Scammers can copy a name, a logo and a job title in a minute. A few checks you can run yourself show whether a “support agent”, recruiter or business partner is real.

A message lands on Telegram: “Hi, I’m Daniel from the security team at your exchange. We saw a login from a new device. Please confirm your wallet so we can protect your funds.” The profile photo shows the company logo. The English is good. Daniel is patient, and he knows your username.

Daniel does not work at the exchange. He works for a scam crew, and the “confirm your wallet” link empties your wallet.

People reported losing $3.5 billion to imposter scams in 2025, and nearly $1 billion of that went to people pretending to be a business, according to the FTC’s June 2026 report. The FBI’s figure for crypto is bigger. Victims told its Internet Crime Complaint Center they lost $11.4 billion to crypto-related crime in 2025, more than half of all the losses it counted that year (IC3 2025 report).

A lot of those losses started the same way. Someone claimed to work for a company, and the victim took their word for it. Some victims did not know how to check. Others saw a familiar name, a logo and a confident tone, and felt no need.

The checks run from a 30-second test to reading the hidden part of an email. If you only have time for two, use the first and the tenth: both are free, and both are very hard for a scammer to fake.

The one rule behind every check

Never use the contact details a stranger gives you to check that stranger.

If “Daniel” sends you a phone number, a website or an email address and says “contact us here to confirm”, all three belong to Daniel. Calling the number he gave you only proves that Daniel answers his own phone.

Every check in this list works the same way. You find the company’s official channel yourself, from a source the stranger did not hand you. Then you ask that channel whether the person is real.

Why people skip the check

It looks official, so we assume it is. A logo, a job title and a company name take a minute to copy. Real staff photos sit on LinkedIn and on company “Team” pages for anyone to download.

They already know something about us. Your username, your last order or the exchange you use is often public, or leaked in a data breach. Knowing those details says nothing about who the sender is.

There is a clock. “Your account will be frozen in 30 minutes.” The deadline is there to stop you checking. A real company will still exist after you spend ten minutes confirming.

The more urgent the message, the slower you should move.

13 ways to check that someone works for a company

1. Contact the company yourself, through its official website

Type the company’s address into your browser by hand, or use a bookmark you saved earlier. Skip links in the message and skip search ads, because scammers buy ads for fake support pages. Find the support page or contact form and ask: “Someone called Daniel, Telegram @daniel_sec_team, says he works on your security team and contacted me today. Is that real?”

Example. A “recruiter” emails about a job at a well-known firm. You open the firm’s careers page from a bookmark. The role is not listed, and the HR address on the page is another one. The recruiter does not work for the firm.

The catch is speed. If support takes two days to reply, wait two days, and do nothing the stranger asks in the meantime.

2. Use the company’s own checking tool

Many crypto exchanges now run a page where you paste a username, email, phone number or link, and it tells you whether the contact is official. Three examples:

• Binance Verify at binance.com/en/official-verification checks domains, email addresses, phone numbers and social handles, Telegram included. Binance says anyone who claims to work with Binance and cannot be confirmed there should be treated as untrusted.
• OKX has a channel verification page in its Help Center. OKX says to type the “@” before a username, or the result can be wrong.
• KuCoin runs an Official Verification Center at kucoin.com/cert. It checks emails, Telegram IDs, X accounts, websites and official wallet addresses.

Example. “Binance support” adds you on Telegram as @BinanceSupportDesk. You paste the handle into Binance Verify, and it comes back as not official. Block the account and report it.

Reach these tools by typing the exchange’s main address yourself and looking in its Help Center for “verify” or “official channel”. If the stranger sends you a link to a “checking tool”, that link is the trap.

A tool can confirm that an address belongs to the company. It cannot confirm that an email really came from that address, because the From line can be forged. Bybit’s own help page warns about this. For email, add check 5.

3. Ask them to message you from the company’s official X account

Ask the person to prove it on a channel only the company controls. Better still, contact that channel yourself. Here is a message you can send:

“Before I continue, please send me a DM from @ExampleExchange, the official account, confirming you work there and what this is about. Or I can DM that account and ask.”

A real employee will say “sure” or send you to the official support channel. A scammer will make excuses: “That account is for marketing only”, “our team can’t access it”, “this is confidential.” Each of those excuses means the person cannot prove it.

Make sure you have the right official account. Open it from a link on the company’s own website, since search results can show copycat accounts. It should have years of posts and the follower count you would expect.

Then look for X’s affiliate badge. Companies that pay X to verify their brand can link their staff accounts. An affiliated employee shows a small copy of the company’s profile picture next to their name, and tapping it opens the company’s account. A plain blue tick on a personal account says nothing about employment, because anyone can buy one.

Official accounts do get hacked. If the official account suddenly DMs you first with a link, treat that as suspicious too. Most companies never start private conversations about your account.

4. Ask for an email from the company domain, then read that domain letter by letter

A real employee can email you from a work address in a minute. Ask for it. A recruiter or “partner” who only uses Gmail, Outlook.com, Telegram or WhatsApp fails this test.

Then read the address slowly. Say the real company is Example Exchange at example.com. Each of these addresses is fake:

• support@examp1e.com (the digit 1 in place of the letter l)
• hr@exarnple.com ("rn" looks like "m" in many fonts)
• security@example-support.com (an extra word added to the name)
• team@example.co (the wrong ending)
• alerts@example.com.account-check.net (the real domain is account-check.net, read from the right)
• help@exаmple.com (the "а" is a Cyrillic letter that looks the same as the Latin one)

Two more things to check in the same email:

• The display name can say anything. “Example Exchange Security” might sit on top of x7k2@mail-ru.biz. Click or tap the name to see the real address.
• The Reply-To can differ. An email can arrive from an address that looks right and still send your reply to a stranger. Hit reply and look at the “To” field before you type.

A correct domain is a good start. On its own it can still be forged, which is why check 5 comes next.

5. Check the email’s sign-in results (SPF, DKIM and DMARC)

Every email carries test results that show whether it really came from the domain in the From line. Your inbox runs these tests already. You just have to look.

In Gmail, open the email, click the three dots and choose “Show original”. In Outlook, open the message, then More actions, View, “View message source”. In Apple Mail, choose View, Message, Raw Source.

Find the line that starts with Authentication-Results. A real email from example.com looks like this:

dkim=pass header.d=example.com; spf=pass smtp.mailfrom=example.com; dmarc=pass header.from=example.com

In plain words:

• SPF pass means the server that sent the email is on the domain’s approved list.
• DKIM pass means the email carries the domain’s digital signature, and nobody changed the message on the way.
• DMARC pass means at least one of those two tests passed for the same domain you see in the From line. This is the result to read first.

Warning signs: dmarc=fail, spf=fail, dkim=none, or a pass for some other domain, such as dkim=pass header.d=bulk-mailer-7.net on an email that claims to be from example.com.

Example. An email from “security@example.com” asks you to reset your password. Gmail’s “Show original” says dmarc=fail header.from=example.com. The From line is forged. Delete the email.

A DMARC pass means the email left a mail system the company approved. A hacked staff mailbox passes too, and forwarded emails sometimes fail SPF while being genuine. Treat the result as strong evidence and combine it with the other checks.

6. Paste the raw email into an AI chatbot and ask it to find the tricks

Raw email source is hard to read. A chatbot such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini can read it for you and point at the parts that look wrong.

1. Open “Show original” (or “View message source”) as in check 5 and copy everything.
2. Remove your own details first: your email address, name, phone number, account numbers and any codes. Replace each with “[removed]”.
3. Paste the text into the chatbot with a prompt like this one.

“Below is the raw source of an email, including headers and HTML. I think it may be a phishing email pretending to be from example.com. Please check: (1) Do SPF, DKIM and DMARC pass, and for which domain? (2) Does the From address match the Return-Path and Reply-To? (3) List every link in the HTML and show where it really points, compared with the text shown to me. (4) Are any domains lookalikes of example.com? (5) Anything else suspicious? Quote the exact lines you rely on.”

AI is good at this job. It will catch a link whose visible text says https://example.com/login while the code behind it points to https://example-com.login-verify.app, and it spots lookalike domains and hidden text far faster than most people do.

Example. You paste a “your withdrawal is on hold” email. The chatbot lists four links. Three go to example.com. The “Release funds” button goes to a domain nobody at the company owns, and that button is the scam.

Chatbots also make mistakes in both directions. An email that “looks fine” to a chatbot can still come from a hacked real account. Make it quote the lines it relies on, then check those lines yourself. Never paste passwords, seed phrases or one-time codes into any chatbot.

