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Breakdown · the maths of signal channels
Crypto signals are a huge industry: paid Telegram channels such as Binance Killers sell entries at 20–100× leverage and report hundreds of percent in profit. But the problem with most of them is not in the quality of the forecast. It is in the instrument that forecast is executed with. And that is maths, not opinion.
A typical signal looks like this: an entry zone, several targets (TP1 / TP2 / TP3), a stop-loss and a recommended leverage. Channels such as Binance Killers work in the format of high-leverage futures scalping — a few trades a day, a short horizon. Reports usually count a “win” already at touching the first target (TP1), even if the position went into the red afterwards.
This creates survivorship bias: the public statistics show a chain of green TP1s, but not the subscriber whose position was liquidated on the way to that same target. The channel shows the signal. What happened to the deposit of the person who executed it on leverage is another story.
Leveraged futures are liquidated when price moves against the position by roughly 1/leverage. We measured across the entire BTC and ETH archive (2024–2026) how often such a wick happens within a day:
| Leverage | Liquidates on a move against of | Wick frequency per day |
|---|---|---|
| 10× | −10% | ≈ every 125th day |
| 25× | −4% | every 8th day |
| 50× | −2% | every 3rd day |
| 100× | −1% | more than half of all days |
| 125× | −0.8% | 60% of days |
Measured across ~43,400 daily windows, BTC+ETH, 2024–2026.
The conclusion is unpleasant: a −1…−4% wick is not a black swan, it is an ordinary week. So a recommended leverage of 20–100× means liquidation is a question of when, not if. And worst of all: at 25× leverage, around 62% of bets that eventually touched the +5% target are liquidated earlier than they reach it. The signal’s stop-loss sits at −3…−5%, but the exchange closes the position at −4% before that stop can fire.
You did not lose to the market. You lost to the instrument you used to bet on it.
The problem is not finding “a channel better than Binance Killers”. The problem is that any a signal executed through high-leverage futures carries a built-in risk of forced closure on micro-noise. The same directional bet through an options structure has no margin for a wick to take: the maximum loss is known in advance and equals the premium paid.
We took one such case apart down to the last digit — the same signal played through futures and through options, on identical inputs. The results are opposite.
The full breakdown on real data: why 25× futures were liquidated while an options structure on the same move produced a profit — with no risk of forced closure.
Read the case breakdown →Are crypto signals worth the money?
The problem with most paid signals is not the quality of the forecast but the execution instrument: high-leverage futures. A signal should be judged not by its claimed winrate but by whether the position survives to the target without being liquidated on a routine wick.
Why do I lose money even when I call the direction right?
Because of how leverage is built: liquidation arrives on a move against the position of roughly 1/leverage (25× → −4%, 100× → −1%). Such wicks are routine, and the exchange closes the position before the signal’s stop-loss can fire.
What is Binance Killers?
One of the best-known paid signal channels (high-leverage futures scalping). It is mentioned here as a typical example of the signal-service model as a whole — the maths described applies to any leveraged signal, not to this channel in particular.