How To Spot a Shitcoin?

[-Multivitamina-]

There is no shortage of coins and tokens in the crypto-industry. How many of them are any good is the question.

Evaluating the economics, technology, and marketing of just one project is hard. There are thousands of projects out there. It’s impossible to come up with a universally applicable method to tell good projects from bad ones.

Yet, somehow people get by and manage to navigate among all the options in the cryptocurrency market. How?

When there are too many things to choose from and the time is limited, people, animals, and computers sometimes use heuristics—problem-solving approaches that aren’t necessarily optimal or rational, but they work well enough in most cases and save some time if you’re lucky.

https://forklog.media/how-to-spot-a-shitcoin/

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[pixie85]

I'll quote some things from the article.

Let's roast XRP

If the source code is closed, it usually means that the developers have something to hide.
✓

Is the major portion of the money supply in the hands of the original company or a handful of people?
✓


Highly dependable on a small circle of well-known developers who work in the same third party company?
It’s either a garbage altcoin or a highly centralized one. The perfect situation is when all the developers are independent because this lowers the chances of any conflicts of interest. When the majority of some coin developers are the members of a third-party company, they might have the desire to alter the development to achieve personal profit.
✓


Does the CEO have trouble with the SEC, CFTC, or another financial regulator?
https://cryptobriefing.com/ripples-xrp-still-risk-securities-classification/
https://www.coinspeaker.com/ripple-sec/
✓

So is it a shitcoin?

[cytpoway121]

When it comes to spotting a shit coin it is quite complicated.

Some investors like to invest on shit coin, they get in soon at very cheap rate, wait for full launch n small hype, then boom they dump and walk away before it crashes.

It takes great courage, good research skills to maintain that stance

[olumyd]

When it comes to spotting a shit coin it is quite complicated.

Some investors like to invest on shit coin, they get in soon at very cheap rate, wait for full launch n small hype, then boom they dump and walk away before it crashes.

It takes great courage, good research skills to maintain that stance

Still, that's a ridiculous risk when you consider that you could definitely lose it all someday. It's better to hold Bitcoin and be at the mercy of its extreme volatility, than play games with shitcoins.

[joeperry]

We have different ways (maybe our own ways) to spot a shitcoin or probably a shit project, in my case I usually check these things:
• Working platform
• Check in details how the project really works through whitepaper
• Project Updates
• Volume
• Uniqueness of the project and if its applicable to the industry
• Legal Papers
• Uniqueness of the project
• Background of the team

well these are some of the things I usually check in order to spot a useless project. There's a lot of these projects that you can find here in the forum itself just go to the announcement section or look for a bounty and check their project.

[Nadziratel]

I have not been able to solve this issue for many years. Everyone identifies shitcoin for some coins. I have seen people calling shit coins even for ETH. It is not easy to clarify this issue. Some just need to be disappointed to make a Shitcoin identification. If he couldn't get what he wanted from a project, he could easily call it shitcoin.

I wish there was a decentralized platform that made reliable and accurate reviews on this issue. But it is not seems possible.

[CoinCode_sh]

The best way is finding out the "Red flags" for example:

• The Code is open source?
• The Code is "real" or is another copy/paste coin?
• Does the company behind the coin really exist?
• Is the project plausibly achievable?

[Sebas.tian]

Basically, this will depend individuals because, they may have different ways to get ideas of how its possible to spot out shitcoins among potential coins. Personally, whenever a project has not workable products then, its probably a shitcoin in the community. Also, if the project has no existing product before creation, the project is a shitcoin. The teams behind any project should be visible to all for accessibility, secret team behind any project can be a shitcoin after creation.

[tippytoes]

The best way is finding out the "Red flags" for example:

• The Code is open source?
• The Code is "real" or is another copy/paste coin?
• Does the company behind the coin really exist?
• Is the project plausibly achievable?

I believe one of the important things to check is the authenticity of the company? Because if they are not legally registered to any jurisdiction, they can disappear anytime they want along with the money they grab from naive investors. And also, your last item - project being achievable. There are countless projects presenting their novel ideas but it stops from there. They are basically selling the idea because they can't implement it in actual terms. Look for actual app or product with real active users. Because without its users, the platform will end up in trading only and so will have a short lifespan in crypto.

[CoinCode_sh]

I believe one of the important things to check is the authenticity of the company? Because if they are not legally registered to any jurisdiction, they can disappear anytime they want along with the money they grab from naive investors. And also, your last item - project being achievable. There are countless projects presenting their novel ideas but it stops from there. They are basically selling the idea because they can't implement it in actual terms. Look for actual app or product with real active users. Because without its users, the platform will end up in trading only and so will have a short lifespan in crypto.

Exactly! Very often the question of the feasibility of the project is not considered (i.e. in two hours we will go to the moon, book the place now!) and unfortunately many person of them fall into a trap.