7. Hover over links and check when the domain was registered

Before you click anything, hover over the link on a computer, or press and hold it on a phone, to see the real address. Read the domain from the right, as in check 4.

Then look up when the domain was created. Paste it into the ICANN lookup and check the “Created” date. A company that has existed for ten years does not send security alerts from a domain registered last Tuesday.

Example. A “partnership manager” from a known crypto project emails from bd@exampleprotocol-team.com. ICANN lookup shows the domain was created nine days ago. The project's real site has used a different domain since 2021.

A brand-new domain is a strong warning sign. An old domain proves less, because some scam domains sit unused for months before they are used.

8. Check their LinkedIn the right way

A LinkedIn profile is easy to fake. A good fake still leaves gaps you can spot.

• Look for LinkedIn’s workplace check. LinkedIn lets members confirm their current employer, most often with a code sent to their work email, and the result shows on the profile. It confirms the company only. The job title is unchecked, and only some companies support it so far.
• Start from the company page. Open the company’s official LinkedIn page, go to its People tab and search for the name. Searching from the company side is harder to fool than clicking a profile someone sent you.
• Read the history. Real profiles usually have years of posts, a work history that makes sense, and connections who also work at the company. Fake ones are often new, with a few hundred random connections and a headshot that looks too perfect.
• Message the profile directly. Ask the LinkedIn account to confirm the chat you are having on Telegram or WhatsApp. Scammers often copy a real employee’s profile, and the real employee will reply confused.

A long history plus a workplace check is good evidence that the person exists and works there. It does not show that the person messaging you on another app is the same person, so always confirm on the profile itself.

9. Check the company’s team page, docs, GitHub and community admin lists

Many companies publish who speaks for them:

• The Team or About page on the official website.
• The docs or Help Center, which often list official support channels and say “we will never DM you first.”
• The GitHub organization. Open github.com/the-company and look at public members. A developer who says they work there can usually be found in that list.
• Telegram and Discord admin lists. Check the admin’s username, the part with the @, and ignore the display name. Anyone can set a display name to “Example Support | Admin”. OKX advises copying the username from the profile screen. If the “username” appears only in the bio, the account is probably fake.

Example. You post a question in a project’s Discord, and “Mod Alex” sends you a private message offering help. You check the server’s member list. The real Alex has a staff role and a different username. The account in your DMs joined the server yesterday.

Lists go stale when people leave, so when the stakes are high, confirm with check 1 as well.

10. Call back through the switchboard

If someone phones you from “the company”, hang up and call the number on the company’s website or on the back of your card. Ask to be put through to that person or department.

Example. “Your bank’s fraud team” calls and asks you to move savings to a “safe account”. You hang up and dial the number printed on your bank card. The bank has no record of the call. The FTC says bank impersonators caused the largest reported losses among business imposters in 2025, and these scams often end with victims persuaded to move money to “protect” it.

This check is hard to beat. Use another phone if you can, because some scams keep the line open after you hang up.

11. For crypto: ask for a signed message from a known wallet

Crypto has a check that nobody can fake without the private key. If a project or team member claims to control a wallet the project lists publicly, ask them to sign a message with it.

1. Find the wallet address yourself, in the project’s official docs, website or official X account.
2. Ask them to sign a message with today’s date and your name in it, such as: “I am Daniel from Example Protocol. Signed for Priya on 29 October 2026.” The date and your name stop them from reusing an old signature.
3. Check the signature on Etherscan’s Verified Signatures page. BaseScan, Arbiscan and other Ethereum-style explorers have the same tool. Enter the address, the message and the signature, and see whether it is valid.

A valid signature proves the signer controls that wallet. Whether the wallet belongs to the project depends on where you found the address, which is why step 1 matters.

12. Don’t treat a video call as proof

Plenty of people still treat a video call as the final word. Since 2024 that has been a costly habit. In January 2024, a finance employee at the Hong Kong office of engineering firm Arup joined a video call with what looked like the company’s CFO and other colleagues. Every other face on the call was a deepfake. The employee made 15 transfers worth HK$200 million, about $25.6 million, before checking with the head office, Hong Kong police said. Arup later confirmed to CNN that fake voices and images were used.

If a video call is part of the story, confirm through a second channel you found yourself: the company switchboard, the official X account or a work email you already confirmed with checks 4 and 5. Ask for a calendar invite sent from the company domain, and run check 5 on it.

13. Search their name, handle and domain with “scam”

Spend a minute on a web search:

• "@daniel_sec_team" scam
• "example-support.com"
• "Example Exchange" recruiter scam

Also look for the company’s own warnings. Many companies publish lists of fake domains and copycat tricks on their blog or Help Center.

If others have reported the same handle or domain, you know it is a scam within a minute. An empty search proves nothing, because a new scam has no reports yet.

Requests that end the conversation, whoever is asking

Some requests are scams however well the person passes these 13 checks, because a hacked real account can pass every test. Nothing makes these requests safe:

• Your seed phrase, recovery phrase or private key. No company ever needs it. Anyone who asks is stealing.
• Your password or a one-time code from SMS, email or an authenticator app.
• Remote access or screen sharing through AnyDesk, TeamViewer or a “support tool”.
• Moving money to a “safe” or “secure” wallet or account to protect it.
• Paying to receive money, such as a fee to unlock a withdrawal, a deposit to start a job, or “gas” to claim a prize.
• Installing software for a job interview. Fake crypto recruiters ask candidates to install a “video call app” or run a coding test that carries malware.
• Connecting your wallet to “verify” it, or signing a transaction you do not understand.

When you see one of these, stop. You don’t owe anyone a polite goodbye.

Three common scams, checked step by step

Scam 1: Fake exchange support on Telegram

The message. “@ExampleEx_Support” writes: “Your withdrawal is stuck. Connect your wallet at example-unlock.com to release it.”

The checks.

1. Check 2: the exchange’s checking tool says the handle is not official.
2. Check 7: ICANN lookup shows example-unlock.com was created this month.
3. The requests list: “connect your wallet to release funds” is on it.

Verdict. Scam. Block the account and report it to the exchange and to Telegram.

Scam 2: A recruiter from a crypto firm

The message. A LinkedIn profile titled “Senior Talent Partner at Example Labs” offers $180,000 for a remote developer role. The next step is a “technical test”: download a code repository and run it on your laptop.

The checks.

1. Check 4: you ask for an email from @examplelabs.com. The reply comes from a Gmail account, “because of internal policy”.
2. Check 8: nobody with that name appears on Example Labs’ LinkedIn People tab, and the profile is four months old.
3. Check 1: Example Labs’ careers page lists no such role.
4. The requests list: running unknown code from a stranger is on it.

Verdict. Scam. If you already ran the code, treat the laptop as compromised. Move any crypto to a new wallet created on a clean device, and change your passwords from that device.

Scam 3: A “partnership” email to a small project

The message. “Hi, I lead business development at Example Exchange. We’d like to list your token. Please sign the attached agreement and pay the $15,000 listing deposit.”

The checks.

1. Check 5: “Show original” says dmarc=pass header.from=example-exchange-listing.com. The email really came from that domain, and that domain belongs to someone else.
2. Check 3: you DM the exchange’s official X account. The exchange replies that it never asks for listing deposits by email and does not know this person.
3. Check 2: the exchange’s checking tool does not recognize the address.

Verdict. Scam. The email passed DMARC for its own lookalike domain, which is why reading the domain letter by letter (check 4) comes before the header check.

A checklist you can save

Before you share anything, pay anything or click anything:

• I found the company’s contact details myself. This person did not give them to me.
• I asked the company, through that channel, whether this person is real.
• I checked the handle or email in the company’s checking tool, if it has one.
• I read the email domain letter by letter, from the right.
• “Show original” shows dmarc=pass for the company's real domain.
• I checked where every link really goes, by hovering or with AI.
• The domain is more than a few months old.
• Their LinkedIn, team page or GitHub matches, and I searched from the company’s side.
• Nobody asked for a seed phrase, code, password, remote access, a fee or a software install.
• I am not rushing because someone told me to.

If any line fails, stop and confirm through a channel you found yourself.

If you already replied or paid

Act in this order:

1. Stop all contact. Do not send “one last” payment to unlock the first one. Fake “recovery” offers usually follow, often from the same crew.
2. Secure your accounts from a device you trust. Change passwords, reset two-factor authentication and log out of other sessions.
3. Move your crypto to a new wallet with a new seed phrase if you shared the old phrase or connected your wallet to a site. Revoke token approvals you do not recognize.
4. Tell the real company through its official support. The company can freeze accounts and warn other users.
5. Report it. In the US, use reportfraud.ftc.gov and the FBI’s ic3.gov. In the UK, use Report Fraud. Elsewhere, contact your national police cyber-crime unit.

