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The things to consider when picking a coin

HOSTS Blake Cassidy, Craig Jackson & Tracey Plowman|3 January, 2022

Sponsored by Bamboo

In this episode of Crypto Curious, hosts Tracey, Blake and Craig address feedback from listeners who’ve asked for advice on how to pick investments. When choosing which crypto coins to buy, there are three things to consider: fundamentals, sentiment, and technical analysis.

Fundamentals are the backbone of the project and define the team, strategy, and token economics that make up the value proposition. Read everything on the project’s website, including the white paper, roadmap and long-term strategy, and then research the team members on LinkedIn, Google, or any other public platforms. Your hosts put these theories into practice on Avalanche (AVAX), an ‘Ethereum killer’ that’s been making headlines lately. As an eco-friendly, smart contract platform with an experienced team, excellent fundamentals and positive sentiment, it’s a very promising investment. 

Remember, though – always follow the golden rule: do your own research!

Download the Bamboo app and use code CURIOUS for $10 in ETH.

Follow Crypto Curious on Instagram, or send the team an email with all your thoughts here


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In the spirit of reconciliation, Equity Mates Media and the hosts of Crypto Curious acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respects to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people today.

Tracey: [00:00:20] Welcome to the Crypto Curious podcast designed to help you navigate the dynamic world of cryptocurrency. Hello, my name's Tracy, and I'm joined by my mates, Blake and Craig. Hey, guys, how's it going? 

Blake: [00:00:32] Pretty well, Trace.

Craig: [00:00:33] Going well Trace. So excited for this one. 

Tracey: [00:00:35] Yes, excited. Look. We're actually recording our 10th episode today, so we want to take a moment to send out a mighty big thank you to you, our listeners. And we could not be more pleased with the amazing feedback we've been receiving. So thanks everybody out there. And today's episode comes about as a result of that feedback. You've asked us for more information on how to pick the right investments, and we can't do that for you. But what we can do is give you some tips on how to be smarter when making your choices. This comes down to three main areas being fundamentals, sentiment and technical analysis. The most important would be fundamentals, especially as you're looking to hold onto your investment long term. When it comes to fundamentals, it can often be hard to work out what is real and what is fake information. As is just so much out there today will give you some tips on how to go about doing your own research. So for me, the first time I hear about a coin, the first thing I do on my phone is going to either CoinGecko or market cap to have a look at that coin. So what are we looking at at a very first point when we're checking out the coin on one of these two apps? 

Craig: [00:01:45] The first thing you're looking at is the price market cap and then you checking out a links to their socials, checking out their website. Crypto is really like the wild west of the moment. It's quite different to researching for stocks or for shares. You're not really looking at, you know, product and reports and yearly annual reports. It's really all about, you know, the token economics. But I think, you know, fundamental analysis is so important. So, Blake, do you want to touch on some things that we're actually looking at? So we're looking at CoinGecko. What are we actually looking for? 

Blake: [00:02:18] We'll hear about coins or whether it be on the news or from a friend, from a YouTube video. And there's a lot of information about there. But you know, there is a kind of like a format that you can follow to be able to understand a little bit more about, you know, the projects that we're interested in and want to learn more about. The first thing that I always do is check out, you know, when I'm interested in a project is check out who's the team. Who are the founders, who created the project? Because this is going to be really fundamental to, you know, deciding whether it's a high value project or not. An example of this is, you know, I was interested in a crypto coin called Theta, and it was like a video streaming service built on top of a blockchain, and it was founded by some of the founders of YouTube. So obviously, they have proven execution capability, and I'm sure they'll execute on, you know, the new project called Theta. As well as this, the end of there's another project that I was looking at one point in time called Brave. And Brave is basically like a web based browser, kind of like Google Chrome or Safari. And the founder of Brave was the guy that founded Mozilla Firefox. So, of course, you know, looking at the team and seeing, you know what other projects the founders and the and the owners have been working on is a really good place to start. 

Tracey: [00:03:40] So if Elon Musk was going to go do another car company, then we'd know that we'd be pretty happy to put some money into that one, perhaps.

