Should you buy a pump.fun CTO at the alert, wait for confirmation, or bid below it?
Buying at the moment of the alert is the baseline: across 155 takeovers in the last 45 days, 45% reached +50% and the median peak was 1.42x, with 14% going to zero. Waiting for confirmation makes it worse, not better, because much of the move happens in the first hour. Resting a bid under the alert price fills on a fraction of signals, and those fills reach +50% more often with a higher median peak, at the cost of a higher death rate. Updated 2026-09-11.
Cite as: Belphor Research (2026). Should you buy a pump.fun CTO at the alert, wait for confirmation, or bid below it? Belphor Data, https://belphor.com/data/cto-entry-timing. Updated 2026-09-11. CC BY 4.0.
Buy now versus wait (entry price is the price at that moment)
| Entry | Trades | Share of signals | Reached +50% | Reached +100% | Median peak (x) | Average peak | Went to zero |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| buy at the alert | 155 | 100% | 45% | 28% | 1.42x | +115% | 14% |
| buy 30 minutes after the alert | 155 | 100% | 40% | 26% | 1.32x | +103% | 10% |
| buy 60 minutes after the alert | 155 | 100% | 36% | 26% | 1.28x | +97% | 9.7% |
| buy at 60 minutes only if the coin held within 15% | 97 | 63% | 33% | 20% | 1.26x | +79% | 8.2% |
Resting a bid under the alert price (entry price is the bid)
| Bid | Fills | Fill rate | Reached +50% | Reached +100% | Median peak (x) | Average peak | Went to zero |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bid 10% under, 1 hour window | 52 | 34% | 54% | 31% | 1.61x | +109% | 27% |
| bid 15% under, 1 hour window | 43 | 28% | 54% | 35% | 1.72x | +127% | 23% |
| bid 25% under, 1 hour window | 29 | 19% | 52% | 38% | 1.56x | +99% | 28% |
| bid 15% under, 3 hour window | 62 | 40% | 55% | 36% | 1.69x | +130% | 21% |
| bid 25% under, 3 hour window | 45 | 29% | 49% | 38% | 1.39x | +152% | 24% |
A bid fills the first time the coin trades at or under the bid price inside the window; peaks are measured after the fill. Unfilled bids cost nothing and are not counted.
What the first hour tells you (outcomes from the alert price)
| First hour | Takeovers | Share | Reached +50% | Reached +100% | Median peak (x) | Went to zero |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| held within 15% in the first hour | 97 | 63% | 47% | 30% | 1.44x | 6.2% |
| dipped more than 15% in the first hour | 58 | 37% | 40% | 26% | 1.27x | 26% |
How this is measured
Every pump.fun community takeover Belphor detected on-chain in the window, at least 37 hours old, with minute-level price snapshots for the 36 hours after the alert (at least 30 readings). Demo and test rows are excluded.
Delayed entries use the snapshot closest to 30 or 60 minutes after the alert as the entry price and only count peaks after that moment. The confirmation variant additionally requires the coin never to have traded more than 15% under the alert price during the first hour. Bids fill at the bid price the first time a snapshot is at or under it within the window.
"Reached +X%" is measured from the entry price of that variant. "Went to zero" means the last reading in the 36-hour window was 20% of the entry price or lower. The Belphor engine can rest exactly these bids (dip bid entries, engine v29); these numbers are the evidence behind that feature, published so they can be judged.
Frequently asked
Is it better to buy a CTO immediately or wait for confirmation?
In this record, immediately. Buying at the alert reached +50% 45% of the time; waiting 60 minutes and only buying if the coin had held cut that to roughly a third of trades, because the first hour carries a large share of the move. Confirmation lowers the death rate a little and the upside a lot.
Does buying the dip after a CTO work?
Resting a bid 10 to 25% under the alert price fills on roughly a fifth to a half of takeovers, depending on depth and window, and those fills reach +50% more often than buying at the alert, with a higher median peak. The price of that edge is a higher share of fills that go to zero, since coins that dip hard are more often the ones that die. The tables above give the exact numbers for each depth.
Where does this data come from?
From Belphor's own on-chain detection of pump.fun creator-change instructions and its minute-level price snapshots, recomputed nightly from the raw record. The JSON and CSV files on this page contain the same numbers.
Belphor detects pump.fun takeovers on-chain in real time, scores every signal, trades member strategies on paper or live, and publishes every outcome. No promises, just receipts.
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