A signal lands in your Telegram: OPENAI 2.01% ⚡ +$217 on $10K. You have maybe five seconds before the gap closes. Every character in that message is telling you whether it is worth acting on, or a trap dressed up as free money. A crypto arbitrage signal is a compact snapshot of one cross-exchange price gap, and the whole skill is reading it fast and correctly. Below we take a real Finder signal apart field by field, so you know exactly what each number, emoji and tag means before you risk a cent.
The whole signal at a glance
Here is a full signal the way it arrives in the bot. We will walk through every part of it.
TON 1.24% ⚡ (40$ on $3.2K) | BEP20 Buy: Bsc_dex 1.7050 🟢 Sell: Binance_s 1.7261 🟢 ————————— SPOT ————————— Exchange Dif Prof Price D W Link Binance 1.24% 40$ 1.7261 🟢🟢 Link Gate 0.89% 28$ 1.7200 🟢🔴 Link ——————— FUTURES ———————— Exchange Dif Prof Price D W Link Bybit 1.10% 35$ 1.7240 🟢🟢 Link +0.01% 8h Ascendex 0.95% 30$ 1.7220 🟢🟢 Link +0.07% 8h ————————— DEX —————————— Exchange Dif Prof Price D W Link Bsc 1.24% 40$ 1.7050 🟢🟢 Link $455K ⚙️ Networks: BEP20: 0x1a2b…9f3c 🕔 2026-06-25 14:32 UTC
A. The headline: symbol, spread, magnitude, profit
The first line is the decision line. Read it left to right.
TONis the token symbol. Tap it in the bot and you land on the token page with every venue and its live deposit/withdrawal state.1.24%is the net spread: what is left after taker fees on both legs, not the raw price gap. A raw 1.5% gap with about 0.13% in fees each side becomes a 1.24% number you can actually keep. This is the number that matters.⚡is the magnitude emoji. It ranks the opportunity at a glance:- 🚀 very high - top-tier spread and profit together.
- 🔥 high - strong on both.
- ⚡ medium - solid, worth a look.
- (no emoji) - low tier, shown for completeness.
+$40 on $3.2Kis the dollar profit on a stated trade size. Finder sizes the example to realistic depth, so $40 on $3,200 means the order book can actually absorb $3.2K near these prices, not just one lucky lot.| BEP20is the transfer network the route would move over, when a transfer is involved.
The magnitude emoji checks spread AND profit at the same time. A 70% spread on a dead altcoin with $4 of real profit will NOT get a 🚀, because the profit never clears the threshold. That is the single most useful guard against false hype in the whole message.
B. The legs: where you buy and where you sell
Buy: Bsc_dex 1.7050 🟢 Sell: Binance_s 1.7261 🟢
You buy on the cheaper venue and sell on the richer one. The suffix tells you the market type:
_sis a spot market._fis a futures market (perpetual most of the time).- a chain name instead of a suffix means a DEX leg.
So Bsc_dex is a DEX leg on the BSC chain at 1.7050, and Binance_s is the Binance spot market at 1.7261. This one route already mixes a DEX buy with a spot sell, which is exactly why the suffix matters. The single emoji after the price is the part most beginners skip and then lose money on: the deposit/withdrawal status for that leg.
C. The status emoji that decide if the trade is real
A spread is only tradeable if you can actually move the coin and the cash. Finder checks deposit (D) and withdrawal (W) status on every leg and shows it honestly:
- 🟢 - open. Deposits or withdrawals are enabled right now.
- 🔴
age- closed, with how long ago it flipped (for example🔴2h). A closed rail means you cannot complete the route on that side. - ⛔ - the network is not supported on that exchange for this asset at all.
- ❔ - no data. Finder does not know, and it will not pretend. An honest ❔ beats a fake 🟢 that strands your coins.
A wide spread next to a 🔴 or ⛔ is the classic trap. The gap looks huge precisely BECAUSE the coin cannot move between those venues, so nobody has closed it. Read the status before the spread.
The venue table: every route, ranked
Below the legs, Finder prints the full table for each market type it found, headed SPOT, FUTURES or DEX. The TON signal above carries all three at once, because the token trades on spot, futures and a DEX simultaneously. Here is its futures block, which also shows the funding column:
——————— FUTURES ———————— Exchange Dif Prof Price D W Link Bybit 1.10% 35$ 1.7240 🟢🟢 Link +0.01% 8h Ascendex 0.95% 30$ 1.7220 🟢🟢 Link +0.07% 8h
Each row is one venue, sorted by spread, so you also see the second-best route in case the top one is blocked. The columns:
- Exchange - the venue name, with a
Linkthat opens its order book. - Dif - that venue's spread versus the best counter-leg.
- Prof - dollar profit on that route.
- Price - the quote used.
- D W - the deposit and withdrawal emoji from the section above.
- Funding (futures only) - the funding rate and its interval, for example
+0.01% 8h. On a perpetual you pay or receive this every 8 (or 4, or 1) hours, and over a held position it can outweigh a thin spread. A— —means the funding data was not available. - Liq (DEX only) - the pool liquidity, so you know how much the route can absorb.
