Bitcoin Forum

Firstly, i would like to say this an amazing forum equipped to learn thoroughly about cryptocurrency. I have heard alot about it and finally got in. I'm not entirely a noob in crypto space as i have learnt few things in the past year.

My main aim for this topic is to share an opinion about being careful of being a crypto sheep. Alot of us tend to invest either our time or money in projects just because we've seen some positive comments or an attractive article about a project and sometimes they eventually become scams. I have also noticed some people get paid to just keep the groove positive in a group, known as shillers. These guys can mislead you.

I will urge the newbies to not just make decisions based unknown recommendation but to research deeply into a project. Yes you can say do all bounties you can and whichever is successful is a luck. It doesn't have to be that way as it can be time consuming and i believe time is money. Take your time to learn about a project by going through their whitepapers for specific roadmap and usecases, try asking the team members questions and see if they seem less serious or unsure. Go through their social media channels and see how they interact with followers. This way you won't be a sheep following other sheeps blindly.

If we try our best to check these things and project still fails, you will know you have done your due diligence. You may also look through scam sections or start a social media post about the project and use relevant hashtags to see if anyone has found any discrepancies.

This is my two cents and i hope i made a little sense and i've posted in the right section. Thanks for reading

Before making any kind of investment its necessery to gather proper knowledges about that specific field. Its not like that you have to know about risk factors, possibilities and outcomes just only before investing on crypto currency where its same for other fields of investment. Every investor should spend enough time before taking the final decision of making investment anywhere and when its crypto then you are taking extra amount risks if you are investing just by reading sime comments or following predictions from untrusted sources.

For newbies i always recommend them to go for established projects rather then new one. Yeah you can easily gather information of any project by checking their whitepaper, roadmap, project background, team etc but thats not all.

If you haven't got enough time to research then "Bitcoin" is the best option for you.

This is exactly why Bitcoin should be the only option for newbies. As a newbie, even if you wanted to research a coin properly, besides googling it and reading fairy tales on their whitepaper there's not much else you can do. You could contact their Telegram channels, sure, but what exactly could a newbie ask to put the team members into some kind of difficulty?

Stick to the King. You may throw a swear or two at me months later if BTC drops a bit while some shitcoin pumps 300%, but trust me - you don't want to buy something you have no idea about and turn a grand into a buck. While Bitcoin also has a chance to drop at any time, once it drops, everything else drops as well - including your shitcoin.

If you haven't got enough time to research then "Bitcoin" is the best option for you.
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This is absolutely true, with well known projects like bitcoin and ethereum the risks are low as they are well established with good marketcap.

Knowledge is very powerful. It's very important for newbies to first learn about basics of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies of interest, different wallets, transaction fees, how to keep funds secure, trading basics and history of crypto price movements etc to avoid falling into traps such as scams, hacks, bad trading decisions such as FOMO leading to loss of funds.

In my own view, maybe at least 7 out of 10 people are surely making their own DYOR before putting up money on a certain project. A project does have a good team behind it, active development, wonderful and awesome roadmap, well-detailed and informative whitepaper, always keeps in touch in the community.....

...but despite all these positive characteristics, why in the end, there's no good result even it counts for years?

So here, newbies must understand that even putting DYOR and trust to that project, keep in mind that there's no assurance that these projects will all succeed. What I mean here is, remove the mindset that it's a 100% success in the end. I'm not totally discouraging newbies to join new projects but just changing their views to avoid expectation then, in the end, will blame the project owners even you admit that you always see them releasing continuous update logs and trying to make their project alive.

Reading articles would help, however, don't focus on the one sided article only, if you can read different article with different sources the better, or reading positive and negative comments would also help, at least that would help you make a good decision. I like that you mentioned the scam accusations section as you can really find a lot of real information regarding the project you are planning to invest, if you see the name of the project has an active scam accusation and the accusation is supported by trusted members in the forum, better stay away from that project as they would not support the accusation if there is no valid evidence or read flag of a certain project.

For newbie, I know experience is the best teacher but if they could prevent getting scam just to learn, then that is better.

Everyone tells people to do their own research, yet no one tells how to do it exactly. It's so easy to just say this phrase, but beginners can interpret it in hundreds of different ways. To many just going to some crappy coin review site or reading blogs or twitter would already count as research. So here's some points:

1. Look for both positive and negative information about a coin.

2. Study the fundamentals of crypto and then learn to do your own analysis.

3. Learn from the past - we already have years of data that show how bad can shitcoins perform in the long term.

I agree with OP, we need to have our own judgment to decide on what projects we trust and which ones let go. If we see tons of people joining to the same project, that doesn't warrant it will not end in an exit scam.

So, if we are not secure or if we have doubts about a project, then the best option is to stay away from it.