FAQ

How can I verify if someone works for a company?

Contact the company through a channel you found yourself, such as its official website or official X account, and ask whether the person works there. Back that up with the company’s checking tool if it has one, a work email from the real domain that passes DMARC, and LinkedIn’s workplace check.

Can a verified X account be fake?

Yes. Anyone can buy a blue checkmark, and it says nothing about employment. On X, staff linked to a verified company show an affiliate badge, a small copy of the company’s logo next to their name. Official accounts can still be hacked, so pair the badge with a second check.

Is an email from the company’s domain always safe?

No. The From address can be forged, which is why you check for dmarc=pass in the raw headers. A real staff mailbox can also be hacked, and a hacked mailbox passes every check. If the email asks for anything on the requests list, treat it as a scam even when the headers pass.

Can AI tell me if an email is a scam?

AI is very good at reading raw email source and finding fake links, lookalike domains and failed SPF, DKIM or DMARC results. It still makes mistakes. Use it to point at the suspicious lines, check those lines yourself, and remove your personal details before you paste.

Will a real company ever message me first on Telegram or WhatsApp?

Most large crypto exchanges say their staff will not start private chats about your account and will never ask for funds, passwords or codes. Check the company’s Help Center for its own policy, and treat any unprompted private message as unconfirmed until you check it.

What is the safest way to check a recruiter?

Ask for an email from the company domain, find the role on the company’s own careers page, and search the recruiter’s name on the company’s LinkedIn People tab. Never pay a fee, buy equipment through the recruiter, or install software as part of an interview.

What should I do if someone fails these checks?

Stop replying, block the account, and report it to the real company and to the platform where you met. If you shared anything or sent money, follow the steps under “If you already replied or paid”.

Gaurav Agarwal writes about crypto security and on-chain investigations. If a scam message reached you that these checks did not cover, describe it in the comments, without personal details, and I will add a check for it.

How to Verify Someone Really Works for a Company: 13 Checks was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This post contains affiliate links. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Deel links are my referral links. Remote did not pay for or see this post.

The short answer

Deel and Remote list the same starting price to employ someone for you abroad: $599 per employee per month. Remote is cheaper for contractors, at $29 per contractor per month against $49, and it does not ask for an employer-of-record deposit as standard.

Deel goes much further with stablecoins. A company can fund its invoices in USDC or USDT. Employees can take up to 25% of their net pay in stablecoins. Contractors can withdraw USDC or USDT to their own wallet across seven networks, Solana and Tron among them. Remote’s stablecoin option is USDC only, for contractors only, paid through Stripe in about 67 countries.

A crypto company that keeps its money in stablecoins and has people who want to be paid in them should pick Deel. A team that pays contractors in local bank money and watches every dollar of fees will pay less at Remote.

How we use Deel

We have paid a small team of contractors through Deel, between 6 and 20 people, all by bank transfer. Setup was fast: adding a contractor and getting the contract signed took little effort. Payments landed on time. And Deel produced the contracts, invoices and tax forms, so we never had to build that paperwork ourselves.

We have not used Remote, and none of our contractors withdrew in crypto. The Remote and stablecoin sections below rely on each company’s own pricing pages, help articles and fee tables, read on 26 October 2026.

Three products that people mix up

Both companies sell three different services, and their prices are far apart.

Employer of record (EOR)

You want a full-time employee in a country where you have no company. The provider’s local company becomes the legal employer. It runs payroll, withholds tax, pays social charges, provides the benefits the law requires, and handles the contract and any termination under local labor law. You still direct the work. This is the product that starts at $599 per month.

Global payroll

You already own a company in that country and only want someone to run its payroll: pay, tax and filings. You stay the legal employer. Both charge $29 per employee per month.

Contractor management

The person is self-employed and sends you invoices. The provider issues the contract, collects invoices and tax forms, and pays out in many currencies. Deel charges $49 per contractor per month and Remote charges $29.

A fourth service sits between the last two. Under a contractor of record setup, the provider signs the freelancer itself and takes on the misclassification risk, meaning the chance that a tax office decides your contractor was really an employee. Both list it from $325 per month.

Our own setup is all contractors. A team that needs someone on the books in a particular country adds EOR hires on top.

Plans and prices side by side

For employer-of-record hires, both list $599 per employee per month as a starting price, and the real figure depends on the country. Deel’s EOR page claims 150+ countries, with its own companies in 130+ of them. Remote covers 90+ countries and says every one runs on a company it owns. Deel takes a deposit for each EOR hire of 1 to 1.5 times the monthly cost (salary, employer costs and fees) and refunds it after the final invoice. Remote’s pricing page says there is no standard deposit, though a refundable reserve may apply in some cases. On onboarding speed, Deel claims as little as one day and Remote quotes a three-day average.

Global payroll costs $29 per employee per month on both. Deel lists 130+ countries on its pricing page. Its payroll specialists run it for you, and in the US and Canada your own team can run it instead. Remote lists 100+ countries and lets you choose self-serve or managed.

Contractors are where Remote is cheaper: its base plan costs $20 less per contractor per month. Remote also sells Contractor Management Plus at $99, which adds $100,000 of misclassification cover per contractor, up to $1 million per company. Deel’s $49 plan includes invoicing, tax-form collection and payments in 120+ currencies, plus a possible fee of up to $5 per month for any contract with no payments recorded for two months in a row.

Remote gives pre-seed, seed and Series A companies 15% off EOR and contractor plans for their first 12 months. Deel’s pricing page shows no matching discount.

Crypto and stablecoins side by side

Paying contractors in stablecoins

Deel gives contractors three routes into crypto. The most direct is a withdrawal to their own wallet: USDC on Ethereum, Base, Polygon, BNB Chain or Solana, or USDT on Ethereum, Tron, BNB Chain, Polygon or Tempo. The fee table lists a 2% service charge plus a $1 network fee, with a $5 minimum, and the route does not work for accounts in the US or the UK.

Contractors can also cash out through Coinbase. BTC, ETH and SOL cost 1.5%. USDC costs a flat $5 under $300 and 1.6% above that. Withdrawals into BTC or ETH also carry an exchange fee on top.

The third route is the DLUSD wallet, launched in June 2026 and live in 80+ countries across Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific, though not in the US, the UK, the EU or Australia. Moving money between the wallet and the contractor’s Deel balance is free, and Deel pays the blockchain fees.

Deel’s help center calls DLUSD “Deel’s internal USD-equivalent digital balance” and says plainly that it is not a cryptocurrency. Stripe, whose Bridge unit issues it, calls it a custom stablecoin settled on the Tempo blockchain. I would treat it as a dollar balance inside the app that runs on crypto rails. At launch it could not be sent to an outside wallet. Deel called that a planned feature, and we found no page saying it has shipped.

Deel said in June 2026 that 10,000 contractors in 100 countries already got paid in stablecoins.

Remote gives contractors one route: USDC through Stripe, on Base, Aptos or Polygon, into a wallet the contractor controls, such as MetaMask. Stripe says the money arrives within minutes. The company must be billed in US dollars, and the contractor must be an individual or a sole proprietor, because Stripe does not yet pay out to companies. The contractor must also live in a country on Stripe’s list, which had 67 entries when we read it. Germany, the UK, Spain, Italy, India, Brazil, Nigeria, Ukraine, Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey and Japan are not on it. Neither Remote nor Stripe publishes a fee for these payouts.

What a $3,000 payout costs on Deel

Take a contractor who bills $3,000 in US dollars. Here is the Deel fee on each route, from Deel’s own fee table. Converting to another currency adds exchange costs on top.

• Local bank transfer in the same country and currency: $0 ($5 if the money crosses a border)
• Wise or Revolut: $0
• USDC or USDT to the contractor’s own wallet: $61 (2% plus $1)
• USDC through Coinbase: $48 (1.6%), plus any exchange fee
• Into the DLUSD wallet: $0, though the money stays inside Deel until it goes out by one of the routes above

Putting stablecoins into your own wallet costs about 2% of the payment, while plain dollars to Wise or a local bank carry no Deel fee. Whether that 2% is worth it depends on what the contractor would pay to buy the same stablecoins on an exchange.

Paying employees partly in stablecoins

Deel lets EOR and payroll employees take 10% to 25% of their net salary in USDC, EURC or USDT, with the rest going to their bank. It covers employees in the US, the UK and 30 European countries, though USDT is not offered in the EU. Employees pay nothing. The employer pays $10 per month for each employee who uses it.