A header like ——— FUTURES ⬇5/13 ——— means there were 13 venues and the message shows the top 5 to stay readable.
D. Networks and timestamp
⚙️ Networks: BEP20: 0x1a2b…9f3c 🕔 2026-06-25 14:32 UTC
The ⚙️ Networks block lists the chains the token moves over and the contract address, linked to a DEX explorer. This is what you would verify by hand before sending funds, so check the contract matches the asset you think you are trading.
The 🕔 timestamp is freshness. Spreads decay in seconds to minutes. A signal stamped a few seconds ago is live, one from many minutes back has probably already closed. Always glance at it last, as a sanity check.
The MEXC ↔ DEX signal: a tighter, action-first format
Not every signal looks like the table above. When a token has a spread between its MEXC futures price and a DEX pool, Finder sends a more compact, action-first format built for speed:
🟢 TON 6.0% 60$ Price Mxc: 1.7050 Price DEX: 1.8073 (Liq: $250K) Max size | Deposit Withdrawal 5000$ | 🟢 🟢 BEP20: 0x1a2b…9f3c
It carries the same decisions in fewer lines. The leading 🟢 is the overall transfer readiness, 6.0% 60$ is spread and dollar profit, then the two prices side by side with the DEX pool liquidity (your real size ceiling), an explicit max size the route can absorb, and the deposit/withdrawal pair. Below it the bot attaches quick buttons (MEXC, DexScreener, GMGN, DexTools, and a swap link) so you can jump straight to each venue. Read it the same way as the full signal: profit first, liquidity and max size second, D/W third. These compact MEXC-DEX signals are built for fast on-chain moves, where seconds matter more than a wide table.
What to check before you act
Read the signal in this order. It takes about three seconds once it is a habit.
- Profit, not just spread. Is
+$40 on $3.2Kworth your time and risk? A 70% spread with $4 profit is noise. - D/W on both legs. Two 🟢🟢 pairs, or do you see 🔴 / ⛔? If either rail is closed, skip it.
- Network match. Does the
| BEP20route line up with a network you can actually use cheaply? Cross-check transfer cost in withdrawal windows and network fees. - Funding (futures only). A
+0.05% 8hfunding against your position eats a thin spread fast. Net it out. - Freshness. Is the 🕔 timestamp seconds old, or stale?
The whole point of the signal format is that you can run those five checks without leaving Telegram and without opening five exchange tabs. That speed is the edge.
Common traps the signal is warning you about
- Huge spread, closed rail. 30% next to
🔴or⛔is not opportunity, it is a coin that cannot move. See more failure modes in arbitrage mistakes. - Big spread, tiny profit. A high
Difwith a smallProfmeans the book is thin. The price exists for one small lot only. - Stale timestamp. If the 🕔 is minutes old, assume the gap is gone and wait for the next one.
- Funding that flips the math. On futures, a thin spread can be entirely consumed by an adverse funding payment over the hold. Read funding arbitrage for the cadence math.
Realistic expectations
A signal is a starting point, not a guarantee. Prices move between the moment the scanner sees the gap and the moment your order fills, so treat the numbers as the best estimate at the timestamp, not a locked-in payout. Your first week should be about reading signals correctly and passing on the bad ones, not chasing every 🚀. Most experienced arbitrageurs act on a small fraction of the signals they see, and that selectivity, reading the D/W and funding before the spread, is exactly what keeps a deposit alive. If you are new to the strategy itself, start with getting started with arbitrage and the crypto arbitrage guide.
FAQ
What does the 🚀 / 🔥 / ⚡ emoji mean in an arbitrage signal? It is the magnitude tier. 🚀 is very high, 🔥 is high, ⚡ is medium, and no emoji is low. The tier only upgrades when the spread AND the dollar profit both clear the threshold, so a high spread with tiny profit will not show 🚀.
Why is the profit small when the spread looks big?
Because the order book is thin. A large percentage gap on a low-liquidity token only exists for a tiny size, so the realistic dollar profit on a normal trade is small. Trust the Prof column over the Dif column.
What do 🟢, 🔴, ⛔ and ❔ mean? 🟢 means the deposit or withdrawal rail is open, 🔴 means it is closed (with how long ago it flipped), ⛔ means that network is not supported on that exchange for the asset, and ❔ means there is no data. Finder shows ❔ rather than guessing.
What is the difference between _s and _f in the signal?
_s is a spot market and _f is a futures market, usually a perpetual. A chain name instead of a suffix marks a DEX leg.
What does the funding number like +0.01% 8h mean?
It is the perpetual funding rate and its interval. Every 8 hours (or 4, or 1) longs and shorts exchange this payment. Over a held futures position it can add to or subtract from your spread, so always net it out.
How fresh is a signal? Check the 🕔 timestamp. Spreads close in seconds to minutes, so a signal that is seconds old is actionable and one that is many minutes old has likely already converged.
See it live
The fastest way to learn the format is to watch real signals scroll. Open the live scanner or start the bot to get them in Telegram, and read each one with the five-check routine above. Next in this series: the mechanics behind the numbers in spot arbitrage and futures arbitrage.