Telegram Trading Bots

Trade memecoins through Telegram

TLDR:

• Telegram (TG) bots have become a very common way for degen traders to trade memecoins, they started out as a novelty but represent a lot of volume now.

• Unibot is one of the most popular TG trading bots, below we look at how it works on Solana. You can see how the interface is incredibly simple yet powerful.

• Although these trading bots are convenient, remember to never leave too much money on them as there have been hacks -“not your keys, not your coins”.

Crypto prices have had a rocky week but volatility in crypto is just a part of the game. Anyone who’s been in the space long enough knows that 20% drops are not unusual, and just as we have large drops we also have large rises!

Traders love volatility and in keeping with the trading theme I decided to look at Telegram bots this week. Telegram trading bots used to be a novelty but now many people use them so it’s worth diving into how they work.

Telegram Trading Bots

Telegram’s always been popular with people in the cryptocurrency space with many crypto communities living on the platform, especially memecoin communities.

So I guess it’s no surprise that the traders within those communities eventually created bots to trade coins straight from inside the Telegram (TG) app itself!

TG bots started as a novelty but over the past few years they’ve grown just as memecoin trading has grown, and they’ve become a whole category of trading interface of their own.

These bots are no way near as powerful or complex as traditional trading platforms like CEXs and DEXs. However, their simplicity is part of their beauty, as you can trade random coins with a few button presses on the move without needing to sit down and pull out your computer or open up a complex app.

Since they are generally quite simple, developers have already created way too many TG bots to count. Some of the most popular ones today though include: Unibot, BananaGun and BonkBot.

Below we’ll look at using Unibot on Solana. There’s a Unibot TG bot for Ethereum too but we’ll stick to Solana where most of the memecoin trading happens today.

Unibot Setup

Setting up Unibot is as simple you can possibly imagine.

I assume you already have Telegram installed on your phone or computer, but if you don’t you can find it here.

Start by opening up unibot.app then select “TG Bots” at the top and you’ll get the option of the TG bot - Eth, Base, Arb or TG bot - Solana.

For this tutorial select the Solana bot and you’ll get sent over to the Telegram app with an auto-suggestion of inputting “/start” that’ll give you your new bot’s address!

Send some SOL into that address from one of your others wallets and hit “Refresh” to see your balance pop up. In this case I sent over 0.3 SOL. It’ll then show the full set of options available to you along with your SOL balance.

As you can see, it couldn’t be any simpler to get started!

Trading

With your Unibot loaded with SOL it’s now time to get trading. The interface here is super simple.

On selecting “Buy” you’re asked to give a token address and in return it gives you a quote price.. I gave the Bonk address: DezXAZ8z7PnrnRJjz3wXBoRgixCa6xjnB7YaB1pPB263

At this point you can select to either:

• Swap - swap the SOL amount selected at the given quoted price

• Limit - create a limit buy order that will be triggered when a price is hit

• DCA - buy at the market price at set intervals, eg. 15 minutes, 5 times

Unibot gives you the options of doing this for 0.1, 0.5, 1, 3, 5, or 10 SOL. Plus, if you click on the bottom right button then you can set a specific custom amount.

Once you’ve selected the amount and the type of trade you want to do, then you can hit “Send Tx” and a transaction will be run by the bot for you.

At times these transactions will fail and you’ll need to try again. Unibot even has a few different bots that you can flick between in the main menu under backup #1, #2 and #3 until you find one that works.

On success you’ll now have this new token stored in that address and you can see it when you select “Portfolio” in the main menu.

To sell is just select the sell button and follow an inverse operation where you do the mirror steps of what we saw above.

More Options

There are more options than just buying and selling though.

The remaining options on the TG bot are as follows:

• Limit Orders - shows currently active buy or sell limit orders

• DCA Orders - shows currently active buy or sell DCAs

• Copy Trade - allows you to copy another addresses trades

• Sniper - buy new tokens that have just been given liquidity

• Referrals - participate in Unibot’s referral program at referral.unibot.app

• Withdraw - let’s you transfer out any tokens you have in the TG bot

• New Pairs - shows you new tokens and the top trending tokens on Dexscreener

• Settings - allow you to import a wallet, export private keys, or change language

Out of the above options it’s worth taking a slightly deeper look at copy trade, sniper, and new pairs, and how they work.

“Copy Trade” asks you to input an address and then either copy a buy or sell based on that account’s next trade, so you mirror the actions they take. This is useful if there’s a prolific trader or whale holder you want to track and copy for example.

“Sniper” lets you snipe early tokens have just been released and then auto-sell at a specific profit or loss, giving you a hedge against it going too far down. Note that you have to set an amount for Unibot to tip for this service as it collects all the tips to effectively run a snipe transaction.

Finally, with “New Pairs” you can also keep on top of some of the top trending tokens on Dexscreener and select to buy them at the press of a button. It’s great for the degen trader who just wants to take a punt at the latest trending token.

It’s worth noting that Unibot’s also added perpetuals, which I’ve discussed here before. But perpetuals are not traded on the bot only on their web app.

Nonetheless as you can see although these TG trading bots have a simple interface they are still quite powerful with enough functionality to let degen traders have a lot of fun on the go.

Not your keys, not your coins

There’s no guarantee that you’ll make money while trading coins with these TG bots, but if you do then please remember the age old addage:

“Not your keys, not your coins.”

Unibot has had hacks before so it’s not worth risking it all by leaving your money there, make sure to take profits out to a more secure wallet from time to time.

You can read about what my general suggestions for Web3 security here.

So stay safe, never bet more than you can afford to lose, and happy trading!