Buy Low, Sell High: Best Apps for Crypto Price Alerts

Today, there are over 16,000 cryptocurrencies you can browse through on CoinMarketCap. That is more than double the amount of U.S. stocks on public exchanges in 2021. And this doesn’t even account for the thousands of obscure coins that aren’t listed on popular sites. 

In the face of this information overload, how is it that some investors are still able to keep up with the 24/7 crypto markets? How are they consistently able to time the market and position themselves to ride parabolic waves to the moon?

No, you don’t need to glue yourself to your monitor analyzing price charts all day. All you’re missing is a key tool in your investment arsenal: trade signals, and more specifically, price alerts. 

So sit down, crack open a beer, and let’s explore what price alerts are, whether they give you an edge in crypto investing, and what apps you should use to set up your custom price alerts.

A trade signal is a piece of intel that indicates whether an investor should buy or sell an asset. These signals are automatically generated by trading software based on any number of data points—like prices, web traffic or even the weather.  

Investors use trade signals for 3 main purposes:

1. Saving time: Passively staying up to date on real-time developments.
2. Moving fast: Moving into and out of positions in a timely manner.
3. Staying neutral:  Basing investment decisions on unbiased information.

As useful as they are, though, investors shouldn’t blindly rely on trade signals. For starters, no one signal is 100% accurate. Not to mention, if you make use of several signals then they’ll oftentimes give you conflicting information. This is why you should always layer your own research on top of trade signals to form a solid thesis.

Outside of buying and selling single assets, you can also use trade signals to make strategic changes to your entire portfolio. For example, if you’ve been eyeing the Metaverse sector for a while, then a market dip is the perfect moment to buy in. If, on the other hand, your altcoin investments are up 5x and you see Bitcoin start selling off—take your profits and run. 

Now, a crypto screener is a tool that sifts through thousands of cryptocurrencies to find trade signals and showcases the best ones to investors. You can find screeners on just about every crypto exchange and project tracking site.

CryptoMarketCap, for instance, has a Spotlight page listing the top 10 cryptocurrencies that are trending alongside those with the largest price changes in the last 24 hours. As of writing this, Mirrored iShares Gold Trust has gone up 98.31%. 

It doesn’t end here though. While crypto screeners introduce you to new projects, I wouldn't recommend aping into them at first sight. You should simply add the most interesting picks to your watchlist to learn more about them and monitor their performances over time. 

Like a hunter, you should stalk your prey, waiting for the perfect moment to pull the trigger. For instance, you can wait for a price drop to buy your favorite project at a discount or buy it once a catalyst (e.g. mainnet launch) has been confirmed.

As is the case with screeners, most crypto exchanges and project tracking sites allow you to construct watchlists. Some platforms even have curated watchlists in popular categories (e.g. DeFi, Metaverse, NFTs, DAO) and ecosystems (e.g. Ethereum, Cardano, Terra). 

As you can see, trade signals range from simple stuff, like price changes and 24-hour volume, to more complex measures, like trends and public sentiment. Price alerts are arguably the simplest trade signals you can use to improve your market timing. Particularly in crypto, where prices can swing thousands of percentage points in a matter of hours.

Let’s explore a few ways investors can leverage price alerts.

Investors can set up price alerts via email, SMS, push notifications (and more) for key buy and sell levels. But that’s basic stuff. The best investors combine price alerts with other signals to make smart money moves. A few signals you can leverage include:

Whether the price crosses above or below the 20-, 50-, or 200-day moving averages (MA). The MA shows you what direction the market is trending in.

Price moving beyond support and resistance levels. Like when Binance Coin (BNB) broke past $40 in 2021 and 15X’d right after. 

These are current prices compared to those of previous years. For example: March is a historically bad month for Bitcoin (BTC).

Sentiment analysis helps you determine whether prices are trending up or down by cross-referencing with bullish or bearish public sentiment.

A trader might want to profit off the sudden price changes brought about by news. Think back to how the crypto markets went on a massive bull run as soon as the Fed’s money printer started going BRRR.  

Now that you’re up to speed on using price alerts to time your crypto trades, you’re going to need a reliable app to keep you posted. Let’s get a lay of the land.

Price alerts are like a commodity feature that most exchanges offer. And since they all seem to do the same thing, it doesn’t really matter what app you choose right? Not exactly. 

It makes sense for a crypto investor to default to using their exchange’s built-in price alerts if they’re only holding coins that are supported on said exchange. If a crypto investor’s portfolio is spread across exchanges or wallets, then they’re going to need a dedicated price alerts app.

With that said, let’s compare a handful of apps for crypto price alerts based on 8 criteria:

1. Assets: How many individual cryptocurrencies you can set price alerts for
2. Custom alerts: Does the app allow you to set your own price targets?
3. Active alerts: The total number of alerts you can have running at the same time
4. Delivery: How the app delivers notifications, i.e. by text, email, push notifications and so on
5. Platforms: Does the app work on iOS, Android or both?
6. Frequency: Do you receive an alert every time a coin hits your price target, or are you limited to one alert per day?
7. Auto trading: Whether you can set up automatic buys and sells based on price targets
8. Pricing: Is the app free to use or do you have to pay for it?