Craig: [00:03:48] So Blake, how are you... Are you just looking at their LinkedIn? Like, how are you finding out this information?

Blake: [00:03:53] Yeah. Good question. So, first of all, I check out their website, and it usually has the story about the founders there. And it also talks about, you know, the team members. Some of these projects have hundreds of team members, but you know, some of the key roles that the CTO, the Chief Technical Officer or the CEO or the head of product, you know, the guys that are usually then go on to, you know, maybe even check out on LinkedIn and just see what other big things they've achieved.

Craig: [00:04:23] And what do you think when you say like a really big token, for example, SushiSwap was buying a pseudo anonymous team. How do you feel about, you know, seeing these projects that have pseudonymous teams, you don't know who they are or don't know where they've worked? What are your thoughts on that? 

Blake: [00:04:39] Yeah, anonymity is, you know, a key principle and driving force in the crypto ecosystem. And there are projects out there where, you know, the founders don't reveal who they are even like Satoshi Nakamoto. 

Craig: [00:04:55] Yeah, true. Yeah, the best one was anonymous, so we should be looking at anonymous teams, shouldn't we? 

Tracey: [00:05:01] It was obviously more risky, more risk involved though. 

Blake: [00:05:04] Exactly right. It creates a lot more risk because these guys aren't accountable to their reputation or the law even because they often work in decentralised teams. So, you know what? Sometimes these projects are really good. But also on the flip side, sometimes these projects do prey on investors. 

Tracey: [00:05:23] Okay, so that's the founding team. So what else is on your checklist that you're looking for? 

Blake: [00:05:27] Yeah, probably the second most important thing that that I look for is the tokenomics. Now that's a bit of jargon in the crypto sphere that refers to how the economics of the token work within its particular ecosystem. And the first thing that you want to look at is how many tokens there are, how valuable these tokens are and then how what's the market cap of these tokens? So the token times their value equals the market cap.

Tracey: [00:05:57] And where can people find any information about tokenomics on these different coins? 

Blake: [00:06:02] Yeah, that's a pretty good question. The easiest place is to look at on CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap. Yeah, that has it front and centre so people can easily read the information. Craig, do you look anywhere else for the tokenomic info? 

Craig: [00:06:16] Yeah, I was just going to say actually and ask you, you know, there's some tokens that have, you know, circulating supply and total supply. So like, for example, you can say these coins that might have, you know, five million circulating, but the total is one billion. How important do you think it is to know how these tokens get released, Blake? And how do you even find that information? 

Blake: [00:06:37] Yeah, that really is important. And generally you find this information on the project's website in something called a white paper, which describes the economic model that they've developed within their ecosystem. And sometimes these are designed to trick investors and participants. So it's really important that you take a good look at who's controlling the supply and the release schedule of the supply, because on the face value of it, it could look like you have a good investment, but in reality, it may be worth nothing. 

Craig: [00:07:12] I think one of the hedge fund managers that I know says nobody cares about the total supply until it's in a bear market that no one no one looks at it until it's not as hot. So I think that's a really important thing to distinguish there.

Tracey: [00:07:26] Another place to check out for token economics is a website called Messari, which will have all the information I ever use that one in the past, which is another one to look at. But what blight do you want to explain? What makes these token economics important to the overall price? 

Blake: [00:07:43] We really want to look at how the tokens being used within the ecosystem, whether it is deflationary or inflationary, deflationary obviously has a higher value proposition because the supply is decreasing, potentially at the same time as the demand is increasing, which will then dictate positive price movement. And you know, there's other ways of assessing how valuable a token is. For example, there's a burn feature in some tokens, like on the Binance token, which is a big cryptocurrency exchange that your burns at a particular schedule over time to reduce the supply and and therefore potentially increase the price. Another element to consider is, you know, if they're staking. So staking means that people lock up their tokens for a reward. And if there's 80 per cent of the tokens and circulating supply locked up, then you know that obviously reduces the supply as well. And then there's other elements around projects putting revenue through the token, which would then increase. You know, it's trade volume, which is another key point that you know, may be worth considering. So there are all these nitty gritty elements, and that is certainly worth having a look into. 

