Now and then, a slew of purportedly 1000X moonshot🚀 coins makes their debut on the crypto market.

I am sure you’re thinking about buying one of them right now.

Perhaps, even your favourite social media influencer has assured you that “this coin is on its way to the moon”.

But, beyond this hype, how do you spot that you are not about to invest your life savings in a shitcoin?

Well, in this post, I’ll show you how to know if a coin is a real gem or a shitcoin.

Ready to learn? Gird your loins.

Post Summary

Before we begin, here are a few things I am going to uncover:

1. Overview Of Shitcoins
2. 10 Tips On How To Spot A Shitcoin
3. Should I Invest In A Shitcoin?
4. FAQ
5. Conclusion

Let’s dive in!

Overview Of Shitcoins?

Shitcoins are cryptocurrencies that were created for no reason.

When I say reason, I mean they don’t have uses cases and notable features, but you can still trade them on the market.

Put it this way: Shitcoins are cryptocurrencies with no real projects backing them.

Sadly, some of these coins were even created as joke coins with purely speculative value.

Also, a shit coin can be considered as a newly launched cryptocurrency intended to prey on unsuspecting traders who have bought based on FUD.

I say that because these cryptos will pump based on hype but will eventually dump after investors like you and me invested in them.

The truth is: no coin has the word “shit” inscribed on it.

But if you scroll down, I will show you strategies that will help you to spot a shitcoin, so you won’t lose your money to them.

10 Tips On How To Spot A Shitcoin

Here you have the 10 strategies at a glance:

1. Holders

A thriving coin should have a good number of holders.

Go to a blockchain explorer and check the number of holders that the coin has.

If a coin has fewer than 1000 holders, this is a red flag.

Also, you should feel suspicious if more than 10 wallets hold each around 3% of the coin’s total supply.

This is significant because it indicates that the coin is likely to be manipulated by the developers themselves.

2 Exchange Support

Here, you need to ask yourself these questions:

• Does this coin have much exchange support, particularly reputable CEx?

No reputable exchange would want to be associated with shitcoins.

The reason is that they wouldn’t want to jeopardize their credibility or get in trouble with the regulatory bodies.

Moreover, an exchange that values its users would not trade them for shitcoins.

If you notice that the coin you are about to throw your money in has little to no exchange support, that is a warning indication.

• Are the exchanges where it is traded legit?

Fake bitcoin exchanges are nothing new.

It is undoubtedly a place where shitcoins would easily be listed.

Funny enough, you can buy these coins from these exchanges but you cannot sell them for money.

To determine if an exchange is legit or not, use the market aggregator tools like Coinmarketcap and Coingecko.

First, go to “Exchanges” and see if “those exchanges” are on the list.

If they are available, then navigate through the “Trust Score” menu to view their exchange’s rating.

Also, check out what people are saying about those exchanges on sites like Trustpilot and Web of Trust.

This will tell you what to make of the exchanges.

If you have a hunch that the exchanges where the coin is listed are shady, that is a red flag. 🚩

3. Volume, Liquidity and Liquidity Pool

This is one step closer to your analysis if you have completed the previous step.

If the coin is listed on an exchange that you deem legit, then you have to make sure that it has adequate volume and liquidity.

You need to know this because it provides you with a glimpse into the coin’s potential.

• Volume

Check that the coin’s 24hr trade volume is not being artificially manipulated, a term known as wash trading.

Here is how to spot a wash trade on an exchange.

• Liquidity

If the coin is traded on a CEX, for example, you may still use Coinmarketcap to calculate its liquidity.

Go to the liquidity section, there, you will find the liquidity score of a coin’s trading pair across various exchanges where it is traded.

This guide will help you to access a liquidity score on Coinmarketcap.

• Liquidity pool

Similarly, monitoring a coin’s liquidity pool in a DEx is very important.

Check if the liquidity pool has been locked for at least a year or 6 months.

This will save you from falling for a crypto scam known as “rug pull” (more on this later).

Also, ensure that the liquidity pool of the trading pair you are intending to trade is greater than $30,000.

Using PancakeSwap as an example, this tutorial will walk you through the process.

If you are not satisfied with your investigation at the end, then something fishy is going on.

4. What are the recent developments?

This helps you to monitor the community’s efforts towards the coin’s development.

I will give you 2 tips to go about it:

• Look at the coin’s source code

Check if the “source code” of your prospective coin is closed or open-source.

If the code is closed-source, this might be a red flag, because cryptocurrency has always been about openness.

However, if it is open-source, you will be able to see if there is any recent development going on with the coin.

Note: You can easily do this on CMC. An open-source coin will lead you to the coin’s GitHub and from there you will conduct your research.

• Updates

So, how far has the team been regularly keeping the community posted through their blog and social channels?

Are there new updates? Have they achieved any proposals or roadmaps thus far?

Is the Twitter and Telegram account active, or is it overrun with announcements of forthcoming events?

If you did your research and discovered a lag in this aspect, it implies that the team is not making any improvement on the coin, which is a red flag.

