LESSONS

Your Pre-Buy Checklist Is Useless If You Don't Actually Run It

A checklist you skip under pressure isn't a checklist. Here's how to build one you'll actually follow before every memecoin buy.

· 5 min read · Blackhat Empire

The Problem Isn't That You Don't Know Better

You already know the drill. Check the contract. Look at holders. See if the socials are real. You've read a hundred threads telling you the same five things.

And then a token starts moving, the chat goes loud, and you ape in twelve seconds flat. No checks. No plan. Just vibes and a green candle.

The gap isn't knowledge. It's execution under pressure. A checklist that lives in your head dies the moment adrenaline shows up. So the fix isn't a longer list. It's a shorter one you can run in under two minutes, in the same order, every single time.

Rule One: Keep It To Five Lines Or Fewer

If your checklist has fifteen items, you will skip it. Guaranteed. The point of a pre-buy checklist is not to cover everything. It's to catch the specific mistakes that keep costing you money.

Start with five. Hard cap. Write them down somewhere you can see them while you're trading. Not in a notes app you never open. Somewhere in your actual field of view.

A workable starter set:

  • What is this token actually? One sentence, in your own words. If you can't write it, you don't understand the trade.
  • Who can sell, and how much? Top holders, dev wallet, insider clusters. Concentration is the whole game.
  • Can I get out? Liquidity depth, whether it's locked or burned, and whether the pool can be pulled.
  • Why now? A real catalyst, or just a chart that's already up 400 percent?
  • What's my exit before I enter? Size, target, and the point where you admit you were wrong.

That's it. Five questions. If any one of them has no answer, you don't buy. Not "buy smaller." Not "buy and watch it." You don't buy.

Rule Two: Attach Each Line To A Tool, Not A Feeling

Vague checks fail. "Check the holders" is vague. "Open the holder tab and look at the top ten wallets" is a task.

Rewrite every line as a physical action you take on a screen. This is where the reference material matters more than the vibes. The metrics breakdown at /v2/dyor/reference.html#metrics is worth keeping open while you build your list, because it forces you to name the exact number you're looking at instead of "seems fine."

When you're ready to look at a chart, do it on GMGN at https://gmgn.uk (mirror: https://gmgn.fr). One place, same layout, every time. Consistency is the whole point. If you're checking five different sites, you're not running a checklist, you're browsing.

Rule Three: Write The Rules Down Before You Need Them

The worst time to decide your risk limits is mid-candle. Decide them cold, when nothing is moving, and write them down.

Things worth pre-deciding:

  • Maximum size per position, as a percentage of your trading stack.
  • Maximum number of open positions at once.
  • Whether you buy at market or wait for a pullback.
  • The hard rule on tokens with unlocked dev supply.
  • What happens after two losses in a row. (Spoiler: you stop for the day.)

The rules framework at /v2/dyor/reference.html#rules exists for exactly this. Read it once, then write your own version in your own words. Borrowed rules you don't believe in get broken the first time they're inconvenient.

Rule Four: Make Skipping Cost You Something

Discipline is easier when there's friction. Some things that work:

  • Say the checklist out loud before you buy. Sounds stupid. Works anyway.
  • Log every buy with a one-line note on which checks you ran. Review it weekly.
  • Keep a running list of the tokens you skipped because they failed a check, and what happened to them after. That list becomes your motivation.

Most memecoins go to zero. That's not pessimism, it's the base rate. Your checklist isn't there to find winners. It's there to keep you out of the obvious losers, so the few positions you do take have room to be wrong without ending you.

Rule Five: Use Other People's Alerts As Input, Not Instructions

Alerts are useful. They tell you where attention is moving. They are not a substitute for your own two minutes of work.

If you're in a community, treat the calls as a starting point for your checklist, never a reason to skip it. Blackhat Empire's public groups are split by chain: BH GMGN SOLANA at @gmgnx_solana, BH GMGN BSC at @gmgnx_bsc, BH GMGN BASE at @gmgnx_base, and BH GMGN ROBINHOOD at @gmgnx_robin, with general chat in BH GMGN BASE. The main alert channels are listed at /v2/dyor/reference.html#alerts and the full directory lives at https://blackhat.finance/channels.html. You can also grab the Telegram folder at https://t.me/addlist/1VUQZMhux_JhMzJk.

Use them to find candidates. Then run your list. Every time. No exceptions for tokens that "feel different," because they never are.

The Only Metric That Matters

A checklist isn't measured by how many bad tokens it filters out. It's measured by whether you still run it in month three, when you're tired, when you're up, and when you're down.

Five lines. Two minutes. Same order. Every buy.

That's the whole system. Everything else is decoration.

Community

Stay connected across the chains:

Charts and on-chain research: https://gmgn.uk.