First of all welcome :)
You preaching good words, problem is, i hope it will help anyone to not getting involved in altcoins as a whole.
Too many people lost tons of Bitcoins trading Bitcoin <--> Altcoins, seen it too many times, sad to read every time.
Bitcoin is true technical revolution, copy-pasting it like altcoins do, doesnt add value, even if they claim it does.

Investing in new projects could indeed give you big profits if the project proved to be a success, but that mentality really kills most people. Stop thinking of it being successful, but rather start thinking of it being a failure, or being a scam, and determine the movement you would do based on that. There's a reason why the best traders out there have the ability to minimize the risk, cause even if they were to mistakenly invest on a scam, they would still know how to minimize their losses.  Start thinking for yourselves, and stop following mob mentality. Being attracted to amazing offers doesn't make you think for yourself, it makes you become suckered in by others.

True, failure doesn't necessarily mean a bad thing. It actually provides you with lessons to follow for the next project you'd invest in, for moves you'd properly do next time. Don't be afraid to lose, or to make mistakes, be afraid of not learning even after making mistakes. Also, avoid social media when looking up scams tbh, most of them are actually just shills instead of scam accusations most of the time.

Its sad when we get a lot of the fact that in the long run dozen of new altcoin dont hold up well in the market due to a lack of interest. Investing in altcoin is not a bad thing to do, but dont get too excited because there are many possibilities that can still happen to altcoin and it is a failure.

Absolutely agree that bitcoin is the best choice for anyone looking to invest. Bitcoin has been shown to provide benefit in both the short and long term for trader and investor. Without excluding the worst odds and price fluctuation, I thought bitcoin was the king of crypto for a long time.

Speaking of research: It's funny how A LOT of people barely understand Bitcoin's basics(with some not even knowing the basics on how custodial and non-custodial wallets work), and yet they immediately try to go with altcoins. The perfect disaster for inexperienced "investors".

the whitepaper only contains the idea and is not going to tell you whether the project is good or bad. the idea is most of the times excellent.
the roadmap and use cases are also promises and they also don't tell you whether the project is good or bad. the promise may not be kept as is the case with altcoins.

to ask proper questions you have to first be familiar with cryptocurrency and cryptography and a lot more in an advanced level which means if you are then you should start looking at the code itself first and then ask questions.
otherwise no question asked by a beginner who is unfamiliar with all that can provide any valuable information. a well versed pump and dumper who has been around could throw around enough buzzwords to look like an expert and make the shitcoin look good whereas under the hood it is pure garbage. all top 20 altcoins are like this.

all followers of social media of an altcoin are there to hype it and help its pump to be able to dump it and make some of their money back and hope for some profit. they won't provide that much valuable information either.

just because the market cap (aka the supply) of some altcoin is huge and it has gotten bigger pumps and has a better shilling community it doesn't mean that altcoin is good and "established". in case of ethereum it is the worst altcoin of all times. it is centralized, mutable, expensive, buggy, slow, hard to use as a smart contract platform in comparison and hasn't delivered any of the promises they initially made to pump it this high. as an investment it is also terrible because it has unlimited supply hence it is inflationary.

This is a very optimistic range. On the contrary, I think that less than 50% of the people buying Bitcoin and altcoins are doing their research, much less careful and thorough research.

During the height of ICOs, there were probably only a handful of investors who diligently went over whitepapers detail by detail and made careful analyses out of them prior to investing.

In the first place, had their research been exhaustive they wouldn't have invested in more than 95% of those ICOs on the simple ground that those are not going to work well, or even work out, in real life.

Investors that prefer altcoins over bitcoin are usually driven by common misconception that can be simply described as a theorem: the lower the price of one unit of particular altcoin the wider the space for it to grow, the more x it will give. "Bitcoin has already given a lot of profits to early adopters, and presently it is not affordable for most investors to obtain one unit of bitcoin, but anyway it doesn't matter because it will not give investors as many profits as it already gave in the past, so I better to invest in altcoins, which haven't grown yet."

What they don't understand is that total supply of altcoins is sometimes billions and trillions of coins, and more importantly unlike in bitcoin, supply in altcoins is controlled by central party, and they can print more to enrich themselves. There is no place for growth of price, only for growth of total supply.

Market cap doesn't really mean anything when it comes to coins that matter tbh. You have BCH, BSV, XRP and Tether sitting in the top - do they make for good investments? I wouldn't say so.

Relying on this basic information such as supply in circulation, market cap or volume isn't going to help much at all. All it does is it creates a potentially false perspective of the coin. I'd rather look for some answers, such as... is the coin centralized? Does the team behind the coin have a significant premine they're holding onto? Is there a real progress or just a fake roadmap to bait fools?

But again, these are things you ask yourself only when you already know what's up with these alts. Hence, best option to go for is BTC or, if you don't want it, then better not invest in anything before you know at least the basic stuff about crypto.

You have made excellent points with regards to people who just follow blindly and not do anything about it. But I do not think that everyone is acting like this, especially during these times, knowing that it's going to be hard to get scammed these days. I think it's essential to get this message across every person who is looking to get into crypto.

