“Do your own research” is advice that almost never comes with a method. Here is one: a thirty-minute pass across three independent lines of evidence — the numbers, the documents, the activity — with the honest caveat stated up front. Thirty minutes is a screening tool. It reliably eliminates bad projects. It does not identify good ones.

Minutes 0–10: the numbers

Start on the market data, because it is the hardest part to fake and the fastest to read. Any coin page gives you all of this.

  • Market cap versus fully diluted valuation. A large gap means most of the supply does not exist yet and will arrive later. Our guide on reading a coin page explains why FDV is the number promotional material tends to omit.
  • Circulating share of supply. Below roughly a quarter, the price you see is being set by a small float and the rest is a queue of future sellers.
  • Volume against market cap. Thin volume relative to size is an exit problem, and it is the risk least visible when you are buying.
  • Where it trades. If liquidity sits entirely on venues you have never heard of, the market cap is theoretical. Compare against the established venues.
  • Age and drawdown. How far below its all-time high, and how long has it existed? Survival through one full bear market is a real quality signal — see what past winters did.

Minutes 10–20: the documents

  • What problem does it claim to solve, in one sentence? If the documentation cannot manage that, the team cannot either.
  • Who pays whom, and for what? Find the actual flow of money. Projects with revenue have an answer. Projects without one have a narrative about future adoption.
  • Token allocation. What share went to the team, insiders and early investors versus the public? Large insider allocations are not automatically disqualifying, but they define whose interests the price serves.
  • The unlock schedule. Vesting cliffs are the single most predictable negative catalyst in crypto. A token with a small float and a major unlock next quarter has a known future seller, published in advance, and it is astonishing how many buyers never look.
  • Whether the tokenomics require perpetual new money. If rewards are paid in newly issued tokens and the only demand is from people seeking those rewards, the model has an expiry date.

Minutes 20–28: the activity

Documents describe intentions. Activity describes reality, and the two diverge constantly.

  • Code. Is the repository public and has anyone committed to it recently? Sustained, distributed commit activity is meaningful; a burst before a launch and silence afterwards is meaningful too.
  • Usage versus claims. Compare the announced partnerships and user numbers with what is visible on-chain. Announcements are free.
  • Holder concentration. If a handful of non-exchange addresses hold most of the supply, one decision moves the price. Block explorers publish this.
  • Audits. Check that a contract audit exists, who performed it, when, what was in scope, and whether the findings were addressed. An audit is a snapshot of specific code at a point in time, not a warranty — audited projects have been exploited.
  • The team. Named people with verifiable histories, or anonymous? Anonymity is not automatically bad, but it removes every consequence for failure.

Minutes 28–30: the disqualifiers

Any single one of these ends the research. There is no combination of other merits that outweighs them:

  • Guaranteed or fixed returns, in any wording.
  • Rewards for recruiting other buyers.
  • An anonymous team with an unaudited contract and paid promotion running.
  • A liquidity pool the team can withdraw at will — the mechanical basis of a rug pull.
  • Contract functions letting the owner mint freely, freeze transfers, or block selling.
  • Urgency: a closing window, a bonus that expires, a price rising on a timer.

What thirty minutes cannot do

It will not tell you whether the technology works, whether the market wants it, or whether the price already reflects everything above. It filters out the projects designed to take your money, which is most of the ones that will be marketed to you. Everything past that is investment analysis, and it takes considerably longer than half an hour.

Nothing here is financial advice. See our risk disclaimer.