Bitcoin Forum

Seriously...between each community fluffing their own coin and the haters on the "neutral" boards shitting on every coin that's just past it's prime, how are you supposed to know what coin is the most prudent investment?

I understand that "research" is worthwhile, but there's only so much you can learn from a coin's website.

At this point it feels impossible to keep up with every single development in the crypto world, however I feel that the truly legit ones that bring something to the table make themselves visible over time.

I agree - but from what I've read, people are saying that at that point, it's already too late.

WTF

By identifying what the scam artists are doing...

Read this and learn how these fuckers are operating on here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=896480.0

First you should formulate some broad heuristics to filter out a large majority of coins. For example, I am not interested in any fastmined or pre-mined coins. This eliminates 90%+ of coins right off the bat, as you can see from this report: http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=a_massive_investigation_of_instamines_and_fastmines_for_the_top_alt_coins

You have to decide what you are looking for in a coin, technically and otherwise. Once you do, you may find that the list of coins that meets your requirements will be vanishingly small.

To call an altcoin a scam you'd have to deal with something like a fake wallet with a trojan inside. If the coin is a pump and dump it is completely legit, you know what you're paying for and should expect that it can as well cease to exist and never reach the moon.

I will offer this disclaimer...Never trust a strangers opinion without doing due diligence. That being said the coins that show the most promise to me are Monero (XMR) and Burst (BURST). I buy them and I mine them. GPU rigs can mine both at the same time with little power consumption and little heat. If you want to know more then you will have to do your own due diligence.

Yes, getting in on something very early that is legit and ground breaking is dream level, stop wishing for that to happen because it's rare. Be happy if you can get into one fairly early and think medium term.

You have to spent time to research and find the best.

For one thing, the developer fully disclosing his face, name, country, business  number and contact info including his cell number might be a good start.

Like this guy and his projects: Rofo (aka Jason L. Curby) twitter https://twitter.com/NobleCoin NobleNXT etc.

You take your time to do your research.

Most people will make themselves known in real life and in person and actually not ask for money or do a premine BS scam.

.

My take it on is this: Does it fulfill a currently unfulfilled need? Bitcoin is well established, so why would I want to invest in a coin - legit or not - that works in exactly the same way? On the other hand, certain Altcoins actually do something that can make them desirable. Darkcoins, for example, protect privacy which would make them more suitable for some people. At the very least I can easily see Darkcoin having a role alongside Bitcoin because it does something that Bitcoin doesn't. Then there is "Atomic" which aims to be a decentralized currency exchange. Imagine being able to work in whatever coin is most convenient? That could certainly be a game changer. Namecoins aim to replace DNS where the coins themselves are primarily seen as a form of payment for .bit domains and the people who support those domains are paid accordingly. On the other hand, take Litecoin. I have a few, but it doesn't fulfill any new purpose, so I don't give it much attention. People in general have limited attention spans and we don't need more than one coin that does the exact same thing, but if it fulfills a need it will succeed by virtue of what it accomplishes.

In this post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=906795.msg9963819#msg9963819) I proposed two new altcoins - energy coins for decentralized energy distribution and network coins for decentralized internet grid. Although the suggestion would depend on some specific hardware implementations that don't yet exist, each suggestion aims to meet a previously unfulfilled need.

My overall point is this: If it fulfills a real need, read up on the details. If it doesn't, why bother?

Crypto is a high risk for a reason which is why its equivalent to penny stocks

Some coins will make u insanely rich in a few yrs

Thank you for pointing out how to know what is legit

your major contributions to this thread will never be forgotten.

what about my contribution?

It is not research but rather a process of elimination. 

My point already stated in the obvious above it.. I led to the conclusion..
Here ill give u a bone. Learn to assess the coin devs decisions.. If they are good and the coin shows promise chances are there will be more great things to come... If they are soso and seem like thry are made because of greed or just to fulfil a promise then u know its a pump and dump. If no decisions then its a dump.. Ill let u ponder that for a while feel free to come back in hindsight..

https://www.coingecko.com/en can help.  check out developer's ratings.  the higher the rating is the higher the chance it's not a scamcoin.

I don't think it's really possible to know in the earliest stages. Unfortunately, the earliest stages are also when most of the profits are to be made. Think of how lucky the initial investors of NXT were when NXT was launched roughly one year ago. 1 BTC invested into the NXT IPO would have made you worth over $5 million during its peak. Then think of how NXT looked at the time when it was first announced. It had a single shady, paranoid, anonymous dev posting from a newbie account who admitted that he had "little understanding of economics" and who decided to go AWOL weeks into its launch. Not only that but it also had no screenshots, no whitepaper, and not even a working beta.

