💡 FAQ
Frequently asked questions about Blind Monkeys.
Getting Started
What is Blind Monkeys?
A free, open-source cryptocurrency scanner. It scores coins using composite technical analysis (Z-score, momentum, volatility, RSI) and ranks them by setup strength. It does not connect to your wallet, does not hold funds, and does not execute trades.
How can I have my own version of Blind Monkeys?
Blind Monkeys is open source, so you can run your own copy. You need three things: a domain and website (DNS pointed at the service, e.g. through Cloudflare), a Google Cloud account (for Cloud Run hosting, a Cloud Storage bucket for data, Secret Manager for keys, and Cloud Scheduler for the crons), and Bybit API keys with trade and wallet permissions for the automated trading. The full step-by-step guide, including how to generate the Bybit keys, is in the deployment documentation.
Why was Blind Monkeys created?
The site was built by Dean Powers, the CEO of Zojax Group and the person behind Blind Monkeys, to manage his personal cryptocurrency investments. After building it, he made it an open-source project so that others could use the application too.
Is Blind Monkeys free?
Yes. Free and open source, released under the MIT License. No paid tier, no advertising, and no account is required to scan.
Do you need my wallet or private keys?
No. Blind Monkeys never connects to your wallet, never requests private keys or seed phrases, and never holds your funds. Scanning is read-only.
Scanning
What are the Conservative and Risk-Taker scan modes?
Conservative looks for mildly oversold coins with modest momentum and low volatility (Z-score below −1, momentum above 5, volatility below 8, RSI below 70). Risk-Taker allows deeper oversold conditions and higher volatility (Z-score below −1.5, momentum above 10, volatility below 25, RSI below 60). Conservative produces fewer, safer candidates; Risk-Taker produces more aggressive ones.
How are scores calculated for risk and conservative scans?
Both modes use the same formula over a 20-day window: score = (−1.5 × Z-score) + (1.0 × momentum) − (0.5 × volatility) − RSI penalty. Deeply oversold coins (a Z-score of −2 adds +3) and rising momentum add to the score; volatility and an overbought RSI subtract from it (RSI above 70 costs (RSI − 70) × 0.5, while RSI below 30 earns a +2 bonus). The score ranks how strongly a coin embodies "oversold but rebounding" — it can be positive or negative. The buy signal is separate: a coin must pass all four hard criteria (Conservative: Z < −1, momentum > 5, volatility < 8, RSI < 70. Risk: Z < −1.5, momentum > 10, volatility < 25, RSI < 60), so a great score can still fail one gate — for example, a coin scoring +7 can be disqualified by an RSI that is too high.
How can a coin meet the scoring threshold and still be blocked?
Because the score and the buy criteria are two separate stages. The score is a continuous ranking — it measures how strongly a coin embodies "oversold but rebounding" and its ingredients are additive, so strength in one factor can compensate for weakness in another. The buy criteria are hard gates — all four must pass, with no compensation. A coin can be interesting for the wrong reasons: for example, a coin with +12% momentum can score above the threshold while sitting 2.4 standard deviations above its 20-day average with an RSI of 68 — the momentum powers the score, but the Z-score and RSI gates block it, because the scan buys oversold rebounds, not pumps in progress. Even after a coin passes all four gates, the trader applies its own checks before opening a position: the regime gate must be open, the trader's own weighted score must reach the auto-open threshold, and the position and daily-cap limits must have room.
What is the 20-day lookback period?
The lookback period is the amount of price history each indicator is computed over. In the Conservative and Risk-Taker scans, every coin is fetched with 20 days of daily prices, and the Z-score, volatility, momentum, and RSI are all measured against that one-month window — so a Z-score of −1.5 means the coin is 1.5 standard deviations cheaper than its own recent month. Twenty days is long enough for statistics like standard deviation to be meaningful, short enough to reflect the current market era. Long scans use 90 days instead, and the Telegram scan summaries ("Lookback: 20d") report this setting.
What is the composite score?
A single number combining Z-score, momentum, volatility, and RSI. Higher scores indicate a coin meets more of the scan criteria more strongly. Coins are ranked by composite score in the scan results.
Which exchanges are supported?
Scanning uses Binance spot market data. Bot P&L tracking uses Bybit. BingX integration is being deprecated. Blind Monkeys does not place trades on any exchange.
Alerts
What are the Telegram channels and what does each one do?
Alerts are split across Telegram channels so each event type can have its own notification sound:
- Blind Monkey Channel — daily scan digest and "scan complete, no candidates" alerts
- Grid New — a new grid bot was opened (coin + funding amount)
- Grid Profit — a running grid earned a profit
- Grid Closures — a grid closed by take-profit, stop-loss, or manually (coin + final P/L)
- Futures New — a futures position opened (coin, margin, leverage, TP/SL)
- Futures Funding — funding events for open futures positions
- Futures Close — a futures position closed (coin + final P/L)
- Ka-ching — profit-only alerts with the cash-register sound: grid profits and profitable closes only
Losses and administrative events get neutral tones; the Ka-ching sound fires only when you make money.
How are Telegram messages for scans determined?
Every scan — the 15-minute automated Conservative and Risk-Taker runs, plus manual scans — produces exactly one Telegram message to the Blind Monkey Channel. If any coin passes the buy criteria, a green "Scan — N Buy Signal(s)" message lists up to ten coins with their Z-score, RSI, and momentum. If none pass, a "Scan Complete: No coin met the scoring threshold" message reports the current score threshold (the auto-open value from the futures settings), the highest-scoring coin even though it didn't qualify (negative scores shown as "NEGATIVE x.x"), and the mode, number of coins scanned, and the 20-day lookback. So even a quiet scan tells you how close the market came to a signal.
How do alerts work?