Remote has no such option. Its stablecoin payouts cover contractors only.

Funding payroll from a crypto treasury

Deel accepts invoice payments in USDC (Ethereum, Polygon, Base or Solana) or USDT (Ethereum, Polygon, Tron or Tempo), sent to a deposit address unique to your company and converted to dollars at 1:1. Deel says most of these payments settle within minutes. Its two help pages disagree on the provider fee, 1% in one and 1.5% in the other, so budget for 1.5%. The option does not cover the US payroll product or US contractor payments.

Remote’s payment methods are bank transfers, direct debit and cards. Crypto is not on the list.

That fee adds up. On a $50,000 monthly payroll, 1% to 1.5% comes to $500 to $750. Whether that beats selling stablecoins for dollars and wiring them depends on your exchange and bank fees. What Deel saves you is the trip through an exchange and the wait for a wire to land.

A worked example: 10 contractors and 2 employees

Take a seed-stage crypto company that pays 10 contractors and employs 2 people through EOR, at list prices.

• Deel: 10 × $49 plus 2 × $599 comes to $1,688 per month, or $20,256 per year.
• Remote: 10 × $29 plus 2 × $599 comes to $1,488 per month, or $17,856 per year. With the 15% startup discount, the first year drops to about $1,265 per month.

Remote saves this company $200 per month at list price and about $423 per month in its first year. Deel also holds an EOR deposit of 1 to 1.5 months of each employee’s full cost.

For a crypto company, the extra $200 buys reach. Suppose four of the ten contractors live in Germany, India, Brazil and Nigeria and want stablecoins. Remote’s USDC route does not reach those countries. Deel’s help page names only US and UK accounts as excluded from its own-wallet route, so ask Deel to confirm each country. If the two employees want part of their salary in USDC, only Deel offers that. And if the company’s treasury sits in USDC, only Deel takes it directly.

Verdict

Pick Deel if you run a crypto company whose money sits in USDC or USDT, whose contractors want stablecoins in countries Stripe does not cover (or want USDT on Tron or USDC on Solana), or whose employees want part of their pay in stablecoins. Any one of those is reason enough. Our own use of Deel for contractors gives us no reason to doubt the basics: setup was quick and payments arrived on time. You can see the plans and sign up through my referral link.

Pick Remote if your contractors are happy with bank payouts and price is the deciding factor. An early-stage team gets the 15% discount and the $29 contractor fee, and its EOR hires need no standard deposit.

Five checks before you sign

1. Ask for an EOR quote for each country you hire in. The $599 figure is a starting price on both platforms.
2. Check your contractors’ countries against Stripe’s stablecoin list (for Remote) and Deel’s excluded countries.
3. Find out whether your contractors invoice as individuals or through a company. Remote’s USDC route only pays individuals and sole proprietors.
4. Ask Deel which crypto funding fee applies to you, 1% or 1.5%.
5. Ask Deel whether DLUSD can now be sent to an outside wallet. At launch it could not.

Deel vs Remote for Crypto Teams: Payroll, Contractors and Stablecoin Pay was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Seven crypto MCP servers that let Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor read live blockchain data, compared on chains, tools and price, with results from a live test.

Ask Claude or ChatGPT who bought a token this morning, or where the money from last week’s hack went. You will get one of two replies. Either the chatbot says it cannot see live data, or it gives a confident answer it made up. The AI learned from a snapshot of the web, and it has never read a block.

Disclosure: I wrote this story with help from an AI writing tool. Figures come from each vendor’s own docs and from my own test runs, all checked on 6 October 2026.

Short answer: the best crypto MCP server for blockchain data analysis in 2026 is Bitquery MCP. It puts DEX trades, trader profit and loss, fund tracing on 19 chains and wallet labels in one server that works in Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor. Pick Dune for custom SQL, Nansen for Smart Money labels, Etherscan for free wallet lookups and CoinGecko for prices.

What is a crypto MCP server?

A crypto MCP server is a plug-in that gives an AI assistant, such as Claude or ChatGPT, live tools for reading blockchain data. MCP stands for Model Context Protocol, an open standard for connecting assistants to outside tools. The server hands the assistant tools such as “list this wallet’s transfers” or “rank the top traders of this token”. You ask in plain English. The AI picks a tool, reads the rows that come back and writes the answer.

The servers differ in what those tools can reach. Some return token prices. Some return raw node data that a developer reads. A few return the analysis itself: who traded a token, who made money on it, where funds moved and who owns the wallet at the other end.

How I ranked them

I scored each server on four questions:

• Depth. Does it return the rows behind an answer, each trade and each transfer, or only totals?
• Analysis tools. Can it follow money, label wallets and rank traders without you writing code?
• Coverage. How many chains does it reach, and does that include Bitcoin, Solana and Tron?
• Setup and price. Is it hosted with a browser sign-in, or a local install with keys? What does it cost per month?

I also ran Bitquery on three real questions on 6 October 2026. The answers are in its section below.

The 7 best crypto MCP servers at a glance

• Bitquery MCP, best overall for on-chain analysis: 10 chains for DEX data, 19 for fund tracing, 314 tools, browser sign-in, from $19 per month.
• Dune, best for custom SQL: 100+ chains, 26 tools, OAuth or API key, paid in Dune API credits.
• Nansen, best for Smart Money labels: 50 tools (12 through a connector), Nansen Pro from $49 per month billed yearly, with 2,000 API credits per month.
• Etherscan, best free option for EVM lookups: 60+ EVM chains, 21 tools (16 with no key), free to start.
• CoinGecko, best for prices: 2 tools that reach 100+ API methods, free public server with no key, Pro plans for higher limits.
• Alchemy, best for app developers: 100+ chains, 168 tools, browser sign-in, free plan with 30M compute units per month.
• Blockscout, best for explorer data on 100+ chains: 16 tools, free PRO API key with 100,000 credits per day.

1. Bitquery MCP: best overall for on-chain analysis

Bitquery MCP is a hosted server at mcp.bitquery.io. You sign in with a Bitquery account in your browser (OAuth 2.1), so there is no API key to paste. It works in Claude (desktop, web and Claude Code), ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code, OpenAI Codex and Windsurf.

Most on-chain questions come down to two questions: who is trading this token, and where did the money go? Bitquery sits at number one because it has dedicated tools for both. DEX trades and trader rankings answer the first. Hop-by-hop fund tracing answers the second, with labels on the wallets at the end. No other server on this list has a built-in tool that follows funds hop by hop across Bitcoin, Tron and the EVM chains.

• DEX data on 10 chains. Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Polygon, Optimism, BNB Chain, Tron, Solana, Robinhood Chain and Arc, Circle’s new chain. Tools cover trending and new tokens, price candles down to one second, pool trades, top traders and trader profit and loss.
• Fund tracing on 19 chains. The same 10, plus Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Dash, Zcash, Cardano, the XRP Ledger and Stellar. You can follow funds hop by hop with Bitquery MCP and get a summary of who an address sends to and receives from.
• Address labels. Exchange deposit wallets, mixers, scams, darknet markets and token clones, so a trace ends at a name instead of a string of hex.
• Risk screen. Ask whether an address is risky and it returns LOW, MEDIUM or HIGH with the evidence behind the verdict.
• Polymarket and Hyperliquid. 14 tools for prediction-market odds, trades and holders, and 18 for Hyperliquid prices, funding, liquidations and trader positions.
• SQL. The $149 plan adds raw SQL over 30 days of per-second trades.

In total, the server listed 314 tools when I counted on 6 October 2026.

What it returned when I tested it. On 6 October 2026, I connected Bitquery to Claude and asked three questions.

1. “What are the most traded Polymarket markets today?” The top market over the 24 hours to 13:33 UTC was “Will Sweden win on 2026–10–05?”, with $4.17 million traded across 2,846 orders from 274 wallets. The answer also said its order data ran 17 minutes behind the clock.
2. “What are the top Base tokens by DEX volume in the last 24 hours?” Doppler (XDP) led with $260 million traded, more than its $202 million fully diluted value. Volume above a token’s total value is a reason to check for wash trading before you trust the figure. The same list held a copycat token named “OpenAI” that lost more than 99% of its price in those 24 hours.
3. Following stolen funds. I started from a wallet that held SOL drained from TradeWiz users on 30 September. One tracing call showed it sent 191 SOL on 1 October to a single address, and a label lookup tagged that address as a KuCoin deposit address. Bitquery’s TradeWiz drain investigation has the full trail.

