How RateKite works
RateKite turns public market data into rankings and two explainable screening scores. This page describes exactly what is measured and what the numbers do not mean.
What RateKite tracks
Global markets: the largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization (price, market cap, 24-hour volume, supply, all-time high, 1h/24h/7d change), aggregated across exchanges by the data provider. These assets have no momentum or risk scores.
DEX intelligence: individual tokens trading on decentralized exchanges that RateKite discovered, measured on their main trading pair (the pair with the deepest liquidity): price, liquidity, volume, buys and sells, pair age and, when the optional on-chain provider is configured, holder concentration and token authorities. Every DEX token gets a Momentum Score and a Risk Score.
Momentum Score (0–100)
How strongly — and how healthily — a token is attracting trading right now. The six components add up to at most 100, then liquidity caps apply: at most 25 under $5K of liquidity, 50 under $20K or when liquidity is not reported, 75 under $50K, and 60 for pairs younger than 30 minutes. A thin pool cannot look strong however steep its chart.
| Component | Max | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Price trend | 25 | 1-hour and 6-hour price change with diminishing returns; very steep moves are halved, falling prices score 0. |
| Volume acceleration | 25 | Last hour vs the 6-hour average, and last 5 minutes vs the last hour; heavily discounted when 1-hour volume is under $1,000. |
| Buy pressure | 15 | Share of buy transactions (50% = 0, 70%+ = full), discounted when there are few transactions. |
| Trading activity | 15 | Transactions in the last hour (10 = 0, 1,000+ = full). |
| Liquidity depth | 10 | Liquidity of the main pair ($10K = 0, $1M+ = full). |
| Volume vs liquidity | 10 | Healthy turnover scores; implausibly high turnover (possible wash trading) scores less. |
Levels: 80+ very strong · 60+ strong · 40+ building · 20+ weak · below 20 cold.
Risk Score (0–100)
How many observable characteristics that make losses more likely or more severe are present. Each rule adds points; the total is capped at 100. Signals that cannot be evaluated add nothing and are shown as not available — except unknown liquidity and unknown pair age, because missing those facts is itself a risk.
| Component | Max | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Liquidity | 30 | Unknown or thin liquidity (under $5K scores most). |
| Liquidity vs valuation | 10 | Liquidity under 2–5% of fully diluted valuation. |
| Pair age | 20 | Markets younger than 1 hour, 6 hours, 1 day or 1 week. |
| Price volatility | 15 | Deep drawdowns or parabolic moves over 1 hour or 24 hours. |
| Buy/sell balance | 10 | Heavily one-sided trading, with at least 30 transactions. |
| Trading activity | 10 | Very few transactions or very low 24-hour volume. |
| Turnover anomaly | 10 | 24-hour volume more than 20–50× liquidity. |
| Top-10 holder share | 20 | Share held by the ten largest holders, liquidity pools excluded (optional on-chain data). |
| Largest holder | 15 | Share held by the single largest holder (optional on-chain data). |
| Mint/freeze authority | 15 | Token supply can still be minted or accounts frozen (optional on-chain data). |
| Missing information | 10 | No price, valuation, name/symbol or project links. |
Levels: 75+ very high · 50+ high · 25+ moderate · below 25 low.
The risk scanner lists actively traded tokens (at least $10,000 of 24-hour volume) scoring 60 or more.
Forex exchange rates
The Forex section shows currency pairs such as EUR/USD, where 1 unit of the first (base) currency costs the shown amount of the second (quote) currency. It is separate from the currency selector, which only converts crypto prices from US dollars for display using ECB reference rates.
- Source. Without a market-data subscription, rates are the European Central Bank's daily euro reference rates; pairs without the euro are cross rates RateKite calculates exactly from them (e.g. USD/JPY = EUR/JPY ÷ EUR/USD). With a licensed market-data provider configured, they are delayed market quotes.
- Rate, bid and ask. The rate is the provider's reported rate. Bid/ask and spread are shown only when the provider supplies both; they are never estimated. Reference rates have no intraday high/low.
- Change and pips. Change is measured against the previous close (or previous publication). A pip is 0.0001, or 0.01 for yen-quoted pairs; for pairs without a standard convention (e.g. CZK, PLN) no pip figure is shown.
- Market hours. Spot Forex trades from Sunday 17:00 to Friday 17:00 New York time. Over the weekend the last Friday rate is shown as “market closed”, not as an error. Reference rates are published only on working days.
- History. Charts use stored daily (and, with market data, hourly) closing rates. Performance figures compare the current rate with stored daily closes.
Nothing in the Forex section is a forecast, a trading signal or a price you can trade at.
Screening, not prediction
Both scores describe the market as it is now. They do not predict prices. A high Risk Score does not prove fraud or malicious intent, and a low one does not prove safety. Scores are recalculated after every market refresh and every token page lists the exact factors behind its current scores.
Freshness
DEX market data is refreshed about every minute and global market quotes every few minutes (default 3). Pages show when the data was last updated and display a warning when it is stale. See data sources for cadences and providers.
Limitations
- DEX windows (5 minutes to 24 hours) are rolling values computed by the data provider, not rebuilt from individual on-chain trades.
- Scores use the main pair only; activity spread across many pairs is under-counted.
- Holder concentration covers the 20 largest accounts and depends on identifying liquidity-pool accounts.
- Thresholds are hand-tuned for fast-moving DEX token markets; they are not statistically calibrated.
- Only tokens RateKite has discovered are covered — not every token on a network.