So, a lot of people don't know much about finance - markets - investing - yields - etc...It's all math really, but also with all sorts of rather obscure & particularly capitalistic elements to it as well. One of the messages that I get **super** often (like a few times a week) is something like: *"Hey Kenny, have you heard of _______Coin?"* Some of these end up being EPIC life-changing opportunities, like when my friend @churdtzu first told me about STEEM. Unfortunately, just like the crypto market as a whole, many of these recommendations aren't great at all. The thing is, most folks never learned anything about trading on the stock market/forex/etc. in school, or from their family, or in any jobs... and most likely some professionals were making many % off each of you through some fund, plan, or other parasitic scheme. Anyway, [welcome to the world of crypto; welcome to the world of personal responsibility](https://peakd.com/hive-167922/@kennyskitchen/reclaim-your-personal-responsibility). Here in the world of crypto, we each get to do our own research and be the authors of or own stories. ## Let's look at my first steps to investigate a new coin: 1. Decide if it's worth my time to go down that rabbit hole right now. 2. Go to [coinmarketcap.com](coinmarketcap.com) and look up the coin a. If it's not there, check [CoinGecko.com](CoinGecko.com) b. If neither, do a [presearch](https://presearch.org/signup?rid=1615775) for the name with the word "crypto" and see if any other listings come up c. If not, it's probably not real :-P 3. Check the math: [Market Cap](https://peakd.com/hive-167922/@kennyskitchen/market-caps-bubbles-and-trillions), Supply, Price 4. Check the Community/Social Media 5. At this point you know if it's a total dead coin or not, and you know the most basic of its math... so now you can dive into the juicy details, usually via the white paper, the [BitcoinTalk](https://bitcointalk.org/) thread, etc. 6. Some really important things to look for: a. How was it launched? (pre-mine, ICO, ninja mine, or other potentially screwy distribution models) b. What's the inflation rate like? Is it adjustable? When does it hit max supply? c. How decentralized is it? Both in terms of ownership of coins, and how many block producers, how many devs/dev teams, etc. d. What purpose does it serve? (Is it a competitor for some slot? If so how is it better than the others? Does it fill a niche that nothing else has yet? ?) # >Let's Take a Look at Safe Haven (SHA) I covered most of this in the video, but I'll go a little more in-depth here, since I'm always trying to keep the videos rather brief. First off, here's the top of it's [CMC page](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/safe-haven/): [](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/safe-haven/) 1 & 2 are done, I'm already here doing the thing, so let's start off at #3 * The Basic Math * Market Cap: $24M *(for reference, BTC is $1T, XMR is $7B, and HIVE is $176M)* * Supply: 3B circulating, 8.5B total, no max (or CMC doesn't know) *(for reference, the max for BTC & SMR are 21M, ARRR is 200M)* * Circulating = How many are actually out on the market) * Total = How many exist right now (some amount may be in a DAO, staked, held by a corporation, etc.) * Max = How many there will be total * Price: $0.007952 (I always like to think - what would the market cap be if it cost $1 per coin) * Community/Social Media * Twitter: 17.8k followers, active every day * Medium: 1k followers, 1 post or so per month * Reddit: 2k subs, but averages <1 post per day in there * Telegram: 400 subs, no activity * Seems like there is some activity for sure, a good twitter buzz. The numbers aren't terrible, though I'm definitely curious how it is distributed and what the max supply is. * Diving deeper... * Looks like the purpose of it is to digitize & decentralize inheritance, I don't know of any coins doing that. * Looking at the [white paper](https://safehaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/SafeHaven_WhitePaper.pdf), I'm not a fan of the "funds distribution" - this is a totally centralized project, with everything being distributed by the project. # Verdict on Safe Haven (SHA)? ## Looks like a corporate stock playing crypto to me. This is not "financial advice," and obviously this wasn't a deep dive into the project - just my first impressions. Feel free to let me know if I'm wrong about something here. Anyway, hope you're all having a magnificent weekend! --- --- *Here's a little something I just [picked up](https://www.cryptomerchandise.com/product/equation-tee/)*