I’m proud of you. You are taking the critical steps to becoming a safer and more informed investor. Let’s get into it.

• 📈Empowered Investor: Your Crypto Research BluePrint

📈Empowered Investor

Lessons from our wins, losses, and connections with the greatest in this space.

Your Crypto Research Blueprint

The hardest thing about DD is that there is SO much information out there and it can be tough weeding out what’s important.

You need to have trustworthy sources of info, and consistently avoid things like scamming sites, influencer hype, and click-bate misinformation.

Getting pulled into the wrong direction will cost you time, money, and opportunity. So here’s our goal for today:

Deliver a step by step template that makes DD quick, optimizes safety, and includes only whats important. So let’s get into it.

Here’s how it works…

The list is divided into two sections: Flips and Long Term Holds. If you are wanting to invest in a project for a quick flip, you can get away with only this column.

For Long Term holds, remember to take these steps, but ALSO the steps under Flip.

The reason for this is that short term trades don’t rely as much on the fundamentals as much as they do hype. Let’s get into it.

1. Find A Project:

Short and sweet and a topic for an entire newsletter in itself (which is in the works, so keep your eyes open).

There are a lot of reasons you may want to look into a project. Here are two great tools that have helped me find growing narratives and trending projects.

I will do a deep dive in future articles about focusing on different niches like: memecoins, new tokens, upcoming protocols etc.

2. Official Links:

This one may be confusing, but it is incredibly important.

Make sure that you click on the official links only!

Especially for hyped projects, count on encountering fake websites, dapps and social media accounts that will drain your wallets.

I always start the journey by scanning CoinGecko to make sure I stay safe.

3. News/FUD:

Quick and easy. This will highlight any major red flags like hacks, compromised smart contracts, or shady founders.

Give them a quick search on Google to see what the latest news articles are saying, and take note of what people are saying on social media… mainly X.

Fun Fact: X is the most highly used platform for all things crypto and Web3.

4. MarketCap and Supply

This is one of the trickiest and most important metrics in assessing your token, especially for short term flips.

Understanding this will give you info on how far it can move, and if you’re about to get dumped on. So first, what does market cap even mean?

1. Understanding Market Cap:

   • Market Cap = Current Price x Circulating Supply.

     • If token $TRAV is worth $1, and there are 10,000 tokens circulating in the market, then the MarketCap is $10,000.

   • Why is this helpful? It gives us a way to measure a tokens strength and compare it with others.

   • Remember that, a lot of the time, not ALL of a projects tokens are currently in circulation, especially early ones.

2. Circulating vs. Total Supply: 

   • A low circulating supply compared to the total supply can mean a big drop in price once more tokens are released.

   • Good projects are open about when these events will happen, and a lot of locked tokens doesn’t automatically rule a project out.

   • Soon we’ll get into finding out when the rest of the tokens will be Unlocked and what this means.

3. Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV):

• FDV = Current Price x Total Supply, which tells us the project’s worth if ALL tokens were in circulation.

• Compare FDV with the Market Cap to understand the potential impact of future token releases.

4. Market Cap Ranking:

   • Taking note of where your project ranks amongst the rest is extremely powerful.

   • If, for example, It’s already in the top 15, and now has to overtake Solid Bluechips like ETH, Solana, AVAX etc, it likely won’t even 10-20x in the short term.

   • If it’s lower on the list though, these are the ones that can have exponential short term gains.

5. Trading Volume:

   • Volume tells us the number of tokens traded within a specific timeframe.

   • Remember… MORE VOLUME = MORE ACTIVITY! And… More activity = more price movement.

   • Consistently high volumes can mean a healthy market with active traders, users and liquidity.

   • WARNING: Some projects do what’s called ‘wash trading’ to simulate high activity. If you are worried about this, check out the block explorer (we’ll get to this soon).

5. Tokenomics/Unlocks:

For projects that have a big difference between Circulating Supply vs. Total Supply, this step is KEY! Here are two things to keep in mind:

• Token Allocation: if a majority of the tokens are allocated to founders/the team, this can be a red flag. I like when a majority of the tokens will be dedicated to the community and building the project.

• Unlock Schedule: This tells us when tokens will be unlocked.

  • Steep/fast unlock schedules are a red flag. It can TANK the value of the token and leave you holding garbage.

  • Gradual/long term schedules typically show conviction and will have less of an effect on price.

6. Security/Audits:

Do NOT fade this step. Especially for new/low cap tokens, the risk for wallet drains is real! Here are some ways you can protect your funds.

Once you get the auditing company name from their website, verify the legitimacy of the audit provider by giving them a google search. Check out things like:

• other clients

• years in service

• security

On the block explorer, go to ‘Contract’, and you will see here if the smart contract is verified, and if it has been audited. Chain explorers like Etherscan will even link you to the Audit Report for your convenience.

On the site De.Fi, in the left, click on Scanner and search for your token. The report is incredibly comprehensive and easy to read.

For a Deeper Dive into long term holds:

Make sure to Subscribe and keep an eye on your inbox. Later this week we will go over each step for the Long Term Hold process, what to look out for, and what to avoid.

It’s on YOU to build conviction, and conviction is the most powerful tool against greed and fear. Congratulations on taking responsibility for your own growth.

Finally, we'll be giving away exclusive thank-you gifts to our early supporters, so be sure to invite your friends to subscribe to Growth Bytes. Link below 👇️ 

http://web3bytes.beehiiv.com/subscribe