Tracey: [00:09:03] So that was a bit of information there about token economics, and we actually had a listener named Adam brought into us last week asking some questions about token economics. So Adam, hopefully we've cleared a few things out for you there. Another big part of fundamental research is a value proposition. So what is it that the project is actually solving here? Can we think of a couple of examples that are stand out for us, Blake? 

Blake: [00:09:26] Yeah, of course. Probably the major one in this sector is the issue of scaling. So creating a global peer to peer digital cash system that scales is very difficult, and Ethereum and Bitcoin have encountered substantial scaling problems. Basically, this means that it's expensive and slow to use Ethereum or bitcoin. Now the value proposition then of a new project could be that they are aiming to be cheaper and faster to then displace Ethereum and Bitcoin. And that would be, you know, they call these. Ethereum killers. Well, you know, bitcoin killers and none of them have been able to displace, of course, the king and the queen. However, they have taken market share from them, and that's because they had a value proposition that competed with the value proposition of Ethereum. There are other value propositions as well. For example, solving decentralised computer storage, which basically is like a decentralised data centre where I could store files on your computer in exchange for a fee. And this is a real world problem, and a group called File Coin is trying to solve that problem. And that's their value proposition, you know? But it is a big technical task to be able to complete, and they've been working on this for many years. 

Craig: [00:10:46] Yeah. Just to bring it back to your Bitcoin Ethereum example, you know, I can think of two of the top of my head. So the value prop of Litecoin, for example, is pretty much a cheaper, quicker bitcoin. The value proposition of Solana is a cheaper, quicker Ethereum, so that sort of people are just always trying to pop the the top dog. Another part of, you know, value proposition is, you know, understanding the token, why do you want to hold it? And, you know, how do you think it's going to contribute to the problem? So, for example, with Ethereum, you know you're holding Ethereum. Ethereum is deflationary. So as you're holding it more, Ethereum's getting burnt, which is pretty cool because, you know, as Ethereum's gets used more and more, the, you know, the supply is going down. But there's also a few other tokens called governance tokens. And this is where, you know, when you hold a governance token, you're essentially holding a vote in decisions that are made by the project. So, for example, a project like De Hedge, which is a decentralised hedge fund management system they might put in, you know, new coins or new managers to be brought onto the platform and then the community that hold the token can vote on that. So it's essentially like bringing it back to equities. It's like a shareholder vote, essentially. So they're pretty cool as well. 

Tracey: [00:12:10] So what we're saying is that there's actually a lot of different options out there right now. You mentioned file coin and I've actually looked at another one called Siacoin doing exactly the same as follow a coin. So what we're saying this, there's quite a few horses in this race and we're trying to work out which horse to back. So looking at this and looking at the competitors, how do we narrow down the field?

Blake: [00:12:30] That's a really good question, sir, in any, you know, sub industry within crypto. There's going to be many people trying to, you know, build platforms and and systems to achieve one particular your value proposition. For example, there could be many lending platforms that are competing with one another, and they'll have your varying points of difference. And it can be really hard to choose a winner. And generally, what people do is, you know, try to gain exposure to a subclass so they don't have to pick a winner. If three out of the top five projects make it, then you know they need to pick a winner. They can spread the risk. And you know, this happens all throughout the crypto sphere. Whether it's your decentralised lending, whether it's cryptocurrency exchanges, whether it's gaming, yeah, everyone's trying to build the best possible product. 

Tracey: [00:13:23] Okay. So we're trying to find the best projects, and we're trying to find the problem that the project is working on, and we're trying to find out that they've got the best possible founding team behind them to work on this. So you're probably thinking this all sounds very good in theory, but where to actually find this information? I don't want to follow random threads on Reddit or unreliable YouTubers talking about their theories about the latest projects. I want to find the new ideas, and I want to determine how reliable this information that's published actually is. So where are we finding out about what problem this project is aiming to work on and the reliability of the founders and their track record, and also the community interest in this project? So where are we finding this information, Craig?

