You'll need to devote a significant amount of time to study several projects.
These are my criteria:
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Premined or not?Premined coins are too suspicious. The devs take an initial big slice for themselves always justifying that with some philosophical rhetoric but there are many past examples of total scam coins using this scheme.
- ICO or no ICO?I don't like ICOs, I prefer to invest in an already ongoing project with given proof of stability and endurance. I'm not saying all ICOs are scam, but same of them are for sure!
- How old is the coin?In my book, if a coin is still being actively traded after 3/4 years of existence, this has to mean something; there is a faithful community behind it.
- Is it still being actively developed?Following the previous point, if after 3/4 years the coin still has a dev team committed to it with real plans for the future, then it has a real project!
- Does it have any real use besides pure pump and dump speculation?Is the coin being used for any kind of purchases? If not, are there any plans for it? Otherwise, it will only be a play toy for trading.
- Does it have an active and large community?How large is the community? Is it still active or everybody left a long time ago?
- Is it PoW of PoS?Proof of Work is a dead end, the power consumption is obscene. Not viable for the average domestic crypto enthusiast. Proof of Stake can be done with a Rasberry Pi
- Fully functioning wallet?Some coins have terrible wallets, unstable, not user friendly. This is a key factor, the software has to be in line with the state of the at crypto developments.