I'll help you telling what's legit, ta-da... commercial break: NeosCoin (http://www.neoscoin.com) :)

he could be one of the satoshis for all we know.. or bcnext could be the satoshi group trolling us all over again.

wait... what!?! 5 MILLION DOLLARS??

It's not easy man.
Use the force.

Look Ripple, 6 month ago was shit, now number 2 in coinmarketcap.Making deals with banks.Legit? don't know, but is money.
Stellar maybe the next? good team there.

Really difficult to know in early stages.The NXT story is a good one,but that doesn't mean that will be repeated.Times are changing in cryptoland.

73 people invested a total of 21 BTC into the NXT IPO. The maximum anyone could invest was 1 BTC. NXT reached a peak market cap of about $100 million in June 2013. Therefore, someone who had invested 1 BTC would have 1/21 of $100 million - or roughly $5 million.

Profit-wise, it was the most successful IPO in crypto history (and probably always will be) and is part of the reason why there are so many IPOs still popping up today trying to emulate its success. Of course, if you had tried to sell your 50 million NXT for BTC or fiat, you definitely wouldn't have gotten anywhere near $5 million since all that selling would have depressed the NXT price significantly.

daaaaaammmmnnn... 

stick to known Dev..such as Laudney, David Zimbeck and few others. Those coins will rise beyond control.

Stay away from new coins created by newbie Dev.

Don't keep your eggs in one bucket

Not all of the original investors had the foresight to hodl and dump during the peak though. Some sold part or all of their stake while the prices were still extremely cheap.

For example, in this thread (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=818722), someone had invested 0.05 BTC (worth $50) into the IPO and later sold it all for 2.5 BTC in total. Had he waited, it would have been worth $250,000:


:(

Majority of people can't see that far..majority wants overnight gain..they can't even see few days forward let alone months.

actually yeah, i know the feeling.  i was told about BTC back in 2010 when it was cheap but didn't really bother looking it up.  i was in the process of downloading the blockchain then got impatient cos my internet was slow so i quit and uninstalled. it was amir taaki who told me about it believe it or not.    

take a close look.. are they overpromising, is the dev team legit in terms of btctalk history, are they just combining the latest hype buzzwords in a nice pdf or is there actually something. do they provide a git link to the source code etc. etc.

the more you can find out the better. also dont expect an ipo price to increase a lot after the ipo is over. basically you are financing a dev team to do work, why would the value increase a few days after an ipo is closed? it doesnt make that much sense because they cant develop in such a short time frame.

tbh... just do a lot of research and dont listen to twitter hype

Scam coins often have a newbie dev who presents a roadmap of unbelievable features he promises to develop using funds from a huge premine. The dev crashes the coin's value by dumping the premine and then disappears without developing any of the unbelievable features he promised.

I'm in same boat.  :)

I looked at the size of blockchain and cancelled it half way back when it was $5

Were there any lightweight wallets like multibit back then?

well you look at the fundamentals.
as far as believing promises go - take a wild guess

You don't need to do any research. Just assume that 99.9% of new alt coins are scams or shitcoins unless they demonstrate something original or new. Oh, and stick with investing in bitcoin and you'll likely do much better.

If less is promised, more will be delivered. Underpromise, overperform is a good strategy in a lot of projects, including crypto. The fancier the onepager with 100's of cool feat's and app's coming up, the bigger the possible dissapointment.

Second consideration is the reputation/trackrecord, former decisions/work of the devs. How have they handled previous situations/projects/issues.

Another good indicator is looking at what type of bct-members or core devs support the project. The ones who have a long history and good reputation here are experienced in the sector and thus there views are worth listening to. Obviously you should always do your own thinking, but it's good to take into consideration. There's a lot of 'support' from members who are centrally controlled (paid shills/trolls). See the bobsurplus debacle.

Premine/instamine etc is an obvious one. The link was posted here before.

If there's IPO/ICO it's 99.99% percent scam.
If there's more than 0.1% premine it's scam.
If there's not a roadmap, what's done so far, it's scam.
If it was instamined it's scam.
If the ANN topic is self moderated it's probably scam.

There're lots of other things, you need to check out the whole ann page to understand it.

i was told there was multibit.  i said "ok, thanks." , then proceeded to turning my pc off. lolz.  i didn't find the time to find out what bitcoin was nor did i have the patience.

i mean who would have known...  the thing to get from it is to always keep an open mind.

If its come from this forum in the last 12 months...its a scam  :-X

most likely, yeah.  and saying that is being fair.

Its hard to know. Most of the coins could promise features but not deliver. So its impossible to know, which one to pick .

Let's get this straight, you are upset that the way to make an extreme amount of money isn't somehow labelled on the product so you can easily identify, buy and therefore become massively wealthy?

I'm going to go ahead and assume you are under 18.