Price. The Trading MCP plan costs $19 per month for 32 tools: trending tokens, candles and top traders. The AI Investigation plan costs $149 per month and opens all 314 tools, including labels and raw SQL. Yearly billing brings them down to $13 and $100 per month. A 7-day trial gives you 100 credits.

Watch out for. DEX data covers 10 chains, so a token that trades only on Avalanche or Sui needs another server, such as Dune. The $19 plan is for trading data only; tracing, labels and SQL need the $149 plan.

Best for: investigators, compliance teams and traders who want market data and money trails in the same chat.

2. Dune MCP: best for custom SQL across 100+ chains

Dune launched its official MCP server in early 2026. It connects the AI to Dune’s data warehouse, which holds more than 100 indexed chains, decoded smart contracts and tables built by Dune’s community.

Dune’s docs list 26 tools. They let the assistant search for tables, write and run SQL queries, and turn the results into charts and dashboards. You sign in with OAuth or a Dune API key, and calls draw on your Dune API credits.

Watch out for. Every answer is a SQL query that the AI writes against tables it first has to find. When the query is right, you get any metric you can think of. When it is wrong, you debug SQL. Long queries can also run past a client’s time limit; Dune’s own docs flag the 60-second default in OpenAI Codex.

Best for: analysts who already know Dune and want a custom metric or a dashboard.

3. Nansen MCP: best for Smart Money labels

Nansen’s server is built around its wallet labels. Connect through a connector with your Nansen login and you get 12 curated tools. Connect with an API key and you get the full set of 50, covering Smart Money holdings and trades, token flows, buyers and sellers, wallet profit and loss, related wallets, Hyperliquid positions and prediction markets.

Price. Nansen Pro costs $69 per month, or $49 per month billed yearly, and tops your API credits back up to 2,000 each month. Most tool calls cost 1 to 5 credits. Label lookups cost the most, from 100 to 500 credits per call.

Watch out for. The label tools are Nansen’s main draw, and they cost the most: 2,000 credits buy about 20 common label lookups. On a free key the premium label tools return an upgrade error. Nansen’s docs also say coverage varies by chain and by tool.

Best for: traders who want to see what large, labelled wallets are buying.

4. Etherscan MCP: best free option for EVM lookups

Etherscan’s official server runs at mcp.etherscan.io with 21 tools across more than 60 EVM chains. They cover balances, transactions, token transfers, contract source code, gas prices and event logs. A keyless version runs 16 of those 21 tools with no sign-up. The full server takes a free Etherscan API key, and its PRO tools need the Pro Plus plan.

Etherscan’s docs warn that mcp.etherscan.io is the only official server. Marketplace listings that use the Etherscan name are not from Etherscan.

Watch out for. Etherscan’s tools answer one address or one transaction at a time. Ranking traders or following funds through 50 wallets means dozens of calls against your API quota. It does not cover Bitcoin, Solana or Tron.

Best for: quick, free checks of a wallet or a transaction on Ethereum and its rollups.

5. CoinGecko MCP: best for prices and market data

CoinGecko runs a free public server that needs no API key and shares its rate limits across users. A Pro endpoint gives higher limits and the full tool set. The server exposes two tools: one searches CoinGecko’s SDK docs, and one runs code against more than 100 API methods. Together they cover live and historical prices, market caps, volumes, exchange data, trending coins and DEX pools.

Watch out for. CoinGecko returns market data only. It can tell you a token’s price and where it trades. It cannot tell you who holds the token or where the funds went.

Best for: price checks, portfolio maths and market overviews.

6. Alchemy MCP: best for developers building on-chain apps

Alchemy’s hosted server signs you in with your Alchemy account, with no key and no install. Alchemy lists 168 tools across 100+ chains, split into 8 admin, 132 RPC and 28 data tools. The RPC tools cover transaction simulation, debug traces, account abstraction and Solana. The data tools cover NFTs, prices and portfolios.

Alchemy’s free plan covers 30 million compute units per month. The company has retired its old local server. The npm package stopped working on 30 September 2026, so older setup guides no longer apply.

Watch out for. Most tools are node calls that return raw blockchain data. A developer testing a contract wants exactly that. An analyst needs many calls to build one answer.

Best for: developers who want their coding AI to query and simulate on-chain state.

7. Blockscout MCP: best for explorer data on 100+ chains

Blockscout hosts its own server and publishes the code on GitHub under its own licence, which limits commercial use. Its 16 tools cover addresses, tokens, NFTs, contracts, transactions and blocks on more than 100 chains. It splits long responses into pages, so a busy wallet’s history does not overflow the assistant’s context.

You need a Blockscout PRO API key. The free tier gives 100,000 credits per day, and a shared fallback key works with tighter rate limits.

Watch out for. Like Etherscan, Blockscout serves explorer data, one address or one transaction at a time. It has no tools for tracing funds or ranking traders.

Best for: wallet and contract lookups on chains that Etherscan does not cover.

Other crypto MCP servers worth a look

• altFINS MCP is built for technical analysis: screeners, 150+ indicators and trade signals on more than 2,000 coins. It reads charts, not wallets.
• Tatum’s Blockchain MCP offers 13 tools for balances, transaction history and NFT data across 130+ networks. It needs a Tatum API key and returns raw data rather than analysis.

Which crypto MCP server should you use?

Match the server to the question you ask most:

• “Where did this money go, and who received it?” Bitquery.
• “Is this wallet risky?” Bitquery’s risk screen.
• “Can you chart this custom metric?” Dune.
• “What are big funds buying?” Nansen.
• “What’s in this wallet?” Etherscan or Blockscout.
• “What’s the price?” CoinGecko.
• “Help me build and test my app.” Alchemy.

You can connect more than one. Claude and Cursor both accept several servers at once, and the AI picks the tool that fits each question.

How to connect Bitquery MCP to Claude and ChatGPT

1. In Claude, open Customize → Connectors, click + Add and choose Add custom connector.
2. Name it Bitquery, paste https://mcp.bitquery.io as the server URL and click Add.
3. Ask a question. The first time a Bitquery tool runs, Claude opens a sign-in page. Log in with your Bitquery account.

On Claude Team and Enterprise plans, an owner adds the connector first under Organization settings → Connectors.

ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code and Windsurf take the same URL in their connector or server settings. Bitquery’s setup docs have the steps for each client.

Before you trust the answer

• Ask for the receipts. Have the assistant list the transaction hashes behind its answer, then open one in a block explorer.
• Check the data delay. Every index trails the chain. In my test, Bitquery’s Polymarket data ran 17 minutes behind, and the answer said so.
• Read labels as evidence. A label says an address was attributed to an exchange or a scam. Check the evidence before you accuse anyone.
• Watch your credits. Every server here meters its calls, and a long investigation can make hundreds of them.

FAQ

What is the best MCP server for crypto analysis?
Bitquery, when the question is about who traded a token and where the money moved. It covers DEX trades on 10 chains and fund tracing on 19. For prices alone, CoinGecko’s free server is enough.

Which crypto MCP servers work with ChatGPT and Claude?
All seven are hosted servers, so any client that accepts a remote server URL can try them, though sign-in support varies by client. Bitquery and Dune both name Claude and ChatGPT in their docs.

Is there a free crypto MCP server?
Yes. CoinGecko’s public server and Etherscan’s keyless server need no account at all. Blockscout and Alchemy have free plans, and Bitquery offers a 7-day trial with 100 credits.

Is there an MCP server for Polymarket?
Yes. Bitquery has 14 Polymarket tools for market odds, trades, top traders and outcome holders; see the Polymarket MCP guide. Nansen’s full tool set also covers prediction markets.

What is the best MCP server for Solana data?
Bitquery covers Solana DEX trades, new token launches and fund tracing; see the Solana MCP guide. Dune also holds Solana tables if you would rather write SQL.

Is there an MCP server for Hyperliquid?
Yes. Bitquery has 18 Hyperliquid tools for prices, funding rates, liquidations and trader positions; see the Hyperliquid MCP guide.

Which MCP server is best for Bitcoin analysis?
Bitquery. It traces Bitcoin transfers and groups addresses that are likely controlled by the same owner, and does the same for Litecoin, Dogecoin, Bitcoin Cash and Dash. Dune also holds Bitcoin tables if you would rather write SQL.

Can these servers trade for me?
This list covers servers for reading blockchain data. Bitquery is read-only, so it cannot move funds. Servers that place trades or sign transactions are a separate category.

If your question is about prices, CoinGecko is enough. If it is about who traded a token and where the money went, start with Bitquery MCP and its 7-day trial.