What's more important, IMO, is to share something that would be helpful to others, like a possible scam entry point. Whether there are phishing links, malicious content, etc. it's better to share that information to help everyone.

Investment is really risky. I could say that altcoins has a pros and cons and newbies who follow other's game usually end up losing.

We all knew that bitcoin has more chance of staying alive over the next few years. But an investor would likely to risk for some profits. Altcoin projects is really a wide range of selection and the moment you stepped on a trap then your money will be gone. But people knows what their doing get rewarded fairly by doing a good homework on these altcoins.

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I suggest instead of betting luck on some altcoins that you are not confident to invest with. Why not learn the concept of trading which could extend your knowledge about market approach than simply risking on shitcoins.

I really like your points, that shows that you have a positive ambition to be here.
The highest strategies to follow this noble forum is to be creative in idea's, and to be observed, and to be determined.
Do not be be discouraged keep on trying your best because a " journey of thousands mile started with a step" and know very well that before prosperity comes their is a forgotten sorrow's.
Just be hard working in all ramifications of crptocurrencies activities, definitely what you find difficult is going to be easy for you.
Before you invest in any platform find out the disadvantages and advantages of it, and also the rudiment of it.
Be careful and monitor environment.

You nailed it @mk4. People tend to be lazy to learn so that they are unknowledgeable and they are also greedy.

People said "Hey I am bitcoin / crypto investor" but in reality they don't know why their transactions are not credited to account balance when they move funds from one exchange to another. They don't know what is hash of their transaction, how to check and get it for support. Some also make noise like "What is it, the exchange is hacked. My BTC was deposited to my account but when I check block explorer, it was move to another address, blah blah".

For such people, such self-claimed bitcoin investors/ enthusiasts, what covers their mind is money, not bitcoin, not crypto.

Another story is, instead of buying a good coin at bottom price and wait for its pump, they jump to coins already have x-fold pumps and hope that they can get 20 or 50 percent of profits within minutes or hours. Who care about risks, it is pumping (like SRM (https://www.binance.com/en/trade/SRM_BTC))! or TNT (Tierion) (https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tierion/) - many people FOMOed and got lost with the shitcoin after it was delisted (TNT/BTC) from Binance.

In such situation, emotion decides their gambling activities and they get lost.

I agree entirely with the advice above. Researching into projects before putting your funds in them is really important. There are always Interesting articles on   projects however most of them are for hype and they do not bring out the true picture of the projects. Following the hype always can cost you a lot. Projects with  good fundamentals can always stand the test of time.

The first and the most important thing is how to do a research, this is the first thing that you must learn you need to know where to check and how to check your guidelines are all correct scammers are good in imitating a good project and some prefer to scam at the last resort because they cannot keep up anymore, like what happen to Adab just because they cannot acquire license they choose to scam their investors.

This is the most common problem of the newbies that would like to earn a lot of money they are making an investment to the platform or coins that have huge money back to them after a single week or months and why do they discover this? Sometimes came from the people on their surroundings and some of the groups common this kind of transaction happen in the telegram which is the most common communication tool we have right now.

To all newbies and would like to make an investment to those coins and platform, we won't tires to tell you again.. and again to make a lot of research and background checks about those platforms and coins because this has money involved and we want to make earning but the outcome of being tired to have a background check is just a step towards to your mistakes.

Knowledge is the most powerful right now if you do not have any knowledge and information relates to business, investment, cryptocurrency, and more you do not have any chance to survive in this environment.

This is a good and enlightening topic for those people who are new here.

You should really not rely on the things that you only see here in the forum and other platforms. Doing own research and making independent on the things that you've encountered will make you have your own decision making become beneficial for you. Not all programs are applicable based on our preferences and skill so don't expect the same result as what you've expected when you engage in a certain program. Look for what's the best for you and seek for the information that will really become effective for your own growth and learning.

On the one hand, it is good that there are such investors because they give people who understand a little more of the subject to earn precisely from such investors, and on the other hand, it is bad for the whole ecosystem, because people start to despair and think that everything is worldwide ponzi scheme

Being dependent on yourself is much better than being a follower by those people who are actually not seeing you there. Being knowledgeable about a thing that we do is only a weapon to become independent. And even it looks like we are a crypto sheep but actually, we decide our own path to follow, not being dictated by someone above.

If we don't stop learning, it gives us a wider crypto understanding. I know that not all things can be acquired by all individuals but being ignorant of something we know less is very ashamed. The most important in crypto space is to create a concrete decision and one goal.

Many good seeming projects with troops of followers on social media failed and exist to scams, meanwhile, investors fail to perform DYOR on some project making them moved by the huge followers thinking it a good projects. One other thing that keeps investors like sheep if following crypto influencers, they are mostly whales that deceive newly investors setting a trap that favours them at last. Thorough research is the perfect way.