It's not impossible, it's difficult. Two very different things. Though actually if you have some intelligence and you learn to check things out and what to look for then it is often not that difficult.

I don't think he's upset about it,  its just that the market can no longer sustain this.
People are just trying to figure out which coins are actually trustworthy & have genuine value.

Rules can guide you but if you follow them religiously particularly the ones above you would of missed most of the biggest most promising projects of the last year or two. Rules will get you someway but having a bit of discernment of the developers intent is essential.

Replace upset with exasperated then, it doesn't change my point. This always been the Wild West. But just like the Wild West that is when fortunes can be made. If the OP wants 'Legit' and safe I suggest the OP buys a tracker fund earning 7% per annum.

I wrote this a while back, still applies today: http://razorsforex.blogspot.com/2014/02/which-cryptocurrency-should-you-invest.html

this is bullshit.

I don't even look at shit websites. They do reveal nothing. The website is always shiny. Doing research/due dilligence does NOT mean to look at the stupid website

you go look for these things:

-is it newbe-dev? if yes: stay away if no: make sure the account used wasn't bought
-next you look for premine. Does it have one? Then skip! (do not buy into the lies of funds are needed for xy or won't be accessed because it's all lies)
-IPO/ITO/ICO SKIP!
-If it hasn't a premine  and no presale and wants to say it's a legit and fair coin you then go on the blockexplorer and see if the blocktimes and rewards of  the first few thousand blocks are what they should be - if the blocktimes are faster than what they should have been stay away cuz it's an flashmine/instamine/something fishy
-do not touch coins with short initial distribution aswell. A good coin is mined for months and years not just days - this is important so you have some distribution of the coin wider than just the 5 blokes who have been around for the ninjalaunch and 5 days mining.

-----

so now you have ruled out already 80% of (shiny) altcoins you don't want to touch. Your odds for profit as investor are now greatly increased.

You're welcome.


Logo, promises, graphics, website, roadmap is  worth nothing with a freshly released coin. These things need to be ignored from the getgo because they are only there to lure YOU into buying it. Ignore the glitter. It's all pigs under the lipstick. Do NEVER buy coins based on promises of xy feature or other things beingreleased in the future because most of  the times it doesn't happen. I can not stress enough: DO NOT BUY PROMISES

a coin needs:
-community
-hashrate
-devteam
-real longterm prospects
-moderate to low inflation (pos interest is inflation too) - 5% in a year is fiat-inflation; so it should be below 5% in a year to be healthy. 
-good distribution between as many people as possible  

coins that do not have the above do go nowhere.

From this angle looking at the website is a waste of time. That's what you do last.

i look at it like it is gambling. try to research and find the good coins, but never invest to much in one and be prepared to lose it all because around here you never know what is going to happen.

Why do I keep seeing people say to skip IPO's. half the top 20 coins on CoinMarketcap are IPO's. Plus whether you like it or not IPOs have become the way most new developments are being distributed.

and no Newbie account? Well you would of missed making a fortune with NXT for one thing. You can't follow absolute rules, you got to have a bit more sense than that to spot winners.Plus you got to be willing to be wrong too, that's where the best learning takes place.

heres my strategy.
1.buy doge at 56-57 sell at 58-59
2.buy litecoin at 2.65 sell at >2.7
3.buy darkcoin at <1.90 sell at >1.90
4.buy 42 coin at 5.1 sell at >5.1
5.buy ripple...just buy it and hold on to it until it rises
6.buy monero, its awesome
7.buy shitcoin below market price, pump it, dump it
invest >0.5 btc or dont bother

The risk is too high for the amount of profits in my opinion, but its a fun way to waste time i guess.

Consider everything here as gambling or HYIP. Then invest your money accordingly.

Pohtaytoh
Photahtoh

same difference  ::)

8. Buy Burstcoin and hold. First and only coin that is POC and working Smart Contracts. I only agree with #6 above.

https://i.imgur.com/Gcq6jiX.jpg


Get inside the consumer's head and choose the coins that they'll embrace.

A currency's long-term success will always be determined by its rate of adoption.

because of selfbuys in ipo's which is easily possible with bitcoin and leaves no traces but is actually highly illegal. Of course these coins can do particularly well for the short/mid-term since after a selfbuy in the own presale most coins are held by the one issuing it and in addition to  this that person can use the bitcoin from the IPO to further pump the coin to draw in even more people with high volume and rising prices before dumping the coin. So it is no surprise to find these scams high up in the list with big volume and high prices.

fraudulent presale distribution will go on as long as people buy into it obviously.

I looked at it and I was like "nah..it's already too high"...a month later it was "$20" and I was like.."Oh snap..I guess I should've bought at $5..too late now" few months later it was at $1200 and I was yelling 5000! 5000! 5000! so I bought butt load of them. Guess what happened next?