The Best Crypto MCP Servers for Blockchain Data Analysis in 2026 was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Claude and ChatGPT can’t see live crypto markets on their own. I compared nine MCP servers that fix that, tested four, and ran the top pick on a real trade.

Ask ChatGPT who bought a coin yesterday and you get a guess. The chatbot has no view of the market. What it knows comes from text it read months ago. It can explain a chart pattern, but it can’t tell you what the price did this morning.

The fix is a plug-in standard called MCP, short for Model Context Protocol. An MCP server is a data source that an AI chatbot can call while it writes its answer. Connect a crypto MCP server to Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor, and “who bought this coin?” becomes a lookup against real trades.

I checked nine crypto MCP servers against six questions traders ask, using each vendor’s docs. On 6 October 2026 I tested four of them myself: Bitquery, CoinGecko, DexPaprika and altFINS. Then I ran the top pick on one live question: who made money on a Solana token that rose 52% in a week?

Disclosure: This story was written with the assistance of an AI writing program (Claude), which also ran the queries. I checked every number against the raw output. There are no affiliate links.

Quick answer: the best crypto MCP servers in October 2026

• Best for on-chain trading analysis (wallets, profit, DEX trades, Hyperliquid futures): Bitquery
• Best free starting point: CoinGecko, which has a public server that needs no key
• Best for labelled “smart money” wallets: Nansen
• Best for Solana wallet profit: Birdeye
• Best if you write SQL: Dune
• Best for market data with news and chart analysis: CoinMarketCap
• Best for ready-made chart signals: altFINS
• Best free DEX pool data: DexPaprika
• Best for social sentiment: Santiment

What is a crypto MCP server?

A crypto MCP server is a connector that gives an AI chatbot live market or blockchain data through a list of tools. Ask Claude which Hyperliquid futures markets have the most buyers, and Claude picks a tool from the server’s list, the server runs the query, and Claude reads the rows back to you. Expand the answer and you can see the exact tool call.

The AI is only as good as the tool it calls. A server built on exchange price feeds can’t tell you which wallets bought. A server built on blockchain trades can’t tell you what people say about a coin online. So the useful question is which server holds the data your question needs.

How I compared them: six trader questions

1. What is this coin worth? Price, market cap and volume across exchanges.
2. What did a small token do? Price history for a token that trades only on a decentralized exchange (DEX), minute by minute.
3. What is moving? Trending tokens and fresh launches.
4. Who is buying, and who made money? Trades and profit for each wallet.
5. Where is the borrowed money? Data on perpetual futures, the no-expiry contracts most crypto traders use to trade with borrowed funds. That means funding rates (the hourly fee one side pays the other), open interest (the value of all open contracts) and liquidations (positions closed because the trader’s margin ran out).
6. What is the crowd saying? Social sentiment and ready-made chart signals.

What each server can answer, from each vendor’s tool list and docs on 6 October 2026. Chart made by the author.

The same comparison in text, for phone readers and anyone who can’t see the chart:

• Bitquery answers 2, 3, 4 and 5; partly 1; not 6. Free 7-day trial.
• CoinGecko answers 1, 2 and 3; partly 4 (paid) and 5; not 6. Free, no key.
• Nansen answers 1, 2, 3 and 4; partly 5 and 6. Trial credits.
• Birdeye answers 1 and 2; partly 3 and 4; not 5 or 6. Free key.
• Dune answers 2 and 4 through SQL; partly 1, 3 and 5; not 6. 14-day trial.
• CoinMarketCap answers 1 and 6; partly 3 and 5; not 2 or 4. Free key.
• altFINS answers 1 and 6; partly 3; not 2, 4 or 5. Free key.
• DexPaprika answers 3; partly 1 and 2; not 4, 5 or 6. Free, no key.
• Santiment answers 1 and 6; partly 3; not 2, 4 or 5. Free tier.

“Partly” means a paid tier, a narrower data set, or only some of the question. Everything comes from each server’s own tool list or docs on 6 October 2026.

1. Bitquery MCP: best for on-chain trading analysis

Best for: who traded, at what price, and with what result.

Bitquery reads trades straight from the blockchain. Its server covers DEX trades on Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Tron, Robinhood Chain and Arc. It also covers Hyperliquid, a crypto futures exchange with its own blockchain, and Polymarket, a prediction market.

What it answers from its own data:

• Price candles down to one second for any token, including ones launched an hour ago.
• Trending tokens, new launches, and the first wallets to buy each launch.
• Every trade a wallet made, its open positions, and its profit at average cost.
• Hyperliquid funding, open interest, liquidations and trader positions.
• Polymarket odds, trades and top wallets, plus address labels and fund tracing.

Two answers it gave me on 6 October 2026:

• In all 15 of the largest Hyperliquid markets, most accounts were long: 65% on BTC, 73% on ETH and up to 85% on a gold contract. Every long is matched by a short of the same size. So a long-heavy account count means many small longs facing fewer, larger shorts. On BTC, ETH and SOL, funding sat at the exchange’s default rate of about 11% per year, so the crowd of longs paid nothing extra.
• In the 24 hours to 13:30 UTC, BTC had 2,282 liquidations worth $15.5 million, and 70% of them hit longs. On xyz:SPCX, a futures market on SpaceX, 1,634 liquidations worth $9 million hit shorts 81% of the time, while its price rose 8.5%.

Weak spots: the trade and price tools keep about 30 days of history (its own coverage check said 30.6 days). It has no social or news data. It prices coins from on-chain trades and has no exchange order-book data. It has no ready-made indicators: you get candles, and the AI works out RSI or moving averages itself.

Setup and price: hosted at https://mcp.bitquery.io with browser sign-in. A 7-day trial gives 100 credits with no card. Trading MCP costs $19 per month for 32 trading tools; AI Investigation MCP costs $149 per month for every tool (product page, setup guide).

2. CoinGecko MCP: best free starting point

Best for: prices, market caps and DEX pool data with no sign-up.

CoinGecko runs a public server at https://mcp.api.coingecko.com/mcp that needs no key. The server works differently from the rest: it has two tools, one that searches the CoinGecko API docs and one that runs code against the API. The AI writes a short script for each question.

On the free server I got ORCA’s price ($2.57), market cap ($155.6 million) and 24-hour change (+30%). The server also returned daily candles for ORCA’s main pool, the latest 300 trades with wallet addresses, the trending list and futures data. CoinGecko’s daily ORCA closes matched Bitquery’s within a cent.

Weak spots: the “top traders” call returned “Not found” on the free server. CoinGecko’s docs put top traders and holders on the Analyst plan, $129 per month, capped at 50 wallets per token. A paid key starts at $35 per month (docs, pricing).

3. Nansen MCP: best for labelled “smart money”

Best for: knowing who owns a wallet as well as what it did.

Nansen’s server lists 50 tools: token prices and candles, who bought and sold a token, wallet profit, holders, Hyperliquid positions, prediction markets and technical indicators. Its edge is labels. Nansen tags funds, exchanges and its own “smart money” list, and those names come back with the data.

Weak spots: no funding rates or open interest in the tool list, and no social data. Calls cost credits: the free tier gives 100 trial credits and then tops up to 10 per day, while one profit leaderboard call costs 150. Pro costs $69 per month (tool list, credits).

4. Birdeye MCP: best for Solana wallet profit

Best for: Solana traders who want top traders and wallet profit per token.

Birdeye covers prices, candles, token trades, holders and top traders on many chains, plus wallet profit on Solana. Birdeye’s docs call the server keyless, but my keyless call came back “Unauthorized”, so plan on a free API key.

Weak spots: wallet profit is Solana only, and the free tier allows one request per second. Lite costs $39 per month (docs).

5. Dune MCP: best if you write SQL

Best for: custom questions no ready-made tool answers.

Dune’s server gives the AI SQL access to Dune’s tables across more than 100 chains, plus its community dashboards. Anything a table holds, the AI can query: top wallets, flows, or a protocol’s fees.

Weak spots: the answer is only as good as the SQL the AI writes, and every run costs credits. The free plan has no API access after a 14-day trial; Analyst costs $75 per month (docs).

6. CoinMarketCap MCP: best for market data with news

Best for: one place for quotes, chart analysis, news and market narratives.

CoinMarketCap’s server has 12 tools covering quotes, technical analysis, on-chain and futures metrics, narratives and news. A free Basic key works, and a pay-per-call route charges 0.01 USDC per request with no key (docs).

Weak spots: market-wide numbers only, with no wallet-level data.

