Telegram produced most of the trading activity Centaur recorded between July and October, from fewer than a third of its tracked traders. Here is what that adds for exchanges, data platforms and AI agents.
Centaur · Research
October 20, 2026 · 7 min read
Trading conversations rarely stay in one place. Beyond casual conversation, Telegram has become one of the strongest platforms for traders to share signals and engage with their community on trading-related matters. According to Centaur's data, the Telegram channels it tracks produced more trade events than the X accounts it tracks in every week from late July to mid-October 2026.
However, most trading data focuses on X, overlooking another major hub for traders. Although X data is valuable, it leaves a gap that Telegram fills. Between 22 July and 20 October 2026, the 81 public Telegram channels and groups with trades in Centaur's record, with a combined audience of nearly 1.2 million subscribers, produced 2,843 positions and 9,308 trade events.
Over the same period, the 170 X accounts with trades in Centaur's record produced 2,504 positions and 6,148 trade events. In other words, Telegram accounted for most of the trading activity Centaur recorded, despite coming from fewer than a third of its tracked traders.
This article walks through what Telegram trading channels add to social trading data and why it matters for exchanges, data platforms, and AI agents.
Telegram trading data is the real trading activity that traders share on Telegram. It comes from filtering every channel post for positions, entries, and exits, while excluding complaints, sentiment, and other conversations with no trading activity behind them.
Telegram has become a home for social trading. Top traders and alpha callers use it to share their trading activity and broadcast their positions straight to their community. Rather than posting announcements alone, channel owners use Telegram to disclose position changes as they happen, so every add, trim, and exit arrives as a quick update for a community of learners and copy traders.
Centaur's data reflects this. Between 22 July and 20 October, the tracked Telegram channels posted nearly 30,000 messages, and roughly one in every three of them described a trade event. Telegram traders also documented how they managed their positions, posting more than one add or trim for every position they opened.
Thousands of messages flood trading channels every day, and several traders can spot the same market opportunity at the same time. Since each trader interprets that opportunity differently, the outcomes often vary. When a trade goes well, it can be hard to tell who called it first, and when it goes the other way, some traders quietly shift the story. In both cases, verifying their claims becomes difficult.
Centaur closes this gap by timestamping each trade across the channels it tracks and linking it back to the original message, so anyone can check who called what, and when.
This is the verified Telegram and X trader data Centaur provides across crypto, equities, and commodities. Get Access
The case for Telegram intelligence looks slightly different for each, though it rests on the same foundation.
As an exchange, you already see much of the market. Trading volume, order flow, price, open interest, and your users' activity all sit on your dashboards. What you rarely see is the positioning and conviction building in Telegram communities, where many of your users pick their next trade. Adding that layer to your exchange creates several practical uses:
Our analysis of how trade discovery shapes exchange retention explains why that context matters once a user funds an account and decides what to trade first.
If you run a data or research platform, Telegram intelligence expands your coverage without forcing you to build your own collection and verification stack.
Your AI agent is only as useful as the market data it can reach. Like most agents, it can probably already pull price, news, sentiment, on-chain activity, and social mentions, yet it rarely sees what identifiable traders are doing. Verified Telegram positioning gives your agent that input, so it can answer questions that a mentions feed never could:
Each answer arrives as structured, source-linked data through Centaur's REST API or MCP, so your agent can check the record behind a signal before acting on it.
Our earlier piece on what social trading data can add to AI trading agents explains why that verification step matters.
Another Telegram feed would add little to your product on its own. Telegram-derived trade intelligence earns its value when it reaches the places in your product where decisions already happen, whether that is an asset page, a research dashboard, a social trading product, a notification, or an agent working through an MCP connection.
Telegram already contains the trading activity. The missing piece is making that activity measurable, verifiable, and usable in the products you run.
See the verified track record behind trades shared on Telegram and X. Get Access
