Bitcoin Forum

Hi there,

rather new to crypto. Currently looking at Insight Chain (http://www.insightchain.io/ & https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/insight-chain/).

Now this smells like a shitcoin (pump and dump), but (as a noob) I can't really put my finger on why this is the case. There's a website, whitepaper, twitter account, etc. But all what they are saying doesn't make much sense, though not being a blockchain expert, I might simply not understand what they are saying.

To some more experienced cryptofans out there: How would you go about deciding whether an altcoin is a shitcoin (ideally using the example of Insight Chain)?

Thanks!

The first question i personally ask, after a team passes the basics like "are they real people" is:
Does this coin/token have a USE case? most dont really they are just hype (insight chain)
This insight chain looks like a "China Coin"  what those coins do is take some hype tech words like DPoS, and validation nodes
and sell it to people that dont realize thats just old tech mostly
Also: CMC is useless, dont go by that, the supply is w.e the teams say there is and the list is extremely easy to manipulate :P

Thank you for sharing your experience!

CMC not being reliable (the market cap figures) is new to me. Are you saying that a team can, let's say, trade a few coins on a shady exchange for 1 dollar and then say that 1 billion coins are in circulation (without any proof), leading to a stunning (but false) market cap of 1 billion?

I'm no expert when it comes to these matters. But I think one of the ways to find out if this is shitcoin is through its uses. Is it a unique working product that will help them grow? But if it was just for the sake of trading the market and for no other reason it could be a pump and dump coin.

^ look for wash trading and you'll have an idea about volume manipulation by teams and even by exchanges.

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If you cannot understand the technical side of a project yet, you can look for their products real use case. Assess if blockchain is really needed or if the product really solves anything which will create demand. See also if how they plan to achieve project expansion, are there partnerships in place?

It's my first time hearing about this coin though they have been on the market for about a year, I was wondering why they still use ".io" on their main website? because as far as I know its usually use for initial offering and they have already done that so why not change to a formal domain name like .com or .org?

They got a good trading volume based on CMC, active community and lot of partnership so I could say that this coin has a potential since its run by Chinese people which is good on marketing their product but I will take a deeper research about this coin.

Thanks! Just read about it on investopedia. Interesting.

Let use know what you uncover!

I did some research into their product / use case and to me, as an educated layman, it doesn't make much sense. If you come to a different conclusion, please enlighten me :D

What coin or token would pass that test these days?  If your criteria for a shit coin includes a real life use case, then essentially everything that isn't bitcoin would be considered one. 

And honestly I wouldn't argue too strenuously about that, especially in the case of tokens on the Eth platform.  Nearly all of them are scams and even more of them don't have any real use whatsoever.

Op, look at the coins in the top 50 or so on coinmarketcap.  Anything below that could probably be considered a shit coin.  Any coin with a value in the low satoshis (except perhaps for dogecoin) is a shit coin.

Shitcoins are literally a piece of shits, for those projects that has no real products ,no token utilization or simply just no use at all and its only created to raised funds and then after it will remain idle on any exchange that it was listed.

Shitcoin could be any coin that doesn't offer anything to crypto sphere. The people behind just put it to make money out of gullible crypto investors. And after the tokens has been listed on exchange, you will never heard from the devs before and chances are, the people behind have move to their next project to scam more people.

Just look at how much coin has been delisted, and you will find what shitcoins is all about.

Please, always use your brain when you are going to invest into such project.
Think about the use case, think about the team, if the team is skilled enough to achieve goals, think if they can overbeat competitors, think about it as an investment - will people buy your coins/tokens in the future and why?  :)

Mostly a shitcoin can difine base on the daily trading volume. If you see that the coin/ tokens  has no volume this is only means there is no adoption and community support for the project .
You should also check the monthly   chart so you will not be victimized with pump and dump coin. Its easy to identify pump and dump coin if you look at the trade history not for the day but a month or week before the pump start.

I am not an expert in the cryptoqurrency industry, but I know very little about identifying Shiltcoin, such as looking at their trading volume, how many investors are involved, how active the team & developers are in managing their projects, including social media influences, etc. If the coins that you mean are in accordance with the information above are the criteria for bad coins or shitcoin.

Sometimes you can trust your instinct. If you can feel that there's something that you can't take within that coin then don't ever continue and remove it already on your interest.

Most of these coins does all have the needs that you have mentioned. Having an actual whitepaper but the question is that for real? they did made that and didn't copied somewhere? they have a website but it could be just their props to make their project looks good.

At the end of it, you still have to research for that coin and everything about it like the team's legitimacy.

I had heard about INB last year, but I have not heard anything about having shitcoin so far. I even looked at the exchange where it was listed to investigate its volume, and I found nothing negative. The calculated volume on the CMC is also correct. The only thing I do not understand is that according to CMC the volume has not been less than $ 1 million since it was created, but it was $223 on June 18, and that volume continued until June 28. And in this time period, the price rose to $2.40 with $19k volume. Has something like this really happened, or is it just the CMC's mistake?

