smart traders are buying and coins are leaving exchanges: looks like accumulation, meaning calm buying to hold. But a strong inflow of new wallets often means a new audience or an airdrop (a free token giveaway), not interest from funds. Read the groups together, not one by one.

Perps, OI and funding in a minute

Three words for the next slide. A perp is a perpetual future: a contract on price with no end date, often with leverage. A long profits from a rise, a short from a fall. OI (open interest) is the total size of all open positions. Funding is a regular fee between longs and shorts; a plus means longs pay shorts. In the picture: price and OI rising together means new money is behind the rise.

Hyperliquid: most-traded perps

Hyperliquid: a decentralised perps exchange where every position is recorded on the blockchain. Its top perps list is worth reading in full: volume, OI, hourly funding and who is pushing, buyers or sellers. Example from the picture: BTC, volume $2.1B, OI $900M, funding +0.0013% per hour, buyers pushing. Volume and OI rising, funding positive: longs are piling in with leverage, the crowd is skewed toward a rise.

Nansen: what to find where

Nansen sections. Smart Money: what funds and top wallets are doing. Signals: on-chain signals by asset. Tokens: token data on Base, Ethereum and Solana, who holds and who buys. NFTs: the NFT market, unique tokens such as digital pictures. Hot Contracts: the most active smart contracts, where the crowd is heading now. Nansen Research: written market reviews. Start with Smart Money and Tokens.

Wallet breakdown: Arkham and DeBank

Found an interesting address? In Arkham Intel check its label (fund, market maker or person) and its large trades. In DeBank open the wallet: what it holds, on which chains and what it farms. Farming means putting coins into a pool or staking (locking coins for a reward) to earn income. Example from the picture: $1.2M, 55% on Ethereum. Bundles puts several wallets into one group.

Common mistakes

Blindly copying a wallet is risky: you see the trade late and don’t know the exit plan. Labels can be wrong, and smart money loses too. Example: a whale bought at $1.00, you got in at $1.30, the whale sold at $1.40 and made 40%. Price fell to $0.90 and you are down: (0.90 − 1.30) / 1.30 ≈ −31%. Bottom line: flows are context, not a signal to trade.

Check yourself

What does the minus for exchanges mean?
Correct answer: More was withdrawn from exchanges than deposited: usually for storage. A minus for the "exchanges" group means a net outflow: more left exchanges than came in. Tokens usually go to personal wallets or cold storage, leaving fewer at hand to sell. It guarantees nothing about price.
What is the most common explanation?
Correct answer: A new audience or an airdrop, a free token giveaway. New wallets most often mean new users or an airdrop: a project gives tokens away and thousands of fresh addresses receive them at once. That is not necessarily big-money interest, and selling often follows an airdrop: free stuff is easy to let go.
Where do you start?
Correct answer: Open the wallet in DeBank: assets, chains, farming. DeBank breaks a wallet down by assets, chains and farming, meaning the pools and staking where coins earn yield. That shows the whole strategy, not one lucky trade. Double-check the owner's label in Arkham.
What is the sensible move?
Correct answer: Take it as context and check the rest. You see the trade later and at a higher price, the label may be wrong, and the wallet's exit plan is unknown. Example from the lesson: the whale got in at $1.00, you at $1.30, it got out at $1.40 and you were left at a loss. So it is context, not a signal.

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