How to distinguish a PromisingCoin from a ShitCoin or ScamCoin?

[someone111]

There has been a flood of altcoins. I would like to invest in one or another. Some of you are following this for years while I am just reading for days.

How to distinguish a PromisingCoin from a ShitCoin or ScamCoin? What are good criteria that indicate a promising start up doing its best vs and a scam?

[thejaytiesto]

It's too hard to know if something is being pumped for no reason or there's something behind it. "Good" alts usually offer something new to the table. MAID offers a very interesting project with 10+ years of development, XMR offers the rings thing for increased anonymity, ETH/ETC smart contracts... those are all top10 coins, yet, all of them have huge problems too, which make them risky investments, but you could at least predict that they are not going to 0, like most total shitcoins do.

[lucky80]

Invest is such complicated things ....just dont loose your capital....

[European Central Bank]

stuff that's old and with volume on the exchanges is a good sign. don't believe anything anyone here tells you. many of them are liars trying to get money out of you one way or another.

being an honest coin doesn't mean it's gonna make you any money. never buy into something pre launch. most of them make their money with the pre launch hype and then dump and run. no one cares about features or integrity. they only want that pump.

[bathrobehero]

If it's an ICO then chances are it's a scam. But even if an ICO is not a scam, you wouldn't know in advance but only after it reached its goal. Sure, you can invest and get lucky but then what you're doing is not investing, but pure and simple gambling.

I'd even go one step further; if there's a coin for which the "devs" are clearly interested in money (especially early on) instead of funding their projects themselves, then it's very likely a scam or just an overambitious project that will never happen but in this context that's also pretty much a scam as well.

If a coin has an ASIC PoW algo (SHA256, Scrypt, X11) then it's probably a low key copy paste coin with nothing interesting going on therefore it's a waste of time. I mean I think you'd be hardpressed to name a decent coin that came out this year with these algos. Do note, that I'm a GPU miner so I'm obviously biased, but even if you only look at how many people have GPUs and how many people have ASICs you can already see the massive difference in distribution and intention. If you're interested I can detail several other reasons why ASIC coins are bad for coins and crypto in general.

I also think all kinds of coins that start with PoS, or have it switch to PoS in the first year or so are shitcoins. Staking basically means the rich gets richer (with no effort nonetheless) which goes absolutely against wider distribution (therefore decentralization) so there's that. I mean if everybody gains more coins based on how much they own without any work then nobody really gains anything over the other so pure PoS coins are basically a fallacy and are pretty close to Ponzis because the only way long term stakers can cash out is if they pass their bag onto new unsuspecting stakers. And I think even low rate staking coins are stupid because it's perplexing to me why anyone would tie their money for a few percentage annual gain in crypto which has bigger swings in a single day. It's worse than rolling the dice.

I can't really tell you which coins to look for, but I do have a suspicion that a bunch of old coins will get picked up instead of new coins being launched.

[bbc.reporter]

@bathrobehero but sometimes it is very hard to determine this because the prices of the promising coin does not rise and the scamcoin rises because of different reasons, maybe marketing is one. Also this forum does not help us in choosing what to hold because one would say XMR is a scam then the other would say Dash is the scam. Sometimes even some people would say BTC is a scam! They even call it BitcOn.

[rigel]

It depends on what do you exactly mean by promising coin.

Are you expecting quick bucks?
Or are you looking for a long term investment?
Or are you more interested in new technologies?

[amacar2]

Actually it is hard to suggest any altcoin or to know which coin is shitcoin and which are legit. But there are few things like you have to look at dev team, what new the coin is offering as well as what are past experience of dev teams in field of cryptocurrency, marketing and networking etc. You can invest in two types like for long term/holding potential coin for longer terms in months/years or you can buy sell with 5 to 10% margin in price daily/day trading.

[Anapple]

Yeah you cannot tell if some random new coin is going to be successful or not. Even if they announce great new technology and plans the project could collapse at any point. You should watch projects and slowly start investing in something if you have built up a trust. If you believe in some project, even then invest only small amounts..

The markets are unpredictable and the current market should not be your first indicator of what to invest in. Markets react slowly to great projects and let go of failed ones even slower. And the price changes cannot be predicted, as could be seen with for example ETC. Because of the small liquidity in most altcoins, anything could be pumped/dumped super easily, so that makes almost any investment unsure.

[someone111]

Thanks!

I am ready for both. A long term investment or also quick term high risk high reward gambling.

[rokkyroad]

Thanks!

I am ready for both. A long term investment or also quick term high risk high reward gambling.

Good luck! You are going to need it.

Assume everything new or recent as scams. This will save you shitloads of money. You cannot outguess unscrupulous developers and pump groups. Insiders make money and outsiders give it to them.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Yeeeegagh!!  My man, most of these altcoins that you see on the exchanges are absolute crapola.  There are only--ONLY--a handful that are worth owning, and even that is controversial.  Some people will tell you to stick to bitcoin exclusively.  The big name ones are LTC, DOGE, Dash.  Others may include namecoin, peercoin, Lisk, ETC/ETH, and a couple others, but they're very risky.  I probably would just watch the market if I were you before you jump in.  There are many sharks in the water.

[Joint Force]

If it's an ICO then chances are it's a scam. But even if an ICO is not a scam, you wouldn't know in advance but only after it reached its goal. Sure, you can invest and get lucky but then what you're doing is not investing, but pure and simple gambling.

I'd even go one step further; if there's a coin for which the "devs" are clearly interested in money (especially early on) instead of funding their projects themselves, then it's very likely a scam or just an overambitious project that will never happen but in this context that's also pretty much a scam as well.

This is good information.

I'm trying to help everyone out and show them an example of a good ICO. First of all, I've a demo of the product. It also demonstrates that people want to use the product as it already has users. Every other ICO that I've seen has no product and you're investing in an "idea". Not only can you get scammed this way, you can also invest in a failure. They devs may not actually have the skills to produce what they promised.

If you do want to invest in an "idea" and support a dev who otherwise wouldn't be able to fund themselves, then I'd recommend investing in a public person who's comfortable giving out quick and regular updates every week.