Craig: [00:14:06] Yeah, I think all of those decisions is obviously your personal research and you come to those conclusions. But I might just touch on, you know, where to find about these projects and how to find if they're actually being used. So one of my favourite tools is CoinGecko. We touched on it before, but it's something really cool on CoinGecko, as you can actually look at categories. So for example, your gaming category, DfI category smart contract applications category, and this just gives you a really high level about, you know, which are the top dogs in this space and which are the ones that are sort of just coming out. Yeah. So I might be on CoinGecko looking at the DeFi category. And then I might say, well, there's you know, so much DeFi. I wonder which ones are getting adopted, which ones are actually getting used. And from there, I might go to a great tool called crypto fees, and this is where I can. Say, you know, which platforms are actually being used, which ones are making money in phase and you know, which ones can I potentially earn some of those fees?

Blake: [00:15:09] What's the website, Craigh?

Craig: [00:15:10] Cryptofees.info. Yeah, so I might jump on crypto fees or info and be like, Well, this the sushi swaps earning a billion dollars a day in fees. You know, why don't I just buy sushi, stake Sushi and earn some of those fees? Not that, not financial advice, but yeah, and crypto fees. Dot Info just shows you how much that platform is being used and how much money people are paying to use those platforms. That's a really great tool I like to look at. 

Tracey: [00:15:38] Okay, so you have an initial look at the coin, Craig and take it from there myself. When I'm doing my research, I start off looking at the Binance research page, which is really helpful and also another site called Messari. And now these are both really good for understanding the core components of these coins that I'm interested in. And these guys also, I feel, is a level of trust when I'm looking at Binance Research and Messari because they're relatively big players in the space. And I guess that I think that perhaps they have gone out and done that level of due diligence. So from there, I would take my notes and then scroll through a couple of my standard YouTube channels that I trust as they're going to give me the more up to date news. And just with the YouTube channels, I tend to stay away from any that have really big, bold headings that are going to that are telling me that something is going to 10x or or go to the Moon. So, yeah, just something to be, which is all of them. She's a lot of them these days. Unfortunately, it's all clickbait. But what about you, Blake? Anything else to add there for your own research? 

Blake: [00:16:42] I take a similar strategy to Craig. You know, I have a quick general look at, you know, on CoinMarketCap or CoinGecko and then have a look at the website and then just have a look at any community forums to cross-reference and cross-check. You know what's being said? But yeah, I'd take a pretty high level look at it in its first instance. And then if you know, I want to look deeper than, you know, there's a whole myriad of places that you can look for your additional information. 

Tracey: [00:17:08] So we look at a project and the goals of what they want to achieve, and we look at the founders and where they've worked before. And do they have a track record for being able to achieve those goals? Then we use the sites that we've suggested to look and start your research journey. Now that's basically fundamentals, and we know crypto is very emotional. So it's also important to have a look at sentiment of the market and the token. You're investing in our people optimistic or they are not feeling so great about things at the moment. We need to have a look at what people are talking about and how do we do that, Craig? 

Craig: [00:17:43] Well, you can actually go on Twitter and search the cashtag now. The cashtag is essentially the three four letter representation of that coin. So BTC bitcoin is BTC. Ethereum is ETH Litecoins LTC. You can actually find that on CoinGecko just next to the coin name. And if you go on Twitter, you can actually search the dollar sign and that cash tag and have a look at what people are saying about it now. Nine times out of 10, it's just people saying it's going to the Moon, it's going to 100x by now. But sometimes you can decipher a little bit of decipher some of that jargon and say some really good insight. Maybe someone's on a Deep Dive on the project, maybe someone's talking to their founders, maybe the project Twitter is tweeting about some interesting news. So I think that's a really good way of just getting a sense of what people are actually saying. But another tool I like to use, which is more for the macro like market as a whole, is the Fear and greed index. This is my favourite to actually have it on my home screen, on my phone, and it tells me how fearful and how greedy we are at the moment. And this is a tool that pretty much, you know, does the data scraping across socials, across technical analysis and the price, and they have their own methodology. So I really suggest you check it out. Just Google Fear and Greed Index crypto and you should you should see it.