When a coin crosses the configured composite-score threshold for the current scan mode, an alert fires to Telegram and appears in the site banner. Alerts re-arm when the coin's score drops back below the threshold, or rises significantly above the previous alert (+50 points or 1.5×). Dismissing an alert in the banner snoozes that coin for 1 hour.
Trading
What is Futures Order Compounding?
Futures Order Compounding is the rule that sizes each new futures order: orders start from a $100 baseline, grow 25% after each take-profit, and shrink 25% after each stop-loss, with a $10 floor and the daily-cap ceiling.
What are learned weights?
Learned weights are scoring factors whose values adjust automatically from real trading results. Each factor starts at an equal weight (0.25); after every closed position, factors that predicted successful trades gain weight and factors that mislead lose weight.
What does the "Pause in downtrend: BTC 7d drift" setting mean?
It is a safety gate on automatic grid creation. Every hour the system computes Bitcoin's 7-day price drift; if that drift has fallen to or below your threshold (default −5%), it stops opening new grid bots — because a meaningful BTC decline drags altcoins down with it and breaks grids out of their ranges. Grids already running are unaffected, and manual opens stay free: the gate only pauses the automation. A more negative threshold (−10) is more permissive; a less negative one (−3) is more cautious; −100 turns the gate off entirely.
How is the trailing stop concept applied at Blind Monkeys?
When a position's profit reaches the TP level (3% of invested funds), it does not close immediately — a trailing TP arms instead and follows the profit upward, closing only when profit retraces by the retrenchment setting (default 1% of invested funds) from its peak. So a position that touches 3% and immediately falls closes at 2% (the worst case), while a position that runs to 10% closes at 9% — the exit line keeps climbing with the position. Futures implement this with Bybit's native trailing stop (converted from margin to price terms by dividing by leverage); grid bots use an app-side trailing manager that checks every 2 minutes, because Bybit's native grid trailing requires a 5% minimum retrenchment. The stop-loss stays fixed and hard either way.
What is the risk management philosophy?
Defense-first and layered: maximum 3x leverage, daily caps on how much can be deployed per day, small $100-baseline orders, a hard take-profit and stop-loss on every position, at most 3 concurrent futures positions, and regime gating so each strategy only trades where it has an edge. Losses stay small and bounded while wins compound.
What is an API and which ones does Blind Monkeys use?
An API lets one system request data or actions from another over the network. Blind Monkeys is built almost entirely out of APIs: Bybit for trading, Telegram for alerts, Binance for market data, Cloudflare for DNS and analytics, seven LLM APIs for the AI visibility checker, and Google Cloud APIs for infrastructure.
What is the tech stack?
Blind Monkeys runs on Google Cloud: static marketing sites served straight from Cloud Storage buckets through a global CDN load balancer, and a dynamic trading platform built as containerized Flask services on Cloud Run (main site, scanner, trader). Cloud Storage doubles as the data layer, Secret Manager holds all credentials, Cloud Scheduler drives the crons, and Cloudflare fronts everything for DNS, security, and analytics.
What gates does the system use before opening a position?
Every automated flow is protected by layered gates. Scan gates: Conservative requires Z-score < −1, momentum > 5, volatility < 8, RSI < 70; Risk-Taker requires Z-score < −1.5, momentum > 10, volatility < 25, RSI < 60 — all four must pass. Grid gates: top-100 market cap, 7-day range width between 3% and 25%, at least 4 oscillations of the range midpoint, net drift under 60% of range width, composite score at or above the score threshold, and no grid already running on the coin. Futures gates: score at or above the auto-open threshold, ETH within 0.5% of its 24-hour high (regime gate), funding rate at or below the Max Funding Rate setting, at most 3 concurrent positions, one new position per scan run, and the daily dollar cap. Exit gates: a hard margin-based stop-loss (4% of invested funds), a take-profit with a trailing retrenchment (default 1%), and a pause gate that stops opening new grids when BTC's 7-day drift falls to −5% or below.
What are market regimes?
A market regime is the overall persistent condition of the market — sideways, upward, or downward. Blind Monkeys detects it from BTC/ETH behavior, momentum, volatility, and macro sentiment, and runs a different automated strategy in each: grid bots in sideways markets, rising-coin futures in upward markets, and oversold-rebound futures in downward markets.
Account
Can I use Blind Monkeys without registering?
Yes. Subscribe to the Telegram channels (see the Telegram page for links) and you'll see everything the system does in near real time: which coins qualified, their scores, what was blocked and why, what positions opened with their margin, leverage, and TP/SL, and how every position ended. Take that information to whatever exchange you already use and place an equivalent position yourself — in your own size, at your own risk. No account, no deposit, no wallet connection, no API keys given to anyone; the platform cannot touch your funds. Caveats: Telegram messages arrive seconds after the system acts so the price may have moved, and the system's order sizes and leverage belong to its operator — size to your own risk. Blind Monkeys displays its win rate publicly and its signals are not financial advice.
Do I need an account?
No. Scanning works without login. Registering (free) saves your coin selections, per-user alert preferences, and settings across sessions.
Project
What is the continuity plan for Blind Monkeys?
The platform is deliberately built to survive its creator stepping away. A living Continuity Manual (CONTINUITY.md) lives in the open-source repository and documents the full system inventory, a first-day checklist, operating commands, the reasoning behind every major design decision, and the account access a successor would need. The system is also self-limiting: open positions run to their take-profit or stop-loss, daily caps stop new deployment, and hosting costs are negligible until someone chooses to continue or shut it down.
Where is the source code?
The full source is on SourceHut at git.sr.ht/~deanpowers/blind-monkeys, released under the MIT License.
How do I report a bug or ask a question?
Use the contact page, or message @deanpowers on Telegram.