DYOR stands for Do Your Own Research

With the crypto market looking more positive and new people coming into the space it's important to learn about mitigating your risks as much as possible.

There are no guarantees in investing in general, but crypto being the youngest financial market out there and with all it's teething problems there are certain steps one can take to lower their risk of losing money.

Back in 2018 when I took (you will hear me say this often, forgive me) that giant leap into crypto things were very new and scary, especially because I had zero investment experience at all. I had no relative or friend that was in crypto to hold my hand. The only person with investment experience was my stepdad but he was more of an traditional investor and at that time the Bitcoin headlines weren't really anything to write home about.

Anyway I digest. RESEARCH RESEARCH RESEARCH is the message for today and here's how I got started to reduce my risks of losing money.

And oh yeah, first of two things that aren't really research but key to understand;

1. DON'T CHASE THE HYPE! Meaning don't jump into coins just because you hear about it in the news. If the hype is real you'll most likely buy it when the coin is already up by a couple of 100 percent. You can measure if you're too late in 2 ways:

#1. How much % has the coin risen since launch? 10%, 100%, 1000%? To me depending on how high the marketcap (more about market capitalization later) a 200% to 300% rise already feels like I've missed that boat. It's not to say that it can't continue to rise another 100% or 400% but I just stay away from coins that already made major runs to avoid getting dumped on by early investors.

#2. If you hear your 70yr old mom or that uncle that saves his money in an old dirty sock underneath his mattress talking about a coin then you're late to the party!

2. Don't spend more than you can afford to lose. In other words, don't use money that's meant to pay your rent, groceries or college money for your kids! Seriously... don't!

How to DYOR:

Google: What is #bitcoin and why was it created? What is crypto? Learn about the technology to understand why a project has the potential to succeed with plans. What is the vision? What problem is it solving?

Coin search: Coinmarketcap and Coingecko are my go to sites to find cryptogems. The "recently added" section on CMC's homepage is where you'll find newly launched tokens. Coingecko has a tab called "new coins". Remember with new coins comes extra risk so make sure to read the whole article before investing in ANY project.

Whitepaper

Found a gem you have a good feeling about? A necessary next step is to read the projects whitepaper (most projects have one) to read about their plans and how they're planning to get there. If the documentation jargon turns out to be too hard to digest you could go on YouTube and see if you can find a (unbiased) video on that project that explains their plans and vision. If you don't succeed there just hop in the project's Telegram chat and ask your questions there politely.

The team

Other things to look for once the whitepaper has convinced you of the potential of the idea/product:

Who's behind the team? Check their website, LinkedIn, and Twitter to see if you can find out more about the creators and their trackrecord. A term that you'll probably hear a lot about is "doxxed". The word is derived from “dropping dox,” or “documents”. This means the developers (devs) are known. Some devs however are anonymous, so called "undoxxed".

A great example of a project with anonymous (partially) devs is FEG. Undoxxed project devs have to work "twice" as hard to prove their legitimacy to their community because there's no face attached to the company if things go south. Community members rely heavily on the project's milestones set on the roadmap. The FEG team does exactly that and this is what attracted me as an investor and even volunteer to work in the marketingteam.

Speaking about community. Another thing to look for is the activity in the community. A lively chat is a sign of an active and engaging projectteam. A "dead" chat usually is a sign that the team isn't working on stuff the community can be excited about or keeping them up-to-date enough to keep the spirit alive. By no means is a dead chat a deciding factor to invest or to stay away. Just something to take into account when trying to get a sense of the sentiment within a community.

Roadmap:

(Almost) every project has a roadmap. A roadmap is a strategic plan that defines a goal or desired outcome and includes the major steps or milestones needed to reach it.

In my book no roadmap is no go. The community needs to have something to be excited about for the future and a roadmap allows the community to start asking questions when milestones aren't being met as promised. If these questions aren't being answered in a professional manner you might want re-think your investment.