Tracey: [00:19:14] What about going straight to the source where all the communities hang out? I myself go and check out Discord, and this is an app that you can get on your phone. It's like a private chat room, and all the good projects have one of these. So if you download the app, you can search the project and you can often you're able to invite yourself into that chat. Sometimes you will have to get an invite yourself, but quite often you'll have, you know, really big players of that community in that discord chatting with you. And you know, it's huge now, especially with the NFT space. You know, you can jump in there and find out loads of information. But that is, I think, you know, amassed when researching any new project, anywhere else like that you can think of for community engagement.

Blake: [00:19:57] Yeah. I always check read it. It's, you know, a lot of the chats transitioned over to Discord and they used to be lots of chat on Telegram as well, which is like a messaging app. And yeah, they're probably the main places I would look to see how the community is interacting. And of course, there's Twitter, which is very busy, which is certainly hit and miss, but you can't get your nuggets there.

Tracey: [00:20:24] So if you've determined that the project that you like has got legs and you're looking at all the social media pages, you're finding reliable information about, you know, how to engage in this community, and you're reading very widely on a variety of sources, not just one platform. Then you're halfway there. You're doing all the right things. Another possible way to really concrete your thoughts around this coin would be to look at something called technical analysis. Now what this refers to charting. There's a lot of lines on a chart, things going up and down, lots of candles, people saying things like resistance and support. And that chart may look a lot like constellations and stars, and this is something that is done by traders. Now out of the three of us, there's two of us that have done a bit of trading in our time. One of us possibly trading right now. That means not as long as we record, hopefully. But yeah, and there is a statistic out there that says only three per cent of traders actually make any money. Is that right? 

Blake: [00:21:30] Yes, I like that, and most traders aren't very good. Yeah. And every time you make a trade, you're creating a lot of risk. So it's often takes years and years and years of failure to refine your skill in technical trading. And it's very difficult.

Tracey: [00:21:47] It's a very difficult thing to learn. There are a lot of free or paid courses out there that you can take online if you are interested in going down that path. But it is something that you know someone once told me you basically have to observe for a year and then, you know, try with a practise account for another year and then give it a go. Good for you. So it's something that you have to just keep watching and learning and trying and teach you something that takes a long, long time. And so that's technical analysis.

Craig: [00:22:19] Technical analysis essentially refers to making decisions based on the price. As Tracy mentioned before, there's resistance support. It's quite similar to day trading in equity markets, but crypto isn't to it's 24-7, so you can tell that some day traders age quite quickly. Then again, some investors do it incredibly well. But you know, as you mentioned, three percent people lose money. 

Tracey: [00:22:46] No three percent make money. Ninety seven percent lose money. 

Craig: [00:22:51] There you go. And 66 percent of us are trading out of us today. So the odds are in your favour, guys. Yes, that's technical analysis is not my style personally and yet actually need to know or understand technical analysis to get started. That's why, you know, dollar cost averaging is such a popular strategy with investors. You know, if you have high conviction in a project, you might just want to automate your buys every week or every month. And then it doesn't matter if the price is going up, going down your just dollar cost averaging, so you don't really mind. So I think that's, you know, you don't need to know technical analysis, but for some people, it's it's a thing to consider.

Tracey: [00:23:32] Yeah. So these are all just indicators from fundamental research, talking with the community, looking at research websites and reputable people. This market is not regulated, so a lot of crazy stuff happens. 

Blake: [00:23:44] Exactly right. So, you know, when you're trading on the ASX is very strict rules about things like insider trading, you know, pump and dumps, which essentially means that your people are doing market manipulation. And lots of these things, you know, simply don't apply to the crypto sphere because they're not regulated. So we do have to pay extra caution when we're participating because it is the Wild West. Some things you have to be cautious of when you're participating in the ecosystem is things like pump and dunk groups. You know, we want to steer clear of those because, you know, often you're getting dumped on. If you're participating in these groups, we don't want to rely upon, you know, any individual's advice on social media. And yet Twitter can be a minefield as well, because often you're the influences on Twitter of being paid by the projects to promote them, and they may not necessarily believe in the fundamentals of them. So, you know, we have to be very careful. 

