How to identify whether a seemingly 'genuine' project is actually a scam.

Despite all the shit going on with the SEC and exchanges, you'll still see a lot of coins and projects pop up that are just scams in disguise. Some of these will be obvious. But others will be much better disguised; they may appear genuine at first glance, with a whitepaper and a list of devs and some seniority, but it's become easier to fake all that stuff too.

So every time you see a new coin and are considering getting into it, check these things first:

1. Whitepaper: Many legitimate-looking whitepapers are written using AI nowadays, to replicate something that at first glance appears to make sense, but no human thought has gone into it. You should always run the text of a whitepaper through an AI checker just in case, and there are many available for free, thankfully. Even if it's not written by an AI, make sure to read all of it and understand exactly how the coin/network works.
2. Devs: Some may check the 'Meet the team' page on the coin's website, see a bunch of people with their LinkedIns linked which all seem legit, and be satisfied. But even that's easy to fake! First off, make sure those people are who they claim to be, and aren't just using photos and links from other devs, impersonating them. After that, check to see if you can find any other social media or personal information about the devs. If literally nothing comes up except for their LinkedIn page, then it's almost certainly a scam.
3. Tokenomics: Always, always check the coin itself and learn everything about it. Are there buy or sell taxes? Is the liquidity too low or too high? How much slippage is there? What about the marketcap? Who owns the majority of the coins? Do your research, be thorough and compare with other actual good coins, and you'll instantly see the difference.
4. Marketing: How does the team market itself and its coin? If it's mainly through Zealy or incentives for other acounts to blindly retweet and share their stuff without any input, then it's probably a scam. Good projects don't need to go to such lenghts to convince you that they are what they are. What they're doing is just promoting an echo chamber within their community. Also check if their Telegram or Discord is read-only, because that's an even bigger red flag.
5. Usage cases: If not only the followers of the project, but the devs themselves are constantly parroting out the same stuff about how their coin is going to 'reach the moon' and 'hit $1' by next year, if they brush aside questions and criticisms, if they refuse to elaborate on how they plan to grow their coin... basically if you can't find a single reason to hold the coin OTHER than to make money, then turn away, brother. It's not worth it.

Hopefully these tips can help my fellow investors avoid these types of projects. We can all be fooled, and scams are evolving rapidly with the times, so you gotta keep your eyes peeled and evolve in the same way.