Add a new red flag:

• Pre-mine
• Check out the "Rich Wallet Distribution"
• Check out the git commit activity. Mostly "copied coin" don't touch the code for months after ICOs/ANN

[Rengga Jati]

-snip-
• Background of the team
-snip-

For me, this one should be put in the first place (top priority). Because in many cases, the quality of the team is the main factor to determine the sustainability of the project. Many projects looked like trusted enough at the beginning, but the team members suddenly leave and disappear when the projects can reach softcaps/hardcaps. In this case, the information of the team members becomes a very crucial thing. So, before analyzing the whitepaper or other things, do deep research on the information of each profile of the team members. If one/some of the team members are suspected as serial scammers or seems fake person there, simply ignore (avoid) to join the project.

[shinratensei_]

When it comes to spotting a shit coin it is quite complicated.

Some investors like to invest on shit coin, they get in soon at very cheap rate, wait for full launch n small hype, then boom they dump and walk away before it crashes.

It takes great courage, good research skills to maintain that stance

It will be very complicated to spot the scam project that camouflages into the legit project. This kind of project will always become an exit scam project when it was on the development progress.
Shitcoin will always have a very big gap value between book order and sell order. They are choosing it caused by they don't need to use a lot of money to pump it and even just with a few dollars have already enough to pump it to get more than 100% increase instantly.
To spot the scam project is not so difficult as long as you can identify all of the photos used by the scam project whether it has stolen from another source or not. The scam project will never be a transparent project.
Some points may enough to identify if that was a scam project or no.

[hatshepsut93]

If you are afraid of shitcoins, then stay away from alts, there's not a single coin that is guaranteed to have good long-term growth, and they all still depend on Bitcoin - without Bitcoin leading the way, there won't be any big movement for alts. Just put your money in Bitcoin, it's already an investment with fantastic potential, why be greedy and chase even bigger gains and put yourself in additional risks?

Just learn more about the fundamentals - cryptography, networks, electronic communications - then you will be able to judge coins yourself.

[isaac_clarke22]

If you are afraid of shitcoins, then stay away from alts, there's not a single coin that is guaranteed to have good long-term growth, and they all still depend on Bitcoin - without Bitcoin leading the way, there won't be any big movement for alts. Just put your money in Bitcoin, it's already an investment with fantastic potential, why be greedy and chase even bigger gains and put yourself in additional risks?

Just learn more about the fundamentals - cryptography, networks, electronic communications - then you will be able to judge coins yourself.

That's why these alts are meant to be day traded most of the time. It just pumps and plummets at the same time in the day. It is either breakeven or a loss for long-term hodlers.
Bitcoin is always the best way to go.

[bgaf]

When it comes to spotting shitcoin, I think its way easier to do a full blown background check first such as:

• Team profile and authencity
• Project objective such as usefulness in the real world
• Any funds to develop the project or if not, do they have partners and legit joint venture to expand the project OP
• Fundamental aspect whether the team has any plans and if these plans have been pursue
• token metric and economic usage of it.
• Liquidity and community support

There is a lot of things to consider and some can add to these list I added. More or less, the project can be identify as shit if those abovementioned weren't on place.

[Jating]

Basically it boils down on the team behind. Using fake stock images, plagiarised white-paper, shitty websites then unlimited supply of tokens, or at least the token supply is into the billions.

And then once they are listed on some mid to shitty exchanges, prone to manipulation and wash trading and pump and dump schemes.

[gwaposakon]

There is no shortage of coins and tokens in the crypto-industry. How many of them are any good is the question.

Evaluating the economics, technology, and marketing of just one project is hard. There are thousands of projects out there. It’s impossible to come up with a universally applicable method to tell good projects from bad ones.

Yet, somehow people get by and manage to navigate among all the options in the cryptocurrency market. How?

When there are too many things to choose from and the time is limited, people, animals, and computers sometimes use heuristics—problem-solving approaches that aren’t necessarily optimal or rational, but they work well enough in most cases and save some time if you’re lucky.

https://forklog.media/how-to-spot-a-shitcoin/

I would also on how the project and developers answer their investors and supporters in their social media sites and support chat. Legit projects and their crypto normally make it their responsibility to answer inquiries and questions of their users. As long as supporters get updates about the development of the project, I mean real person and not bots, I think the project is ok.

[kambaralikhan]

The idea of the project is everything. Investors tend to invest in those projects who has commercial value and which leads to mass adoption and the team behind the project, I think any coin who doesn't possess these characteristics proves as a shitcoin in the end.

[bassbity]

Basically it boils down on the team behind. Using fake stock images, plagiarised white-paper, shitty websites then unlimited supply of tokens, or at least the token supply is into the billions.

And then once they are listed on some mid to shitty exchanges, prone to manipulation and wash trading and pump and dump schemes.

Difficult to prove the project to be shitcoin sometimes we get stuck in that, so from we have to look from the background of the project, of course it will be one to see how it will develop, but there are also many successful projects that continue to enter the exchange with low, then that too will be vulnerable to shitcoin.
Therefore I will see from the side of the project when it is running and I used to continue to monitor how it is progressing.
So it's hard for me to see shitcoin that has been exchanged.

[nancy]

These are good points but the main one - use cases.
Without any usecases coin is useful only for speculation