Craig: [00:24:42] Yeah, that's a massive one with the influencers like I've become a victim of, you know, influence on Twitter that, you know, they'll put up this tweet of a coin and they'll say, you know, by now, this is going to go to the moon and then what they'll. Do is they'll just sell and then they'll delete their tweets, so there's like never any evidence that they've clearly just pumped and dumped a coin and it's really dangerous and it happens all the time.

Tracey: [00:25:07] It's also worth mentioning you're talking about these, these pump and dump ism, these influencers and these these personalities on YouTube who you want to not take advice from. But me personally, I've got a couple of people within the industry who I will ring for advice, you know, like, I'll even I'll just hit Blake up and say, you know, I'm looking at this, so you know, you might even have a mentor or someone who's been in the industry for a long time, who you trust and you want to get some advice from. Obviously, you know, you don't want to take someone's, you know, advice verbatim, but you know, if you've got people who you know that have been in the industry for a long time that you trust, it's also good to get the information as well.

Craig: [00:25:43] Well, even just calling someone and talking them through what you why you've come to that conclusion and just using someone as a soundboard, great luck. I think of a call you all the time chasing about these bitcoins that I'm looking at. So it's always good to have a soundboard 

Tracey: [00:25:55] And then we both ape in... and then it goes to

Craig: [00:26:00] Zero. 

Tracey: [00:26:02] And that sounds like a good spot to have a break. When we get back, we'll put the theory into practise and have a good look at a certain coin. Welcome back to the crypto curious. Now let's put all this theory into practise. 

Blake: [00:26:17] Yeah, and the project that we've chosen today is one called Avalanche. Now, Avalanche is a blockchain that's growing massively in popularity over the last year and mainly because it's trying to compete with a Ethereum, and they're doing a pretty good job. So, you know, the first thing that you know we would look at, like Craig mentioned, was go into CoinGecko and now you're looking at its price, looking at how many tokens are in circulation and looking at the market cap. So Craig, do you have any comments about that? 

Craig: [00:26:50] You know, you would you essentially say a Ethereum gas fees are too high? You know, surely there's going to be an and Ethereum lock platform that's going to be cheaper, quicker, easier. So, OK, I'm going to go on CoinGecko and look at the smart contract application category. I'll say, Well, there's Solana, there's Avalanche. That's interesting. I've never heard of Avalanche before, so you know, I go on to add to the avalanche page. I can see that, you know, it's got a multi-billion dollar market cap. It's got, you know, a lot of volume. You know, it looks like it's quite a significant project. So I think, okay, so I wonder who's behind this? So how would I where would I go after that? 

Blake: [00:27:30] Like, I always check, first of all, that it looks legitimate on CoinMarketCap and then, you know, jump on the website and it usually has the founder story. And in this case, the founder of Avalanche was an associate professor of computer science at Cornell University, and he specialised in operating systems, distributed systems and in cryptocurrency research. And he was the founder of an organisation called Ava Labs. And Ava Labs is basically like the the research group that supports the development of the ecosystem. And there's hundreds of employees that you can see on the website, including, you know, prominent managers that have worked in your organisations like Nassar, who has studied at Harvard, worked at, you know, professional consulting firms, and you can see that these people have executed on big projects before. So from that point of view, if I was looking at, you know, speculating on this asset, then from a team and found a point of view, it's a really big tick for me. 

Tracey: [00:28:35] What about the token economics?

Blake: [00:28:37] Yeah. So token economics often needs a little bit more digging. You can have a look on one of these sites like CoinMarketCap or CoinGecko, or you can read the white paper, which is generally on the website of the project that looks to be 220 million AVAX tokens presently in circulation, with a maximum amount of 720 million tokens which could go into circulation. And what's really interesting about the Avacta token is that all the fees that are processed on the Avalanche blockchain, they get burnt, which means, you know, it's a deflationary economic model. And as well as this, there's big incentives to stake avalanche tokens, which means that you can lock them up and generate a reward of something like 10 percent per annum, which is great for a deflationary economic model. Because not only are tokens being burnt, there's many tokens being locked up, further constricting the supply. So from an economics point of view, you know, it looks like they've developed a really great model. 

