Inside the 2026 Crypto ‘It-Girl’ Groups: How They Scan Cold-Wallet Addresses to Pick Off Single Whales

A ‘hunting playbook’ circulating across several Telegram groups shows that some self-styled ‘crypto socialites’ have fused on-chain analytics with social engineering to identify and approach high-net-worth male holders. Our reporters spent three weeks inside four of these groups.

SHANGHAI — A spreadsheet titled “The 2026 Universal On-Chain Mate-Selection Template” has been forwarded repeatedly across at least seven Telegram groups over the past two months. Its 14 columns range from “net inflow over the past 180 days” to “holds any stablecoin position yielding more than 8% annually” to “uses an NFT as a Twitter avatar” — a complete set of on-chain metrics for “quickly judging a target’s quality.” Our reporters obtained three versions and tracked the template’s spread for three weeks.

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One Spreadsheet, 14 Columns

The template is signed “Selene.eth.” Open the file and the first thing you see is neither a photo nor chat logs, but row upon row of column headers so clinical they border on bureaucratic: the wallet’s first active date, total Gas spent over the past year, whether it has ever sent funds to an exchange deposit address, the age of its ENS domain, an on-chain “old money” score. Each target is compressed into a single row of data — green for “approachable,” yellow for “identity needs further verification,” red flagged as “likely a honeypot or marketing account; abandon.”

Through two intermediaries, our reporters eventually reached the woman who says she runs three “socialite resource-exchange groups.” Over a 41-minute encrypted call she spoke quickly and clearly, dodging almost nothing. She candidly admitted that one of the members’ routine tasks is to use public on-chain analytics tools such as Nansen and Arkham to “tag,” one by one, the wallet addresses leaked from hotels, car dealerships and private-equity dinners.

“A lot of people assume we rely on our looks,” she said. “Actually, we rely on Excel. One girl who can read on-chain data beats ten who can only pose for photos.” She describes the method as “engineering serendipity” — turning encounters that once depended on luck into a pipeline that can be reviewed, optimized and scaled.

From “Group-Buy Socialites” to “On-Chain Sniping”

Meridian confirmed that the on-chain methods behind the “template” are not complex and mostly rely on public data. For a subscription fee of a few hundred dollars, anyone can look up an address’s asset composition, counterparties and holding periods on mainstream analytics platforms. The real “barrier” lies in translating these cold numbers into a seemingly chance encounter.

And when these on-chain methods are combined with the long-familiar “group-buy socialite” model of a few years ago, the impact multiplies. In that old playbook, dozens of women would jointly rent a single Ferrari, take turns staying in an executive suite at the St. Regis, and share one Chanel handbag — all to cultivate an “independent and wealthy” persona on social media. The persona remains; but the targeting is no longer an aimless “wide net.”

“It used to be: go to the club and try your luck. Now it’s: check the wallet first, then decide whether to go to that club at all,” said a former active member who later left the group, describing the process to Meridian. She said the groups compile dossiers on a target’s regular haunts, license plate, even their pet clinic’s appointment times. “By the time you ‘run into’ him, you understand his asset structure better than he does.”

One exchange in the chat logs obtained by reporters is telling. A member uploaded a screenshot of an address’s holdings with the caption: “This 0x one — 1,800-plus E (ETH), sitting untouched in a cold wallet for nearly two years. Old money. Worth prioritizing.” Minutes later, another member replied: “Already identified him — tech-company founder, single, there’s a private-equity dinner next Wednesday. I’ll go.”

The Gray Zone and Compliance Risk

On-chain data is public by nature, and scanning and analyzing it can hardly constitute a crime — which is precisely what makes this so thorny. Blockchain’s transparency was once seen as its greatest virtue; now that same transparency is being turned against itself, an “open hand” held over the heads of whales.

But several lawyers told Meridian that legal analysis does not mean the entire chain of conduct is safe. The moment the “matchmaking” process involves concealing material facts, fabricating an identity or inducing a transfer, it can edge toward fraud or extortion. “The problem was never looking at the data,” said a lawyer who handles virtual-asset disputes. “It’s what you do with that information after you’ve looked.”

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