Have you checked their development so far? Is it progressive or stagnant? Also, have you checked their team record? Can you ascertain if the team is real, for instance do they attend blockchain/crypto events? Do they have a product or are they developing one at MVP? All these factors will help you analyze the project if it's worth it or not.

shitcoin is a coins without active development and has no voume in exchange
the team didn't do anything, because shitcoin created just to cheat the investors
thats my opinion about a shitcoin my friend
regards

the first is by comparison, if we observe the market, we can see almost the same price movement. for example bitcoin, etherum or other coins have increased, then the small coins underneath usually also move green, if not then the coin is very bad and not worth buying (maybe only 10%). then specifically for coins or new tokens that are just launched into the market, often see the official group chat activity of the team, if there is quiet and no news at all, we can be sure the project is dead and has no future.

then you can also see prices or exchange rates that are very low or very low. the position of tokens or coins like that is also very difficult to be sure to last a long time in the market. the long term impact is that coins don't have value anymore, and worst of all, coins will be removed from the market exchange.

I don't think I need an expert to know where is shitcoin.
For me, it's clear that shitcoin doesn't have any real function. And plus it's definitely pump and dump coins. Prices tend to fall continuously. Developers who are slowly no news. Developers who suddenly sell their own coins with fun. There are so many indications if we look at the present reality. Some people are happy to play in shitcoin. According to my mind for seeing them, it is easy to get profits quickly. But when they lost, they would say harsh words.

There are many definitions of shitcoin, but I am more interested in calling it a dead coin. Coins that do not have a clear project and are also not active communication from the developer team so investors are always in doubt whether the project will be in accordance with the roadmap. In addition, a coin can be said to be a dead coin if the transaction volume on the exchanger is very small or there are no transactions at all

Even not an expert or professional can smell if the project has any worth you can noticed it when the team show their way to market their project. Isn't all about marketing I know some project that doesn't focus on marketing but the product itself speak for the whole. If you know how to use github, its a hub of source code and every update and improvement is uploaded there. Even no marketing as long the project keeps improving it then its a good one. Look on Hawk Network, their team rarely seen on social groups but their project is worth like pioneered coins.

Agree there are lots of coins that have good products but don't have a big marketing budget. Marketing is not an indicator of a good coin because ultimately investors are waiting for products that will be able to provide benefits for the company.

Indeed. You don't need an expert or asking for help to others for you to know if a project will be successful or worth it to participate with. I am also not an expert when it comes to crypto, but i can easily identify a shitcoin if the team members are not active and there are only few people were willing to paeticipate in their project, which they can't find any solution to advertised it to other people on how their product will benefit the investors.

Can an expert tell me how to identify a shitcoin I have some experiences about cryptocurrency but i will not call myself an expert but my suggestion might be of help.

Majorly, i avoid any project with these two features, those that promise the unbelievable and those that do not have actual product.

@OP
Lol, is there any expert that can really claim that they have the perfect solution to really knowing how to identify a fake project? It is quite very difficult top actually know a shit projects now, at the early stage of these shit coins when they still have very well system too, we could use their whitepaper and team to discern some, but whitepaper is so difficult to be able to discern these projects now, they even do hire Blockchain developers now to help them write the whitepaper, and the team even look genuine when you see them.

It is because it has become difficult that made me to result into allowing them to have stayed long in an exchange first before thinking of looking at their project for any investment in them, so indirectly, I dint do new projects again.

I am not an expert, but you can see such things on team behaviour and their roadmap. If everything is getting postponed and team members are not delivering their promises, you can be sure that such project will never be successful.

Well, there is the easiest and most effective way to save ourselves from the threat of shitcoin by monitoring subforum scam accusation (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=83.0). I am very grateful to most of the members of this forum who have dedicated their time to analyzing and warning us. Because I really lack experience in assessing the project as a whole.

Though I would not tell that Insight coin is another shitcoin, because to me it seems ok type project with huge supply. They have a plan for products and use cases! If you look at their Github page and technical paper you will see something good is here! But this is not a coin for investment in this position. You may keep looking on this project until you find something good there! If you feel not good in Insight Coin, choose another for investment!

Shitcoin... this is a very subjective concept, you know :)
Usually it means really weak coin in your opinion or even pure scam. It's up to you, you are defining this. I don't think coinmarketcap top-100 contains any shitcoins.

I personally call coins without a working product shitcoins, or especially ones that promise one far in the future; a lot of these promises eventually fall through and never happen, and it's gambling if you're buying something that's only promising to deliver something. Some factors also depend on how you view things; for example, a lot of people like to call strongly centralized coins and tokens like Ripple shitcoins. Projects that aren't solving problems but are looking for solutions to problems that might not even exist are also shitcoins in my eyes. There's really no one way to define it, but a very general way of defining a shitcoin would just be a project that doesn't meet its own goals and/or does not have any significant real use-case.

