With markets rising again, here is a friendly reminder to do your own research, and some tips on how to research!

 Any time the market rising people flock to cryptocurrency looking for "the next big win" and are constantly asking others to tell them what the best opportunity is.Because in many countries the cryptocurrency market is not a regulated industry, it is one that is ripe with manipulation and scams. Some tools that might be useful:

• CoinCheckUp.com - this is my preferred research site as they have a lot more data, and more diverse data than other price monitoring sites.
• Coinmarketcap.com - this is one of the oldest price tracking sites, and is more popular than CoinCheckUp, but has less data.
• Delta Portfolio Tracker - A popular cryptocurrency potfolio tracker.
• Blockfolio - A popular cryptocurrency potfolio tracker. 

Disclaimers:

• Crypto isn't an investment strategy.
• Crypto is highly volatile and highly risky. Any money put into crypto could be lost in a crash. It could take years to recover. It could never recover.
• The following information is not financial advice.
• This is a guide on how to perform research, and is formed from an individual opinion. It's focus is helping you debunk some of the under qualified advice that others try to give in this space. It should not be considered complete or sufficient. You should never base any decisions on things you read online. Use your own best judgement.

Here is my personal approach to researching coins:Step 1 - Understanding your risk profile:A lot of people advocate for users purchasing cryptocurrencies and tokens that are "low-cap" ($10M - $100M) because they have the most opportunity to grow.While this may be the case, the smaller a coin, and the earlier the project the more risk there is that the project can go to 0.In traditional stocks some people are happy to make a 3% - 4% annual return, but would be in financial hardship if they lost money, and will invest in larger, safer and more stable stocks.Other people, would only be satisfied with a return of 7% - 12% annual return. These people may also be willing to lose all of their investment. In their case they'd look at higher risk and turn around companies.We say these two people have different 'risk profiles.'It's important with any purchase (even something like a car) to decide what your financial risk profile is.My personal view is that just because something has the highest chance of return, doesn't mean that it is the best opportunity.Step 2 - Identify New Coins:There are three ways I generally discover 'new' coins:

• 1) Bitcointalk.org forum posts in the altcoin and token announcement sections.
• 2) Coins mentioned here on /r/cryptocurrency
• 3) Coins newly listed on https://coincheckup.com/newly-added as coins tend to list on price trackers very early on.

Step 3 - How I rule out coins:One of the first things I do when examining new projects is find really strict criteria to remove projects from the list.Everyone should come up with their own list of things that voids a coin from being on their list, but here are a few I personally use:

• I don't buy coins in industries I don't understand.
• I don't buy coins in regulated industries.
• I don't buy coins that are inactive in communication on social media.
• I don't buy coins that are registered in countries where I can't validate that a corporate entity.
• I don't buy coins if I can't find their executives on LinkedIn and validate it is a real profile.
• If a coin is building a brand new technology, I won't buy it unless there is a detailed technical paper explaining the new technology.
• If a coin had an pre-ICO with discount, I tend not to buy it. If I do, it would need to be a small ICO discount and significant time would have needed to pass so that early investors have likely already dumped on the market.
• I don't buy coins if I wouldn't use them as a customer.

These criteria I use to quickly filter down my list before I do some more detailed analysis.Step 4 - Doing detailed research:First and foremost I read the white paper and then I ask myself the following questions:

1. Would I use this as a customer?
2. Would I pay that price as a customer?
3. Does this project require a new technology to be built?
4. If I look at the team behind the project, do they have a previous track record? Have they run a successful company previously? What happened to that company?
5. Does this team have the ability to build this technology? Are their engineers published in this industry? Do they have product managers and customer support?
6. Is it clear how the project will get users/customers?
7. Why are they using the blockchain - does it add value here? What are the pros and cons to using the blockchain here and why would the blockchain improve the current alternative? (Remember, right now blockchains are slow and costly in most cases)
8. Watch out for absolutist claims. Every projects has downsides and cons, a real project will be realistic in outlining those.

After that, if it is an already launched project I check out the coin's detail page on CoinCheckUp for example the Bitcoin page: https://coincheckup.com/coins/bitcoin/chartsI then look at:

1. Tab "Analysis" > "GitHub Development" to see if there is active engineering development on the project.
2. Tab "Analysis" > "Coin facts & figures" if it is a company I check the information on the CEO/CTO as well as some info on the team.
3. Tab "Markets" - I check where the coin is trading to see if any of my preferred exchanges are available yet. If it's on limited exchanges, I look for non-sketchy ones. I also may look to see if there is a large spread between currencies.
4. Tab "Charts" - I check that the volume has a decent, growing and steady turnover. It's easy to get trapped at a bad price in a currency that has a low volume.

Once I've gone through those pieces of information, I usually check out the subreddit of the project and ask myself questions like:

• Are they constantly announcing partnerships etc? If so, what will those partnerships do for me? Are they legitimate? If they are frequent low quality posts, I assume they are just trying to pump the market and I'll avoid it.
• Are the users hostile towards people who are critical of their project, or who are asking questions? If it is a brainwashed, angry, subreddit that can't have any questions, I usually try and avoid.
• Does their team's marketing/communication people respond to posts in a genuine fashion or is there a lot of "marketing" language with no real answer?

Final Tips:

• Finding "the next big coin" is overrated. When you weigh up the risk the odds are better that a divrese set of coins would be better.

Share your research methods!Everyone has different research methods, and things they look out for. Consider sharing yours in the thread below so that others, especially new users, can learn from your methods!