An alert is worth what it tracks: trades or transfers, the size bar for each coin, and how fast it arrives.
What counts as a whale trade
The bar depends on how much the coin trades: 0.05% of a typical day's volume for most coins, with a floor and a cap.
| Coin | Whale threshold | Why |
|---|---|---|
| BTC | $500K+ spot $1M+ futures | The deepest market of all |
| ETH | $1M+ spot $2M+ futures | Takes serious money to move |
| Top majors (SOL, XRP, BNB, DOGE...) | Up to $400K spot $800K futures | 0.05% of a typical day's trading, so a quieter major sits lower |
| Everything else | Up to $100K spot $200K futures | Same rule, capped lower |
| The quietest coins | $25K+ spot $50K+ futures | The lowest bar, however little the coin trades |
| On-chain DEX swaps | $250K+ free $25K+ with Pro ($100K+ on Ethereum) | Uniswap swaps on Ethereum, Base and Arbitrum |
Two types of whale alert
Services like Whale Alert report coins moving between wallets. A deposit to an exchange can mean selling. You never see a buy or sell.
A $2M BTC market buy on Binance Futures, seen as it happens with direction, price and exchange.
CoinLobster tracks trades on 18 exchanges, Hyperliquid (with the wallet behind each trade) and large Uniswap swaps on Ethereum, Base and Arbitrum.
What to look for
| Pattern | What it is |
|---|---|
| Several large trades, same direction, within minutes | Heavy trading on one side in a short time |
| A whale buying during a selloff | Someone stepping in while others panic |
| Very negative funding, then whale buys | Shorts are paying longs to stay open while a large buyer comes in |
| A large market buy near a liquidation cluster | If the price reaches those levels, bets on a fall are closed by forced buys |
Each row describes what happened. On our record nothing we tested told which way the price went next. What we measured.
How CoinLobster tracks whales
CoinLobster reads 18 exchanges at once: Binance and Kraken (spot and futures), Bybit, OKX, Coinbase, Bitfinex, Gate.io, HTX, KuCoin, MEXC, Bitget, Bitstamp, Crypto.com, Gemini, BingX and Deribit. Every trade above the whale threshold shows up as it happens.
Pro adds funding at the time of the trade, nearby liquidation levels and signal alerts.
A free account includes 1 custom whale alert, no card needed. Or watch the live feed first.
CoinLobster vs other whale trackers
| Feature | CoinLobster | Whale Alert | Nansen |
|---|---|---|---|
| Exchange trades | Yes (18 exchanges) | No (on-chain only) | Limited |
| On-chain DEX swaps | Yes (ETH, Base, Arbitrum) | Transfers only | Yes |
| Buy or sell direction | Yes | No | Yes |
| Combined order book | Yes | No | No |
| Liquidation data | Yes | No | No |
| Funding rates | Yes | No | No |
| Free tier | Every coin an hour late, 12 hours of history | Yes (basic) | Yes (paid from ~$49/mo) |
| Prediction markets | Via PredTerminal | No | No |
Get started
- Open the combined order book: BTC whale trades across every exchange
- Open the whale feed: large trades only
- Check the radar: coins with unusual whale flow right now, plus the last 24 hours
For prediction market whales (Polymarket and Kalshi), see PredTerminal.