Nearly every coin out there is a shitcoin, so you should flip your logic and instead ask "what coin is not shitcoin"? A decent coin should have relatively high marketcap, though marketcap alone is never enough to judge a coin. A decent coin should have active community which is genuinely interested in it, rather than being bounty hunters or paid shills who just create buzz. The most important factor is development activity - a good coin should have a lot of commits, issues, pull requests, discussions on github, and they should come from many different people. And last, the coin should have realistic and achievable goals that are actually useful, and it should either be unique in it's field or solve the problems of its competitors.

I commonly look at it as a coin or shitcoin just by recognizing the team and its projects whether they are genuine and have offices in their country and whether the project has a good innovation.
But that's not enough to judge because now many team manipulations and massive projects are very real and can make us believe and eventually disappear. So follow their community if crowded will usually be something good.

If me, maybe when i read here at first is see some people answer we must look at team, maybe it work for early to decide the project legit or not. But sometime after end of ICO, the coin can be shitcoin too because it looks like left by it's developer. I think shitcoin or not, actually still hard to predicted. Usually project that underestimated by people, can be good in market.

What makes a project standout from shitcoins is real working project and pro teams, without these two the project will surely fail, every investors must take the responsibility of doing research to avoid shitcoins completely.

What made you interested in that project anyway? In my personal judgement I will not invest in projects that I don’t fully understand, we don’t have to be experts to judge a project but as long as it has use cases and working product’s unless if it has no use then probably will fall on shitcoin category.

I'm no expert but it's easy to see if the coin we hold is shitcoin.

We will soon find out it's shitcoin if it has no exchange volume and 1 satoshi is the price. And if it has been abandoned by the developer. It is also possible if these are coins made to be used in the scam.

You one funny thing about majority of these projects is that they keep riding under the auspice of decentralization by not creating a virtual office, but yet they keep creating all these centralized projects for us that really does not make sense.

It is true that every project is at least supposed to have their physical office in the country for people to be able to verify them, but many would claim that their identity is not supposed to be known which I think this is just purely scam, so I also consider what you do here too before concluding if a project is bad or not, and secondly, I even prefer to participate in a project that is meant to have like a physical factory and not all these software running project claiming millions of dollars to create an application.

Some of my friends did an analysis by observing the social activities of the project.  My friend asked for an explanation and authentic evidence of the strategic steps, activities and development of the project.  an official project will surely be happy to explain its development with photographs, on the contrary, a fake project will try to cover up and cannot provide evidence.

How to identify a shitcoin is basically simple.  From their roadmap and white paper alone, you would get them. Also, take a close look at the Team backgrounds. A shitcoin will basically have fake team.

If you are good in research and follow up you will get to know projects without future and even if you do not buy during ICO or IEO once listed, team zealousness towards the project and amount of token dump should defined something to you . Must do dump and blame bounty hunters...they even dump before bounty distribution so they would always use bounty to cover up. follow up projects and exches too to detect good and shit projects.

Usually some project with no vision will also struggle providing technical information into their community as well as how the project will progress into the future. Their roadmap also usually just there and not being followed.
The lack of motivation from the developer side usually is an obvious sign of shitcoin.
If you uust want to be sure to avoid these kind of coin just stick to top 20 coin it is that simple because there is no point of owning shitcoin anyway.

Must do an analysis for the whole project and the team that they display on the website. Social media will always be active and provide the latest information about the project being built. InsightChain is still running according to the Roadmap and Twitter is still active. Already listing on DragonEX with a large volume and on Livecoin.
Keep a close eye on prices on the exchange if there are pump and dump practices.

Yes, the scam accusation section is very good in this regard, but it takes time for the scammers to be recognized, perhaps you have invested already.
So to protect himself, always pay attention to what the product is, what it will give us, and whether the team will succeed.

Shitcoins and scam projects are superfluous, but not the same. Shitcoins are coins that have no more volume and no usability.

According to the road map! That is exactly what I usually capitalize on when I am looking for projects that is worth investing on. And talking about roadmap, it means that we are dealing with projects that are already established because that is the only way that we can know if the project is working along with the roadmap of the whitepaper that was released and promised to their investor.

I have personally made my own decision never to invest in a project that is just coming as new project except it is a project that I can really vouch for because new projects are very difficult to really know their intention, so I don’t really follow their whitepaper from the beginning until the project has gone to an advanced stage where we can verify the activities of the project team.

Do your own research. Check their white paper and the activeness of the developer and team behind their project. However, if you're just investing, you better invest on top coins instead of new coins if you really want an assurance. As for me, it's better to invest with well-established coins than to take too mauch risks in new altcoins.

It's your personal responsibility to know coins that shit and those that worth investing in, don't forget that you are putting your money into and you will be responsible for anything that comes out it. Crypto is an unregulated finance space and must always trend softly

I usually use a one red flag rule with altcoins. If I see a single red flag i never touch the coin.

Possible red flags are fake team pictures, fake resumes, anonymous team, bad sites with bugs, stolen code or code based on another coin with very little changes, plagiarized anything like white paper or articles, only tradable on small and shady exchanges.

You won't be sure if the coin is a failure until you see the price and volume.