I've had shit luck when it comes to crypto and bitcoins. Everytime I buy it ALWAYS goes down. I've tried it with Drk, BC, Doge, RDD, BTC, LTC and bunch others. I'm still invested in lot of them but  I don't worry about short term anymore...I'll check back few years later to see what's up..if they're dead they're dead but few years is fair amount of time.

I missed a great opportunity with BTC and I don't wanna repeat the history. Even if one of those coin hits $1 by 2020 I'll still end up with few millions on my hand. If they're dead I'll just lose couple of hundred bucks..no big deal.

Reward> Risk

bulls buy at extreme troughs and sell at extreme peaks. Most ppl buying into bull distribution.. 99% of the time every market ranges or goes down

Personally I am only really interested in bitcoin 2.0 platforms like Ethereum, Counterparty, NEM, NXT, etc. But back in the old 'n days I was into WDC VTC LTC and PPC. Anything forked from BTC and LTC nowadays are pretty much crap.

xpy seems to have a serious following with all the gaw miner people so I am taking a chance with it.  Hopefully it doesnt end up like the zenhashlets and absolutely useless

SJCX will rise. It has lot of potential and offering cloud storage. Lets see

And then the namedropping of random coins have started. So let me also drop a name, but first let me share my thought:)

After 1.5 year of playing around with Cryptos I have got the experience that 100.000 factors have to be considered to know whether a coin is legit or not. But still I wouldn't say it is just some guesswork to be a happy investor/miner/holder/staker. Probably a fortuneteller would have the same chance as me to become successful.

My five cent would be:
- Make sure the coin has solid ground values and some ideas about its future.
- A dedicated developer team that is eager to make things that are useful and not just copy/paste other coins that have had the luck to become successful. Few coins have survived with only a single developer.
- A community that supports the coin and do not hesitate to help each other. A community that seems to be full of egoists will probably not have any future.
- If you find a good coin, spread the word to others. It's hard to become successful alone.

In my case, I put a lot of interest right now in SterlingCoin. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=721936.0)

Try to deduce what the intention behind the alt coin is.   Is it for the devs to get rich?  That kind of thing.

They're mostly all worthless unless you want to make money off pump&dumps.   Which makes the job easier, yet harder to find the needle in the haystack I guess.

Why even bother? Just stick to Bitcoin.

Well bitcoin is good but no anonymity. That is why some BTC whales went to Monero.

Mining for a Cure: Gridcoin, Proof-of-Research & Finance Options Analysis!

http://www.coinssource.com/mining-cure-gridcoin-proof-research-finance-options-analysis/

https://i.imgur.com/CchNYc9.jpg

Due diligence my friend...find a public team that has a track record of doing big things.

There's only one coin I know of that's legit and its the almighty BTC

Because they bought them.

This time last year there were less than 50 coins on coinmarketcap, which made picking a winner pump&dump possible. Nowadays there are too many coins and it makes picking a winner pump&dump extremely difficult.

Haven't you thought of the gold rush?

I would say we are in the middle of 21st century gold rush. It will probably be as the last time, a very few will be lucky and the rest survivals will not even earn bread and butter. :)

If one should wish to abolish the state, money, and private property, one should look into this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776426).

Well, a virtual goldrush. But there are more than one similarities between this and the wild west: there's quite some people digging for digital gold, people trying to steal that digital gold, you can gamble with what you find and when your equipment wear out there's plenty of shops to get new gear. Hell there's even hookers that'll accept your digital gold.

So when looking for legitimacy consider your own observation: the streets don't change, only their names.

I don't think they had blow in the wild west though. Hookers yes, blow no.

lol I forgot the opdiumden yes.

Both have and had, respectively, states, money, and private property underlying their depravity.

Is the stock market a virtual gold rush?  

No one way you can make money off this stuff unless you have the best trading bots or you acquired equity at the very beginning at low cost..  even then it is no path to easy riches, your equity is not guaranteed to be worth a thing and many tech companies do not have an IPO until 5-10 years down the road.

The hookers provided the blow!

Well, I would say that the stock market was wild west in the 60s and 80s, when everybody thought they could make a fortune on stocks. Instead of Miners, they were called Yuppies :)

 

OK yah

I just avoid most of them, if you're interested in them you'll have to either research, or find someone you think has already done the research, and go off their advice.

I'd say a dev who has shown his face and name since the beginning of 2014, when all the anonymous scammers were running around, and have been devoted to his project throughout the entire year is something to take note.

Meet Noblecoin dev Rofo aka Jason L. Curby: https://twitter.com/NobleCoin

His current project includes noblecoin and NobleNXT. ANN for NobleNXT here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=841741.0;all