It’s better to pay attention on whitepaper. Team is important and their effort can be count in future success. Also for me as investor understandability and clarity of explanation play an important role. Sometimes team is too concentrated on their own interests and less tend to think about main audience. It is absolutely wrong
Definitely right, the whitepaper is what You should look for first before proceeding to add the Altcoin to Your Altcoin Portfolio. Just as You have said, the team's explanation about the project should be clear and have answered any necessary questions or doubts the reader/investor may have. You should also consider getting different opinions from different sources, be it from the telegram, facebook, twitter, or any other social media sites as it can be of great help having people's opinions because it gives You the idea if they are interested in the project or not. In other words, it gives You an idea if the project has a lot of Hype and if people are interested in the Altcoin. And also do some research about any other similar platforms of the Altcoin(Project) that may have been successful, this tends to lower the hype of the altcoin You are interested in as it already has a similar platform from an older Altcoin which leads to a lower chance for it to have a Higher value.