7. altFINS MCP: best for ready-made chart signals

Best for: traders who want indicators and chart patterns without doing the maths themselves.

altFINS covers more than 150 indicators and 130 signal types, plus 35 candle patterns, across more than 2,000 assets. On my test, altFINS flagged ORCA as overbought on 5 October, with RSI above 70 and Stochastic above 80, and listed it as an unusual-volume gainer. The free Basic plan includes MCP access (docs).

Weak spots: chart analysis only, with no wallet data. altFINS put ORCA’s market cap at $69 million, while CoinGecko and Bitquery both showed about $155 million. Check market caps against a second source.

8. DexPaprika MCP: best free DEX pool data

Best for: pools, liquidity and token details across 36 chains, free.

DexPaprika’s server at https://mcp.dexpaprika.com/streamable-http needed no key on my test and returned ORCA's details and its pools. Token candles asked for a paid key (Dev, $30 per month), and the server pointed me to free pool candles instead (pricing).

Weak spots: no wallet tools, so it can’t say who bought.

9. Santiment MCP: best for social sentiment

Best for: what the crowd is saying, next to price and on-chain metrics.

Santiment’s seven tools cover price, market cap, social volume and sentiment, trending stories and analyst insights, with metrics such as exchange inflows and daily active addresses. The free tier allows 500 calls per day (guide).

Weak spots: time series only, with no wallet-level data.

Also worth knowing: CryptoQuant (exchange flows and miner data), Arkham (entity labels and counterparties), Glassnode (on-chain metrics, with 30 days of history free and no key) and Token Terminal (protocol fees and revenue). Alchemy’s server gives raw node data and no trading data. Moralis’s MCP package has had no update since September 2025. Messari, now owned by Blockworks, sells its server only through its sales team.

Walkthrough: who made money on ORCA this week?

ORCA, the token of the Solana exchange Orca, rose 52% in the seven days to 6 October, from $1.67 to $2.54. Trading ran at about $1 million per day from 30 September to 3 October, then jumped to $6.1 million on 4 October and $10.3 million on 5 October. I asked Claude, with Bitquery connected, who made money on the move.

Step 1: find the token. Claude found ORCA in a trending_tokens screen of the week's gainers. The screen returns the token's address as well as its ticker. That matters, because anyone can create a coin called ORCA.

Step 2: screen the wallets. profitable_traders_by_token ranked every wallet that traded ORCA that week. The top three:

• Wallet Ffz3…Z47h bought $3.13 million of ORCA in 161 trades over 29 hours and sold nothing. Estimated gain: $719,012.
• Wallet FkaL…3MZp made 9,790 trades, buying $3.54 million and selling $2.82 million. Estimated gain: $112,852.
• Wallet 7xD1…aLrV bought $168,014 and sold nothing. Estimated gain: $52,320.

Step 3: check the profit properly. The screen estimates profit as sales minus purchases, plus the value of what the wallet still holds. trader_positions works it out again at average cost and splits cash already taken from gains on paper.

• Wallet 1 paid an average of $2.07 per ORCA. At $2.55, its 1.51 million tokens were worth $3.86 million. Its $725,376 gain was all on paper.
• Wallet 3 looked the same: a $52,684 gain on paper, nothing sold.
• Wallet 2 was the only one to take profit: about $100,000 realized, a 3.7% return on what it sold, plus about $20,000 on paper at that hour’s price. It held each position for about seven hours on average.

Step 4: read the trades. trader_trades lists every swap with its transaction hash. Wallet 1's five largest buys were each exactly $25,000 in USDC, routed through Jupiter. In one of them, at 19:02 UTC on 4 October, the other side of the trade was wallet 2 (transaction on Solscan).

So wallet 2 fills other people’s orders. It acts as a market maker, a trader that quotes both buy and sell prices and earns the gap. Copying it would teach you nothing.

Wallet 1’s buys made up 19% of all ORCA trading on 4 and 5 October, the two days the price climbed from $1.80 to $2.42. Bitquery’s label lookup had no name for the wallet. Its largest buys came in identical $25,000 blocks, which looks like a fund or a treasury desk working a large order. Nothing on-chain proves who owns it.

The lesson: a “most profitable traders” list is mostly paper gains and market makers. Ask the AI two follow-ups every time. Is that profit realized or on paper? Is this wallet a market maker?

How do you connect a crypto MCP server to Claude or ChatGPT?

Hosted servers take about two minutes:

1. Claude (web or desktop): Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector. Paste the server URL (for Bitquery, https://mcp.bitquery.io) and sign in when the browser asks.
2. ChatGPT: Settings → Connectors → add a custom connector with the same URL. Bitquery’s guide lists Plus, Pro or Business as the plans that allow it.
3. Claude Code: run claude mcp add --transport http bitquery https://mcp.bitquery.io in a terminal.
4. Cursor: Settings → MCP → Add new MCP server, then paste the URL.

Servers that ask for an API key take it in the connector settings or a header. Servers you install yourself with npm or pip go in the client’s config file, and each project’s README has the exact block.

Connect only the servers a chat needs. Each one adds its tool list to the conversation, and the AI picks tools by reading their descriptions. Two servers with similar tools make it guess.

Prompts worth copying

• “Which tokens on Base gained the most this week? Skip anything under $5 million in volume and flag names that look fake.”
• “Who made the most money on [token address] this week? Check the top five at average cost and tell me which gains are realized.”
• “Who were the first 20 buyers of [token address] after launch, and how many still hold it?”
• “Which Hyperliquid markets have the highest share of accounts long, and what does funding cost them per year?”
• “Show the last 24 hours of Hyperliquid liquidations by market. Were they mostly longs or shorts?”
• “Who are the top 10 wallets in this Polymarket market, and do any carry exchange labels?”

Where AI trading analysis goes wrong

Paper gains reported as profit. The ORCA walkthrough shows the pattern. Ask whether a gain is realized every time a number looks big.

Junk at the top of every screen. When I sorted Base tokens by weekly gain, the first row claimed a rise of more than 100 million percent, caused by one stray swap. Another showed a fake “USD” coin, with an odd character in its name, valued at $4.6 trillion. Set a minimum volume, and check the contract address before you trust a ticker.

Two numbers for one thing. CoinGecko listed Hyperliquid’s BTC open interest at $3.45 billion. Bitquery said $1.74 billion, and its docs say it counts one side of the book. CoinGecko’s figure is about twice that, which fits counting both sides. Ask what a number measures before you compare servers.

A wallet is not a person. Market makers and exchange accounts show up as “traders”. A bot can sign trades from one address while its tokens sit in another.

Old data. Ask for the time of the newest row in every answer. Bitquery’s lag was zero minutes when I checked, but no server promises that.

Text written by strangers. Token names and memos are written by whoever created them, and the AI reads them as part of its input. A token name can carry instructions. Keep servers that can move money, such as an exchange account with trading keys, out of the same chat as your data servers.

It is not advice. These tools tell you what already happened, quickly. They do not tell you what happens next.

What about exchange MCP servers?

Binance and CCXT both ship servers that can read your account and place trades. Binance’s runs in a separate sub-account with no outside withdrawals. CCXT’s runs on your own machine across more than 100 exchanges, and trading is opt-in (CCXT docs). Both are execution tools, so they sit outside this comparison. Start read-only, and give an AI trading keys only after you trust its analysis.

FAQ

• What is the best MCP server for crypto trading?

For on-chain trading analysis, my pick is Bitquery MCP: it covers DEX trades, wallet profit and Hyperliquid futures, including funding and liquidations. Nansen is the closest rival if named wallets matter more to you. For free market-wide prices, start with CoinGecko’s public server.

• Can ChatGPT or Claude analyse crypto trades?

Yes, once you connect an MCP server. On their own they have no live prices, so treat any number they give without a tool call as a guess.

• Is there a free crypto MCP server?

Yes. CoinGecko (https://mcp.api.coingecko.com/mcp) and DexPaprika both answered my calls without a key. altFINS and Santiment have free tiers, and Bitquery has a 7-day trial.

• Can an AI trade crypto for me?

It can, through exchange servers such as Binance’s or CCXT’s. Keep those separate from your data servers, and test with read-only access first.

• How far back does crypto MCP data go?

It depends on the server. Bitquery’s trade tools keep about 30 days, Glassnode’s free access covers 30 days, and Dune’s SQL reaches the full history of its tables.

The Best MCP Servers for Crypto Trading Analysis in 2026 was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Is Polyfox legit? Here’s how the Polymarket Telegram bot handles copy trading, AFK automation, non-custodial fund control, fees, and risk — plus the security steps worth taking first.

