Smart Money 101

Track activities of the most profitable crypto traders and investors, from venture funds to whale wallets. Analyze movements of top market performers to gain insights that inform your investment strategy.

Written By Nansen Intern

Last updated 30 days ago

What Defines Smart Money?

Smart Money refers to the most successful onchain traders. But what deems a trader successful?

  1. Consistent trading success:

    • Superior win rates

    • Substantial realized profits

    • Performance across market cycles

  2. Skill indicators:

    • Token diversity

    • Strategic timing

    • Risk management

  3. Leading indicators:

    • Early position taking

    • Trend anticipation

    • Market signal generation

Smart Money Labels

Our Smart Money classification encompasses several key categories:

  1. Smart Money Funds (~3,150 addresses):

    • Venture capital firms

    • Hedge funds

    • Liquid crypto funds

    • Institutional investors

  2. Smart Traders (performance-based):

    • All-Time Smart Trader (~850 addresses)

    • 180D Smart Trader (~600 addresses)

    • 90D Smart Trader (~410 addresses)

    • 30D Smart Trader (~200 addresses)

Nansen’s SM Methodology

We've recently refined our approach to identifying Smart Money wallets across different timeframes. Our updated methodology considers multiple factors including:

  1. Core performance metrics

  • Minimum win rates

  • Required ROI percentages

  • Realized profit thresholds

  1. Trading diversity factors

  • Number of profitable tokens

  • Portfolio composition

  • Asset diversity

  1. Consistency requirements

  • Performance through downturns

  • Long-term success patterns

  • Adaptive trading strategies

Understanding Smart Money Timeframes

Our Smart Money categories reflect different trading approaches and time horizons:

Trader Type

Characteristic

Trading Style

Short-Term Smart Money (30D & 90D)

  • Higher required win rates

  • Lower absolute profit thresholds

  • Focus on market volatility

  • Quick position entries/exits

  • Momentum trading

  • Shorter holding periods

Long-Term Smart Money (180D & All-Time)

  • More balanced win rates

  • Higher profit requirements

  • Greater token diversity

  • Strategic positioning

  • Trend identification

  • Longer holding periods

Explore the Smart Money Leaderboard

  1. See who are the best Smart Money traders, showing top-performing wallets.

    • This table features top Smart Money addresses, ranked by Realized and Unrealized PnL, along with key metrics that provide insights into their performance.

  2. Hover over any address and get a quick preview of the wallet’s

    • Net worth

    • PnL (90 days)

    • Win rate

    • Trades (7 days)

    • Custom Labels

  3. Narrow down your view by configuring any of the filters provided

  4. You can also toggle Scatterplot to get a visualization of where these wallets lie across ROI

  5. Don’t forget to choose select your desired Chain at the top for a clearer view of Smart Money addresses making moves under that network

Profiling a Wallet Address

If you’d like to dive deeper into a given Smart Money address, you can simply click into the address directly, thus entering Nansen Profiler.

💡 Reminder: Don’t forget to check out our page on Profiler to get a clearer explanation as to what you can do with Profiler.

Analyze Top Tokens

Get an overview of what Smart Money traders are holding and trading, all in a single view.

  1. Navigate to the Top Tokens tab

    • What Are Smart Money Trading? - These show the tokens that are being traded (bought/sold on a DEX, or sent/received from a CEX) the most by Smart Money.

    • What are Smart Money Holding? - These are the tokens that are being held the most by smart money.

  2. In any of the tables above, filter tokens by:

    • Market capitalization (micro to large caps)

    • Token age

    • Sector

    • Smart Money labels

  3. Narrow down your view with additional filters

Track Live Trades

If you’d like to get an understanding of what Smart Money traders are trading in real-time, hit the Trades tab for more information:

  1. Monitor real-time DEX trade updates

  2. Scroll down to get a list of Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) orders created from Smart Money through Jupiter