What steps must one take to verify if an emerging alt-coin is legitimate?

[Rambu]

As the title says. New cryptocoins are being created on an almost daily basis and people with little in-depth knowledge such as myself might struggle to distinguish legitimate ones from scams or fundamentally flawed start-up coins. What do cryptocoin veterans look into when trying to find promising new cryptos?

[dogeball]

Typically that they are doing something different than the other coins and aren't just a straight up copy, but that isn't always true too. If your business plan is to make money off a alt-coin surging in value you should be a part of EVERY alt-coin startup and mine in the first few days/ a week and hold those coins with the hope one of the ones you did this to jumps up in value.

[nastybit]

A few point to consider:
- check the specs, if they are copycat of others stay away
- check who posted the spec, if he has the name of the coin stay away
- check who posted the spec, if he has less than 100 post stay away
- check the initial difficult, if it's close to 0 it's a dump and dump
- check what other says, it's the best if you have no idea (also the worst because you want to make a move without having an idea)

[pao_de_lo]

1 - is innovation?
2 - was pre-mined?

http://altcoins.com/scamcoins

1 - tem inovação?
2 - foi pré-minado?



------------------------
from Brazil.
No, I'm not going to the world cup.

carnival

[tescomatty]

Low starting difficulty or premining is big no for me to even mine 1st day

[dogeball]

premining doesn't mean an altcoin will fail, just to clarify, it means the coin operator has taken a portion of the coins for himself. If its a respectable small amount, and he is not going to be mining himself once the coin is launched I don't see anything wrong with that, he should have some of the coins he created...