5. Team and Whitepaper

How confident are you about the team and are they blockchain inclined?

Make sure you confirm their identities on Linkedin and other social media sites.

If the team is made up of non-techy marketing folks with no blockchain knowledge, this should raise your eyebrows.

Examine the coin’s whitepaper as well.

It is a red flag if:

• The coin has no whitepaper
• If the whitepaper is ambiguous and meaningless
• If it has several grammatical errors

6. What is the project behind the coin, and does it even require a coin?

Many projects have created cryptocurrency for farmers, poverty alleviation, social media points, and so on.

But are these tokens even solving a problem?

If a coin lacks a use-case or it is only used for staking, then maybe you are about to put your money in a shitcoin.

The reason is simple: a cryptocurrency’s value is determined by its use cases, and staking is not one of them.

7. Roadmap and Partnership

A project’s roadmap should give you a clue of how the team intends to achieve mass adoption of their coin.

But, if the roadmap is not worthwhile and they have failed to achieve it as claimed, then it raises a red signal.

Good instances of crypto projects that consistently changed their roadmap to their demise are Factom, Paycoin, and a whole lot of others.

More so, you need to check the company’s acclaimed partnerships.

Are they genuine or just a marketing ploy? If the partnership is not as solid and significant as they portray it to be, then you should feel suspicious.

This post will give you more insight into what I am talking about.

8. Hype and Market Gimmicks

You should be extremely cautious of coins whose value is influenced by hype.

Particularly noteworthy are crypto projects that pay top social media influencers and celebrities for marketing stunts.

The worst are the sock puppets, making spamming and misleading comments about a coin.

This should be a red flag. Obviously, once the hype has worn off, you can only imagine how this coin will dump on you.

9. Token Sniffer

I am sure you must have heard of Token Sniffer.

It is a website where you can perform a free token audit of a coin you are intending to trade.

Now, you can enter the contract address of the coin to the “search menu” on the top right corner of the website.

Once you click on “Enter”, it will display an automated contradict audit result of the coin.

If there is any malicious alert, then this should be a red flag.

10. Telegram bots

Telegram bots used for shitcoin airdrops are also something to keep an eye out for.

You should set your alarm bells ringing:

• When a Telegram bot urges you to make referrals and send a certain amount of BTC or ETH to a specific wallet address in return for an airdrop.
• Or when a telegram bot directs you to a phoney website where you pay a certain gas fee in exchange for a shitcoin.

A good example is the recent WDOGE coin airdrop.

Offers like this should immediately make you feel suspicious.

You are still here? Good!

In the next section, I will walk you through how you can spot a real gem coin.

Should I Invest In A Shitcoin?

Investing in a shitcoin comes with high risk.

This is because there is a possibility of losing your entire investment.

Fairly, the majority of altcoins especially the new low-cap ones are shitcoins.

However, certain new low-cap altcoins are still hot gems.

Now, these coins might have shown one or two signs of some of the shortcomings mentioned above.

But, they should not be dismissed as a shitcoin right away.

For example, it doesn’t really make it a shitcoin, if a token that was launched a few months ago is yet to be listed on a CEx like Binance.

If you must invest in a shitcoin, I will be giving you 5 approaches to go about it.

• Go through the strategies listed above. This will help you to know where to place the coin
• If you deem the coin a shitcoin, but want to take the chance, then you should not invest more than $5 into the coin for the first 1 or 2 months.
• Be willing to lose some money as well. But try and limit your loses by choosing a token with a less gas fee, for instance the tokens that are built on the BSC network.

However, keep in mind that because you have decided to take this risk, the outcome will be two things:

1. You may either be one of the few persons that will make profit when the shitcoin pumps or one of the majority that will accumulate loses when it dumps.
2. Or your shitcoin isn’t what it appears to be, but a hidden 1000x moonshotcoin which you happen to be an early adopter.

Now, before I end this section, there are a few things I will like to clarify.

Simply because a token’s price has risen exponentially does not imply that it is a gem.

Also, most exchanges that you actually deem legit, may list a shitcoin just to delist it later.

So, don’t go on thinking that all coins listed on reputable exchanges are not shitcoins.

Also, a coin might be a shitcoin today but might end up gaining traction and some real-world use cases in the future, e.g. Dogecoin.

But to be on the right track, make sure that the coin you plan to hodl for the long term has at least, one or two real-world use cases. Not financial advice!

FAQ

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Conclusion

We have thousands of cryptos that have shown up in the crypto market as true gems, only to be relegated to the list of long-forgotten altcoins.

Obviously, you shouldn’t bother about trading your money for a rip-off coin when there are real gem coins like the ones here.

This is where I will call it an end. Hope you resonated with this post?

So, tell me:

Have you lost your money to a shitcoin before?

Did your altcoin fall into any of the shitcoin strategies?

Are there other strategies to spot a shitcoin that I have missed?

You can leave your thoughts in the comment section, and I will respond.

And, yes! You can also share this post with your friends by clicking on the social media icons below. Cheers!

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