Craig: [00:29:46] So like theoretically, you could see that it's got 720 maximum cap supply. So what you're saying is, could that potentially decrease because the fees are being burnt? 

Blake: [00:29:59] Exactly. So whenever the fees are burned, it reduces the total supply of the tokens, 

Tracey: [00:30:05] Which in theory means that the price would go up.

Craig: [00:30:07] Hmm. Hmm. OK, interesting. The next stage, you know, you've looked at the token, you looked at the team and you'd say, OK, what's the value proposition? So for Avalanche specifically, the value proposition would be that it's a high speed, low cost and it has properties of being eco friendly. Now bitcoin is a crypto that uses a lot of energy, and this is becoming quite a hot topic in the industry now, similar to, you know, equities in the share market about, you know, what are platforms and what a companies doing to be green and be good for the environment. And the way Avalanche has run is they take a lot less energy and it's a lot less, a lot more better for the environment. 

Tracey: [00:30:49] And if we look at community, Avalanche has got a really healthy and exciting community, one that I'm actually part of. So on Discord, they've got something like, I think it's over 40000 people active in there. And when I was online recently, there were 7000 online and all in conversation and everything really positive. So when you check something like that out, that's all, really. Positive sentiment. 

Blake: [00:31:13] That's right, and what's really different about crypto versus, you know, often crypto projects is that they're open source and you can check the developer activity so you can check your how frequently the developer community is committing code and building the ecosystems. And you know, you don't get the opportunity to speak to the developers and companies that you're generally investing in or or to see the quality of code that they push into a repository. But with this ecosystem, because it does have an open sourced element to it, your people are able to check these things. 

Tracey: [00:31:50] Has anyone found anything that is a bit of a risk or a bit of a con for Avalanche when they're looking at research information? 

Craig: [00:31:57] Yeah. So, you know, Avalanche is a smart contract platform. Now there is a lot of smart contract platforms. You've got a theory and you've got Solana, you've got Cosmos, you've got Polygon. So you know what they're trying to do isn't without competition. So, you know, and you think, how do they differentiate themselves? Let's say the main thing is that they're the greenest, they're probably the greenest out of the lot. So that's sort of what they've got going for them. But you know, it is a highly competitive space. So, yeah, what they're doing is not easy. 

Blake: [00:32:30] Yeah, exactly right. Yeah.

Tracey: [00:32:32] Well, hopefully we've given you some really good indicators there to take away with you when you start to do your own research into some coins. And that's it for today's episode. So please keep the questions coming as we want to know what you want to know about crypto. Send us an email to podcast at Get Bambu Io or follow us on social media. All those details are in the show notes below, and don't forget to write and review us in your podcast app. Thanks for listening to the Crypto Curious Podcast. I'm Tracy. 

Craig: [00:33:00] I'm Blake. I'm Craig. Cheers, guys. 

Tracey: [00:33:02] See you later!

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Meet your hosts

  • Blake Cassidy

    Blake Cassidy

    Blake has a passion for technology and fell down the crypto rabbit hole while studying in Europe in 2015. He then started trading Bitcoins while living in China in 2015 and ever since then has been immersed in the sector. Blake is now the CEO of Bamboo which helps people take their first step into crypto currencies.
  • Craig Jackson

    Craig Jackson

    Craig developed an interest in crypto after hearing about Bitcoin at soccer training in 2017. Since going down the rabbit hole, Craig has endured the ups and downs of crypto, now working in fintech as the Growth Lead at Blossom. Craig enjoys learning about the upcoming innovations in the space and is keen to share them with the Crypto Curious.
  • Tracey Plowman

    Tracey Plowman

    Chief Operations Officer for cutting-edge cryptocurrency app, Bamboo; Tracey Plowman is among just a handful of women taking on executive roles in the digital assets space. Tracey is extremely motivated to encourage more women into technology and believes this can help to empower their investment choices and establish financial freedom. Tracey’s interest in cryptocurrencies was sparked, while working as operations manager for a digital investment fund. This fostered her passion for cryptocurrencies and trading in this new asset class.

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