Five questions to ask before you buy any token (and which ones the Scanner answers for you)

In the three seconds before you tap buy, the question in your head is "will it go up?", and that one has no answer. This lesson replaces it with five that do, run the same way whether the token is four minutes old or four days old. For each, it names the evidence, says which PumpPill screen shows it, and marks the one question no tool can answer for you.

Question 1: what kind of trade is this?

Age and market cap define the game before you look at anything else. A forty-minute-old token and a three-day-old token at the same market cap are different trades with different position sizes and different exits.

Market cap on its own tells you less than you think. Across 40,415 Solana calls we logged, the tokens that went on to 10x to 50x entered at a median $45,842 and the ones that went flat or down entered at $50,000.

Where to read it. The Scanner's "Am I early?" answers how far the token has run from launch, from its peak, and from where PumpPill first logged it, with the age. The market row under it gives the market cap, the liquidity and the share of the peak.

Question 2: is the attention real?

Volume is the easiest number to fake. Volume against liquidity is harder. A token turning over many times its pool depth in an hour at small average trade sizes is bots passing tokens between themselves. Real attention is two-sided, with distinct buyers whose sizes grow as the story spreads.

Across our Solana calls, those whose poster had 100,000 or more followers at the time reached 2x 35.0% of the time, against 16.5% where no poster or follower count was recorded. That cell still went flat or down more than a third of the time, so it is a filter, not a gate.

Where to read it. The Scanner's risk read includes the market readings, liquidity against market cap and turnover against the pool. "Who's talking about it?" names the X accounts that posted the contract with bots and repeat posters filtered out; a Premium member sees the account and its follower count. The Trade Bot's Scan reply carries the same X line.

Question 3: who controls the supply?

Three facts, before anything else, on Solana: is mint authority revoked, is freeze authority revoked, and is the liquidity locked or burned. A live mint authority lets the deployer print into your position. A live freeze authority lets the deployer stop you selling. An unlocked pool can be pulled. A fourth fact, on either chain: does a test sell go through.

Then the top-ten share, read against age; the cleared-float lesson in this hub covers why the same group means different things before and after it sells.

Where to read it. On a Robinhood Chain read, "Can it trap me by design?" and "Can I get out?" cover the contract's powers, the deployer's share and the position of the liquidity. On Solana the contract section lists mint, freeze, liquidity, the test sell and any sell tax as pass, fail or unread. "Who holds it now?" gives the top ten with pools left out. An authority can be revoked at any time, so the read is a state at its time stamp.

Question 4: who is already in?

Twenty wallets at one to four percent each can be a community or one operator with a multisender. The holder chart shows where the tokens sit; it cannot show how many hands control them. Funding does. When twenty wallets make their first buy in the same block from the same funding source, that is a script.

Across our Solana calls, a bundle confirmed at entry cut the share that reached 2x to 14.4%, against 24.3% where no bundle was found.

Where to read it. "Did insiders load the launch?" asks whether the first buyers bought as one group, who funded them, and whether they have sold. "Has the smart money already left?" gives the verdict on that group's current position: still holding, selling now, or gone. "Is smart money in?" says whether wallets PumpPill tracks, by record or by size, were seen buying. A whale here means a wallet we saw buy.

Question 5: what would prove you wrong?

Every position needs a falsifier you can watch. The launch group starting to sell. The deployer wallet waking up. Volume dying while the price holds. The account that started the run deleting its post. If you cannot name the thing that would flip your read, you do not have a read.

No scanner answers this one, because it is about your trade, not the token.

Where to write it down. In the PumpPill Trade Bot, every buy on Robinhood Chain arms a ladder of take-profit steps measured from the price you paid, and you can add a stop-loss and change any step; on Solana the same ladder arms when Auto Sell is on, or from a one-tap button on the position. Position alerts message you when a position is up 50, 100 or 200 percent or down 30 from your entry. Write the trigger as a step the bot will act on.

The checklist on one screen

| # | Question | Evidence | Red flag | Who answers |

|---|---|---|---|---|

| 1 | What kind of trade? | Age, market cap, run since launch | Minutes old at a high cap | Scanner, "Am I early?" |

| 2 | Is the attention real? | Volume against liquidity, who posted it | Volume up, buy sizes shrinking | Scanner risk read and X line |

| 3 | Who controls supply? | Mint, freeze, liquidity, test sell, top ten | Live authority or unlocked pool | Scanner, "Can it trap me?" and "Can I get out?" |

| 4 | Who is already in? | Funding of the early buyers | Many wallets, one source, one block | Scanner, insiders and smart money |

| 5 | What proves me wrong? | One named trigger | No exit defined | You, in the bot's ladder |

What this does not tell you

Four of the five questions describe the token at a moment. None of them predicts the price. A token that passes all four can still go to zero because nobody wants it tomorrow.

An unread line is not a pass; weigh it as an open question.

The base rate stands. More than half of the Solana calls we logged never got 10% above entry. The checklist is a filter for structures that make winning impossible, not a finder of winners.

What to do next

Open /scan with the next contract someone sends you and read the two answers before the chart. Or paste it into @PumpPill_Trade_Bot and tap Scan for the same read in the chat. Then set the exit in the bot before the buy, so question five is answered by the time question one is.