The mod team is trying its best to keep the sub clean, so we do not end up like r/CryptoMoonShots, but it's you who has to choose and research the coins you want to invest in. The mods are trying not to be authoritarian, but at the same time they do not want users to be scammed, so it is impossible to moderate without subjective opinions. This is why some posts are flaired with "Caution, Unusual Activity", when it seems suspicious, but this does not mean the coin is bad, you should just be cautious with potentially fake comments and scams. Edit: Yes, I am a mod too.

As this sub is all about small market cap, upcoming crypto coin/tokens, I wanted to share some tips on how to stay somewhat safe and potentially make good gains in this sea of new coins. Remember that even following all this advice, it is always possible to lose money, so don't invest what you cannot affort to lose and dyor, this is not financial advice.

This is a tip I got from r/CryptoCurrency: Only trade on the BSC (Binance Smart Chain), the gas fees on the ETH chain will kill your profits. This is just advice, just remember the fees. Edit: u/-0-O- pointed out that BSC is much more full of scams and pump-and-dump projects than ETH is. They exist on both, but most legit projects are still choosing to develop on Ethereum, not on Binance. The gas fees on BSC are usually a few pennies, but the same goes for the people deploying these projects. Basically anyone can launch a bunch of shitcoins. So decide this for yourself individually.

Alright, let's say you have seen a coin on this sub. There a few sites I recommend to use first:

Bscscan.com This site is going to be your good friend for researching any coin/token

Enter the name of the coin or the contract address (should be stated in the subreddit post or coin website or coingecko/coinmarketcap) in the search bar. Now you go through the 3 most important tabs:

1. Transfers: You want to check the volume and activity here. There should be transactions every 10 minutes minimum, otherwise you might be too early or the coin doesn't have the momentum you want. This tip is only for short-term traders, if you believe in the project so much, and plan to hold it for years, it's your risk to take, but I don't recommend buying any coin/token with less than 1 transaction every 10 minutes.
2. Now check the Holders tab: This is the most important aspect for researching coins: If there are multiple whales (>5-10 large holders with >2% of the coins) then go ahead and RUN. The largest holder should only be a liquidity pool, mostly with the adress "0x000000000000000000000000000000000000dead". Especially if this wallet has over 50%of the coins a rugpull is basically impossible. Edit: another correction by u/-0-O- "A contract can change the token balance of an address arbitrarily, and now scammers are baking right into the contract a way to transfer funds out of these dead addresses. These addresses can also be very misleading, as coins burned at the start of a project don't really mean anything, it's just changing the supply. So an address with 10% might only show as having 1%, because of the misleading burn wallet holdings."
3. Liquidity: You can use Poocoin.app too see the liquidity pool on the left side. It should say {YOURCOIN}/BNB LP Holdings. Scam coins will basically never have a huge pool size, so I personally check that it's over 10-30k, but others might see that differently.
4. I just run the adress through tokensniffer.com, which scans for a verified contract source, prior similar token contracts, proxy contract and pausable contracts. This is not a must, but cool to learn a few new things and maybe find hacks/exploited coins easily. Just remember that the site is not to be interpreted as advice and should be considered in the context of the project as a whole along with external information.

Some advice from u/actuallkymkm to watch out for: „A lot of tokens have code built in that trap buyers by not letting anyone except the creator sell once they've bought in. To avoid these tokens, a good tip is to trade a tiny amount at the start ($2-$5), and see if you're allowed to sell.“

These were the technicals, let's talk about marketing, design and the team.

I myself do not make my decision based on marketing, but one can at least check if the coin/token has a good website and twitter account. Things like telegram, discord and reddit are cool, but not a must. Unfortunatly, even shitcoins tend to take off with a good design, name and idea, so you might as well look for that. But remember a lot of scams tend to have very good marketing to reach the most people, telegram groups for promising coins to those who advertise for them, or fake followers and comments. This is why I choose technicals over marketing.

If the team is publicly known, this is a very good sign. This is not often the case with many coins, and that doesn't mean they are bad projects though. If you know their names, google them or check their LinkedIn (if they have one) to see prior experience and skills.

Individually, every coin/token solves a unique problem with an idea/concept. Take this into account when deciding wether to invest or not.

That was my advice for researching coins you find on this sub or anywhere else. Please go ahead and add/correct anything the comments, this is just my preference and I'm very open to suggestions/opinions.

Stay safe out there!