Supply and marketcap:

Market Capitalization is one way to rank the relative size of a cryptocurrency. It's calculated by multiplying the Price by the Circulating Supply. Market Cap = Price X Circulating Supply

Remember scarcity is what makes a coin valuable. Bitcoin has a total supply of 21million coins of which 19,3 million is circulation. 21million is extremely scarce hence why #bitcoin has such a high price. The larger the supply the more money needs to flow into the project the reach a certain marketcap thus a higher price.

#FEG for example had a total supply of 50 quadrillion tokens in V1. V2 has a total supply of 50 billion tokens. That's a lot less. FEG because of it's scarcity and a low marketcap now has a better potential of reaching 0.01, 0.10, or maybe even $1 in the future. THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVISE. I'm simply painting the picture of supply vs marketcap and how you determine if a coin has potential to grow.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Total supply is the total amount of coins or tokens of a specific cryptocurrency that have been created or mined, that are in circulation, including those that are locked or reserved.

So make sure you know if a project is unlocking coins that are entering the market in the future. This could impact the growth potential of a coin tremendously.

If you apply all the steps that I've mentioned above then you should be set to go and start investing in your desired project. Remember though that nothing, especially in crypto is guaranteed! Have fun investing and always

Bonus reading tip: Why and How to Do Your Own Research (DYOR) When Investing in Crypto | #Binance Blog

Today I want to talk about a FEG utility I'm most excited about called "From The Wallet" aka FTW.

But before I go into depth I'd like to share my experience with security and why I believe FTW is such a promising tool for crypto.

When I started investing in crypto back in 2018 I remember spending hours upon hours for weeks to get to know the basics including how to buy and sell. I also remember my first purchase which was ADA (this is not a shill. I don't hold anymore Cardano) and that it took me 30 minutes to press the buy button. The knobs, the numbers, the signs and the colors were so intimidating that I just couldn't press that button with 100% certainty that I wasn't about to throw away my hard earned money.

Fast-forward to today I got used to the intimidating look of trading platforms after buying and selling dozens of crypto after my first purchase in 2018.

But that's me. I'm a risk taker by nature. However I'm sure that there are thousands of people who gave up on crypto because they felt a purchase was too difficult or too "scammy" looking to pour their money into and risk losing it all.

For some "high risk, high reward" is rarely worth the risk and the chances of them ever coming back to crypto is zero to non.

This is why I'm so bullish on FTW. "From The Wallet" is a Limit-Order trading platform that allows users to trade directly from their wallet to another user and vice versa. The devs made the platform fully Decentralized by allowing the user to stay in possession of their coins or NFT throughout the entire process. In other words, your coins won't leave your wallet until both parties have agreed on the transaction!

And to add an extra layer of security the devs only allow approved contracts to trade on the platform. This means you can't buy a fake BTC or more commonly, a fake BAYC NFT!

Learn more about FTW: https://docs.fegtoken.com/ftw/ftw-from-the-wallet

SmartDefi - A fully Audited Token Launch-Pad for anyone to create a Cryptocurrency!

Tune into Binance Live tomorrow as RTRcrypto talks about the hurdles for DeFi in general and zooms in on how SmartDefi will tackle the challenges we all face in crypto and DeFi in particular.

Other utilities such as FTW, Aggregator, Smartlending and more will all be discussed.

Want to have a head start? Start learning about FEG utility here: https://docs.fegtoken.com/

Hope to see you tomorrow 29th March 2PM UTC at Binance LIVE.

Thank you for reading my first ever Binance Feed post.

My name is SatoriiSan. I got into crypto in 2018 and it's been full-time schooling ever since. In 2021 I became a volunteer with the FEG marketingteam after having invested into the project myself.

My goal in crypto is not to give any financial advise but rather to inform the new investor about the do's and don't's when they first come into this space. I hope that my writing about the basics will inspire new and young investors to make the best decisions on their road to becoming financially independent in this fairly new and sometimes harsh world called CRYPTO.

Please follow my blog to stay informed about everything FEG and occasional crypto events that keep me up at night so you can sleep well. - SatoriiSan