How to Find New Cryptocurrency Projects

Tokens and Coins

Every day we discover new cryptocurrency projects on different blockchain platforms, where the preselected list can be found on Coingecko, Coinmarketcap, or other crypto aggregator sites.

The cryptocurrency projects are categorized as a coin and token.

The coin is a native currency of a Smart Contract Platform (in most cases it’s a blockchain, but we have other architectures like DAG).

The token can be emitted by everyone (in the Permissionless Blockchain) on these platforms and in most cases is associated with a cryptocurrency project.

We can also have many tokens or coins associated with one project. In most situations, one is used as a currency and another for protocol governance. A few examples are Theta or Phantasma Chain.

Over 13000 crypto projects are available and this number is growing every day. Many of them are scams, don't have a business sense, or are managed by inexperienced teams. For these reasons, people often fail to score profits due to a lack of cryptocurrency understanding.

To navigate in this space, we need a framework to narrow the scope of our findings because cryptocurrency research takes some time. This process is called screening, or pre-selection.

Screening (Pre-Selection)

We have many methods to screen potential crypto projects. We can divide them into 4 groups:

1. Social – choosing projects based on their social activity, a recommendation from influencers or social media groups.

• Heimdall
• CoinGossip
• LunarCrush
• MoonFactor
• Evai

2. Fundamental – usage of metrics from traditional financial analysis like P/E or new one introduces for crypto like TVL.

• TokenTerminal
• Blocknomy
• CryptoMiso
• Messari
• DefiLlama

3. Categories – focusing on a specific niche or category (gaming, media, meme coin etc.).

• CoinGecko
• CoinMarketCap

4. Maturity – investing in projects from different phases or with a specific market cap. For example, we can hunt for projects before listing (ICO, launchpad or launchpool).

• CoinCheckUp
• GemsReviews

Screening Strategies

There is not any best way for screening. However, you can choose any of these approaches or even mix them to create your own screening strategy. To give you an example of how it can look:

1. Projects recommended by some Twitter accounts (you can check my account to get some recommendations)

2. From specific categories like gamefi

3. WIth our defined criteria (number of Twitter followers, specific blockchain, backed by VC…)

4. Before the project is in the public sale phase

Now, when we know what do we want to create, we can deep dive into this process.

Screening Process

The efficient screening process enables us to narrow available projects which can be analyzed later in the Selection part.

The Investment Process and Selection will be covered in detail in other articles.

We need to start with a Screener (tool) or Screening Strategy in order to catch promising projects. After this, we will have to apply our criteria and do preselection. Based on the strictness of it, we will have fewer or more coins for further investigation. This should be adjusted based on our time availability, like – how many projects do we want to analyze per week? And so on...

Most of the criteria will depend on our source or chosen screener. If we are using fundamental scanners, we can focus on some parameters like MC, Users, or TVL. When these details are not available in our screener, we can always look for them on coin listing sites like Coingecko or Coinmarketcap.

I am also always adding Investment Thesis – why exactly I am buying this and how do I want to earn on this investment? This is especially useful for Evidence-Based Assessment from module 4 of Cryptocurrency Investment Framework.

If still, you get more projects than you can handle, you can create a queue for them. This also means that you should find a way to order them (or choose randomly). Another approach is to add additional criteria. I like SWOT analysis, especially with the combination of the investment thesis.

Let’s do an example for Bitcoin.

Investment Thesis Example - Bitcoin

Investment Thesis – increased adoption being perceived as a source of value, inflation hedge, digital gold narrative and payment method via a Lightning Network. Everything that creates demand and increases the price due to limited supply.

SWOT analysis:

• Strengths – first cryptocurrency, broad adoption among individuals, companies and countries

• Weaknesses – old architecture, some energy consumption controversies

• Opportunities – adoption from different companies and countries, higher availability to the individual via traditional finance

• Threads – regulation and banning bitcoin in a certain jurisdiction, companies selling bitcoin for-profit and changing narration of digital gold

You can also find many examples on the internet:

This will give you less or more confidence for an investment thesis and help decide if you want to spend some time researching this project. SWOT analysis also shows you where should you put focus during your research.

You can also consider dividing your investment thesis and swot analysis in the short and long term (depending on your Investment Strategy).

Screening Framework

Let’s recap the main points:

1. Screener and screening strategy -> where and how do I want to find it?

2. Screening criteria -> what is the most important for me?

3. SWOT analysis -> what do I know about this?

4. Investment thesis -> why I want to buy this?

What next?

In the next articles, we will cover Investment and Selection process. After it, you will be able to start researching your crypto projects. I will share with you my framework, some examples and tips on how to start.

You can also follow me on Twitter to get more investment frameworks and cryptocurrency analyses.

Disclaimer: Nothing in this article constitutes professional investment advice. Please do your own thorough research before making any investment decisions.