Investing in a project without a team is risky

$4.6 billion worth of cryptocurrency pumped and dumped in 2022.

9902 crypto projects that pumped the price and sold it with a suspected honeypot in the code. A honeypot is a code that doesn’t allow you to sell your crypto.

In other words: 9902 scam projects.

4.6 billion = 4,600,000,000 dollars

Think about how much money that is. Just unbelievable.
Many altcoins are made to scam you. Don’t underestimate it.

This newsletter will focus on a quick and easy way to protect you from investing in projects that will scam you: researching the team members.

Researching a team is easy and very valuable because it’s a quick way to see if a project is valid. The great part of a crypto project having a team is that they have a face to that project—a person who is personally liable for mistakes.

Many projects don’t want to put a face on their coin. They want you to give your hard-earned money and not be able to trace them if things go wrong.
Putting their face in the team section on the website exposes them. They will risk not only their time and effort in creating the project but also their reputation.

People with good reputations will deliver good projects. If Vitalik Buterin
creates a new coin. Wouldn’t the whole crypto space want it?

Yes, they would.

He created Ethereum: this guy is a genius in crypto.

Projects that display people, especially with LinkedIn, gain much trust. So research the people and discover/find out if they are the real deal.

Let me show you three ways to investigate team members:

1. Check the website

The website is the first place you need to look for team members.

Many good projects put their team members prominently on their website. They are proud to be a part of this project.

Here are some tips to investigate a website:

1. Look at the sections on the front page.
2. Search in the menu bar for an about us link.
3. Investigate the footer for links to the team. Sometimes, it’s an about us page or careers.

If you can’t find a team. Go to the next step.

2. Find the coin on CryptoRank

Link to CryptoRank

Another great way to find information about the team is using CryptoRank. The team can add information about the project on CryptoRank.

CryptoRank contains valuable information about many crypto projects.

For example:

1. Team members
2. Links to X, Website, Telegram
3. Market cap, price, and trading volume
4. List of exchanges where you can buy the coin.
5. Vesting Info: You can see when tokens are distributed.

Example of the Solana team on CryptoRank:

3. Search Google for more information

If you can’t find any team members on crypto rank, you can do a quick Google search. Don’t spend too much time, though, because it can be a rabbit hole. If a project doesn’t want to be open about its team members, just don’t invest.

Here are my top searches for Google:

1. [COIN] crypto linkedin
2. [COIN] crypto team
3. [COIN] crypto owner
4. [COIN] crypto AMA
5. [COIN] crypto youtube
6. [COIN] crypto careers

For example, when I look at Seedworld token on LinkedIn, I get the following page:

On the Seedworld website, you can’t find any team members. Thankfully, a Google search helped locate the team, making this a valid project.

That’s it for this week.

There are many great projects out there. If a project is solid, but the team members are missing, don’t invest.

Researching team members is very effective. Missing team members are among the first red flags/identifiers for scammy projects. These steps will help you identify the team and see if a project is valid.

Be the hero of your own crypto journey, and stay safe.
Dan John