Polymarket turned real-world main events into a tradable asset class. But spotting a good opportunity is only half the job. You also have to watch prices, react quickly, and manage open positions without missing a move. Copy-trading bots try to fill that gap, and right now Polyfox is one of the big talking points. It’s a Polymarket trading terminal that lives inside Telegram.

The obvious question before trusting a bot with real money: is this a legit tool, or just another scheme to drain deposits? Let’s break it down — what it is, how it works, where the real value sits, and where the risks live.

What Polyfox Is and What Problem It Solves

Polyfox is a Telegram-based trading terminal for Polymarket built around copy trading: you pick a trader or wallet with a solid track record, and Polyfox mirrors that wallet’s buys and sells within the limits you set.

The problem is pretty mundane in practice. Manually tracking someone else’s wallet means constantly checking when a position opened, at what price, and when to exit. Active Polymarket traders can run dozens of positions across markets at once — doing that by hand is basically a full-time job.

Polyfox automates that. The bot watches a chosen wallet in real time and mirrors its trades according to your configured limits. Beyond copy trading, it adds stop-loss and take-profit controls, gasless execution, multi-chain deposits, whale alerts, and backtesting. It feels more like a full trading terminal squeezed into a messenger app than a chat bot.

How the Telegram Bot Works: From Depositing to Automated Trading

Here’s the general flow.

1. Find a trader worth following. The Smart Wallets section highlights wallets with strong recent performance: win rate, number of copiers, profits earned. That saves you from hunting wallet addresses or cross-checking Polymarket’s public leaderboard yourself.
2. Configure copy settings. Decide how closely to mirror the chosen trader’s activity — for example, using a multiplier (like 0.1x of the original position size) and setting an overall budget for the strategy. This step matters a lot: without it, a $500 account could end up matching a wallet trading six-figure sums.
3. Fund the trading balance. Polyfox accepts deposits from Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain, Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism, automatically converting assets into your trading balance. Withdrawals are available in supported stablecoins on Polygon.
4. Launch and monitor. Once funded, the bot tracks the selected wallet and executes trades that fit your limits. Copying can be paused or stopped anytime — there’s no lock-in.

The Non-Custodial Model: How Much Control Users Actually Keep

A big plus for Polyfox is its non-custodial design. It doesn’t hold your funds in its own accounts. Keys can be exported to any MetaMask-compatible wallet, and withdrawals remain under your control.

That’s a meaningful difference from setups where you “deposit into” a platform account and trust the operator. A non-custodial model removes one clear risk — the possibility that the service operator absconds with your money.

But don’t read this as a full safety net. Non-custodial doesn’t eliminate smart-contract risk, wallet-security risk, or the trading risk itself. It answers who physically holds the funds, not whether you’ll lose money in the market.

Copy Trading and AFK Trading: How the Bot Runs While You’re Offline

Regular copy trading means you pick a trader or wallet and automatically copy that wallet’s moves. If the wallet opens or closes a position that fits your criteria, Polyfox mirrors that trade in your account.

AFK trading (away from keyboard) is broader. Instead of following another wallet, you set up an automated strategy with its own rules — defining when to open or close positions — and it keeps running around the clock, even when you’re not watching.

The difference matters: copy trading follows a person; AFK logic follows a predefined set of rules. Polyfox frames its 24/7 strategies as a way to keep automation going while you sleep, work, or simply aren’t glued to your phone.

Setting up an AFK strategy isn’t just flipping a switch. It means clearly defining boundaries: how much capital you’re committing, and under what conditions positions open or close. Even after launch, it’s smart to check in on the strategy — open positions, capital usage, and whether the bot’s behavior still matches expectations. You can pause, tweak, or stop the strategy at any time.

Security Considerations: Protecting Your Telegram Account and Using Official Links

Because Polyfox runs through Telegram, the security of the messenger is part of the trading account’s security. This deserves emphasis, because real losses often come from a compromised Telegram account or a fake clone, not from the bot itself.

Practical tips:

• Access the bot only via official links from the project’s website or verified channels, not random chats, comments, or sketchy ads.
• Watch for clones and phishing copies: Telegram sees lots of fake duplicates of popular bots designed to look real.
• Never share seed phrases or private keys with anyone, anywhere, including “support” in DMs, legitimate services won’t ask for this in chat.

Trading Risks: Picking Traders, Market Moves, and Slippage

Even a flawless bot can’t dodge market risk. Here are a few realities to keep in mind.

Choosing a trader isn’t lottery-winning. Being top of a leaderboard doesn’t automatically mean they’re the right one to copy.

A high win rate by itself isn’t enough. Losing trades can be bigger than winning ones, and that can wipe out the gains. And a lower win rate can still pay off if the wins are big enough. Look at P&L, win rate, how often they trade, position sizes, and how diversified they are across markets.

Market volatility. Markets can swing hard on news, and even fast mirroring won’t always fetch the same entry price as the original trader.

Slippage and execution gaps. From the moment a position is opened to when the bot copies it, prices can move. In thin, less-liquid markets, the difference between expected and actual fill can be noticeable. That’s not a bot flaw — it’s a general feature of copy trading, whether automated or manual.

Past performance ≠ future results. A trader who’s been profitable for months can still be wrong on the next call, switch approaches, or run into a regime where their strategy stops working.

Extra Risks of AFK Strategies Without Real-Time Supervision

AFK is handy because it frees you from staring at charts all day. That convenience has a downside.

An automated rule can execute perfectly — every condition met — but still end up with a bad result if market conditions have shifted while the rule stays the same. A calm-market winner can bleed money during sharp moves, and without checks, you might not notice for too long.

A false sense of security can creep in: the less you check, the easier it is to miss a shift: whether it’s a change in the copied trader’s behavior or a shift in market conditions. AFK handles execution, not risk oversight. Someone still needs to keep an eye on things, just not every minute.

Recommended Safeguards

Before putting real capital in, set up some basic protections — both on the account and the trading settings.

• Enable Telegram two-factor authentication. It’s a simple, crucial step to reduce the risk of someone else getting in if your phone or account is compromised.
• Start with a small test deposit. Try a minimal amount first to see how trades actually execute and how the interface feels.
• Set position limits and budget caps. The copy multiplier and the strategy budget cap aren’t optional extras — they’re the main risk controls, especially when copying traders who run lots of positions.
• Use Stop Loss and Take Profit. They help limit losses and lock in gains without waiting for the original trader to exit. Note they aren’t a guaranteed price — fast moves or illiquid markets can cause fills to differ from the trigger price.
• Regular checks. Even with automation, periodically review open positions, capital usage, and overall strategy behavior, especially after sharp news moves.

How Polyfox Makes Money

Polyfox keeps things simple: a small fee on every trade — 1% — without subscriptions, deposits, or withdrawal fees. Gas costs are handled by the relayer, so there’s no extra network fee to pay per transaction.

For light trading, that fee isn’t noticeable. For heavy, high-frequency copy trading, a 1% per trade fee can bite into returns, worth factoring in when deciding who to copy and how often.

In short, this is a standard infrastructure model: a slice of trading volume funds the server costs, the gasless execution setup, and ongoing development — not an upfront charge or hidden fee.

Why Polyfox Only for Polymarket — Not Kalshi and Others?

People ask why the bot is built specifically for Polymarket, not Kalshi or other platforms.

Practically speaking, the team’s focus is on making a polished product for Polymarket first — deep smart-contract integration, solid wallet and leaderboard data, and all of that. Support for other platforms isn’t off the table later, but starting with one market helps build a stronger product without stretching resources too thin across different architectures.

Finally: Is Polyfox Legit or a Scam?

Short answer: it looks legitimate, not a trap. Non-custodial setup, easy withdrawals, clear fees, and real risk-management tools (stop-loss, take-profit, budget caps) point to a thoughtful trading tool, not a scam.

But legitimacy isn’t the same as guaranteed profit. Polyfox automates execution and removes some manual chores, but it doesn’t erase market risk, doesn’t promise copied traders will keep winning, and doesn’t shield against slippage or rapid price swings. Automation helps with the process, not the outcome.

Bottom line: think of Polyfox as an execution and automation layer on top of Polymarket, not a source of guaranteed signals. It’s handy for folks who already know Polymarket and don’t want to babysit a dozen wallets, and for newer traders who want structured access with built-in risk controls. Still, choosing who to copy, setting sensible limits, and checking in on a strategy regularly — those are on the user, not the bot. And that user judgment matters more than the tool itself.

Is the Polyfox Telegram AFK Trading Bot Legit or a Scam? was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.