Bitquery: only 26% of $752.5M in big memecoin wallet gains passed trading checks
In brief
- Only 26% of $752.5 million in large memecoin wallet gains passed Bitquery's market-trading checks.
- 51% of gains involved wallets selling tokens received from other addresses, not bought.
- 1,104 transfer-driven positions traced back to addresses tied to the token's creator.
- 15 of the 25 largest reported gains met Bitquery's wash-loop criteria.
- Transfers between one investor's own wallets don't prove manipulation, Bitquery notes.
What Bitquery measured
Bitquery examined 3,170 wallet-token positions with reported gains of at least $100,000 between October 2025 and August 2026. About 51% of those gains involved wallets selling tokens they'd received from other addresses, 13% showed patterns of potentially coordinated trading (by Bitquery's criteria), and 10% couldn't be conclusively classified.
The trend got sharper this year. Transferred-token sales stayed below 100 cases a month until July, then made up seven of every 10 large wallet wins in August, according to Bitquery.
Within that group, the firm identified 1,579 profitable positions where most tokens sold had come in through transfers, not purchases by the selling wallet. Of those, 1,104 could be traced to addresses associated with the token's creator (directly or through intermediary wallets). Bitquery also flagged 423 creator-linked transfers involving additional signing addresses.
Why copy traders can't follow
Copy trading platforms let investors mirror wallets with strong historical returns, and they typically rely on observable purchases to open positions. Tracking tools usually calculate profit by subtracting recorded purchases from sales. Transfers distort that math.
A copy trader watching the receiving address sees the sale. They don't get the purchase signal needed to enter at a comparable price.
In one UOTF token example, four temporary wallets each received nearly eight million tokens before forwarding them to selling addresses in a coordinated transaction. One recipient sold its holdings for $1.59 million with no corresponding recorded market purchase.
Wash-loop patterns at the top
Fifteen of the 25 largest reported gains met Bitquery's criteria for wash loops. In the Arena example, a wallet spent $4,223 before recording about $4.92 million in sales. An address previously funded by that wallet accounted for 99% of buying during the holding period, and Bitquery said the seller had transferred more than $1.4 million in SOL to that buyer over the preceding two days.
None of this is proof of wrongdoing. Transfers can also happen between wallets owned by the same legitimate investor, so a missing purchase record doesn't by itself establish manipulation.
What the study does show is narrower: a big number on a wallet tracker isn't always a trade anyone else could've copied.
Frequently asked questions
Why can't copy traders reproduce many large memecoin wallet gains?
Copy trading platforms typically rely on observable purchases to establish positions. When a wallet receives tokens by transfer, a copy trader watching it sees the eventual sale but not the purchase signal needed to enter at a comparable price, according to Bitquery's analysis.
Does a missing purchase record mean a wallet manipulated a token?
No. Bitquery's analysis notes that transfers can also occur between wallets owned by the same legitimate investor, so the absence of a recorded purchase does not by itself establish manipulation.
How much of the $752.5 million in gains passed Bitquery's checks?
Only 26% passed Bitquery's checks for conventional market trading. About 51% involved wallets selling tokens received from other addresses, 13% showed patterns of potentially coordinated trading, and 10% could not be conclusively classified.
