Top 10 Crypto Research Tools: Finding The Next 100x Altcoin

The idea of cryptocurrencies has only been around since Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin whitepaper in August of 2008. Thus, it’s an incredibly young concept and all the infrastructure surrounding cryptocurrencies is just beginning to form. Cryptocurrency as a larger sector is also, unlike many other sectors, not dominated by traditional players.

Therefore, for new people, as well as crypto veterans it might be hard to know which platforms to use for the most up-to-date news and analytics. Finding them might be hard and without them, you might miss those next 100x altcoins along with valuable information about your investments. That’s why you'll find in this article the top 10 tools to do several types of research from the market as a whole to all your altcoins. 

However, before getting into the list I just want to point out that these platforms are in no particular order. This is because it would be pointless to try and rank platforms with such varying use cases. Additionally, there are also many different sites that you might prefer above those I’ve selected. Many of these have equivalents of some sort which can work just as well, sometimes it’s just about personal preference. 

10. CoinMarketCap

To start things off let’s begin with a simple but useful platform. As many of you might know, CoinMarketCap is for many the go-to place to check crypto prices, me being one of those people. Although the amount of research you can do here is quite limited, it’s still a wonderful place to check the overall state of crypto markets. 

CoinMartketCap features the basic statistics you need to begin your investigation of most any crypto project and its related coin or token. For the market as a whole, you find the number of cryptos out there, the total market cap and volume, along with BTC dominance and ETH gas fees. On top of these, you’ll find top news from all your favorite sites. Then when we move into individual cryptocurrencies CoinMarketCap offers all the basics like price, market cap, volume supply, a brief description, and a few other things. What I like about the platform is that all of this is easy to check, and you can also create your own watchlist.

A useful platform that evolves at a rapid pace. Image via CoinMarketCap. 

Then if you prefer to do some research on new altcoins you’ve never heard about, CoinMarketCap offers a few basic insights you’ll need. First, if you want to find these you can use filters to search coins by market cap, volume, or something else. Then when you find a crypto that sounds cool you can do a quick scan whether it’s likely to be a scam or if it truly might be something to look into further. This you can do by, for example, checking which exchanges offer the crypto. CoinMarketCap also rates the exchanges according to credibility so that you’ll know what exchange to use and whether the crypto is traded on reputable exchanges. After that, you can check the number of active addresses along with token allocation. All of this will give you a good overview before digging deeper. The last thing I want to point out is that probably many of you use Coingecko instead, which is just as good, according to some even better. However, I personally like to use CoinMarketCap. 

9. CryptoPanic

Something that I believe everyone agrees on is that the crypto space is evolving at an unprecedented pace. This means that when you scroll the internet you’ll be hit with a tsunami of content and it’s not possible to have the time to go through everything. That’s where CryptoPanic comes in. They gather the top content from all sites. I’m not just talking about news sites, they have everything from Youtube videos to Twitter posts. 

Therefore, I also use CryptoPanic on top of reading both Cointelegraph and Coindesk every day, and of course, watching every Coin Bureau video. CryptoPanic ensures that I haven’t missed anything. I also like to regularly search for the cryptos in my portfolio to see if there’s anything new about them. However, CryptoPanic isn’t maybe the most user-friendly with its simple layout, so I usually use their links and read the content from the original site.

Lastly, one extremely good feature on CryptoPanic is the ability to vote on posts. This makes it easy to sort the news based on what people are reading and liking. This makes your burden much lighter since the amount of content on CryptoPanic can be quite overwhelming. However, it’s a good site and you should consider bookmarking the page. 

8. CoinMarketCal

Another tool to help you keep up to date is CoinMarketCal. What they do is offer a calendar with all events surrounding many coins, including smaller coins. This is a perfect place to check if any major event is taking place.

For swing traders, it offers the perfect trading research since many cryptos tend to pump before a major event. This can be anything from projects launching on a certain blockchain or an upgrade like EIP 1559 kicking in. Other forms of news found on the calendar could include some exchange listings or ICOs, both being excellent potential trading opportunities.

However, the number of events happening in a rapidly evolving industry like cryptocurrencies is quite a lot which is why you can filter these events. CoinMarketCal functions such in a way that it depends on the community to post new events. Then they allow community members to vote on the events listed to indicate whether they're likely to happen or not. This allows you to sort for only major events which usually include events like the launch of EIP 1559. On top of that, you can sort if you only want to see news of a certain crypto or maybe just the top 10 cryptos. However, want to know the best part of all of this? CoinMarketCal is completely free.

7. TradingView

Now, a platform I simply must mention is TradingView. This is by far the best charting tool out there, at least according to me. I’m not going to get into this too deeply since you’ll find an article about TradingView from Coin Bureau. However, there are a few things I want to talk about.

If you’re familiar with technical analysis then I guarantee that you’ve seen someone use TradingView, or perhaps you use it yourself. This is because TradingView offers everything you’ll ever need. They offer tools that allow you to draw your own analysis along with every known indicator you could ever need. Not only have they integrated the most famous indicators, but they also allow their community to create their own indicators and share them. You can find these from the indicators button. To make it easier to know which ones to use, TradingView offers the opportunity to like these public indicators and the number of likes is displayed next to the name. Overall, TradingView is the best, which is why I suggest you head on to Coin Bureau to read the article after which you can head onto TradingView to create your own account and start researching.

6. Glassnode

Glassnode is an on-chain analysis tool, which I’m sure many of you have heard of. It’s often used by news sites like Coindesk as a reference to the statistics they reference. This itself shows its credibility which makes it one tool I prefer to use. Glassnode gives us a wide variety of on-chain analytics and therefore if you're not familiar with on-chain analysis you might be overwhelmed. That’s why I’m going to borrow the wisdom of our crypto guru Guy at Coin Bureau to introduce you to a few possibly valuable metrics.

One is net unrealized profit/loss (NUPL). This metric, as the name suggests, shows how many active HODLers are sitting on profit versus loss. The reason this metric is valuable is that when euphoria strikes more and more people are sitting on unrealized profits. This naturally creates looming selling pressure waiting to be realized if something unexpected were to happen. On the flip side, a substantial number being in the red might be a sign to enter, especially if the dip has already happened and the price is moving sideways. This shows that weak hands have been shaken out and the rest will HODL. This makes sell pressure small which naturally might entice buyers since their risk/reward is looking good.

Another useful metric often used is active addresses. This is probably something many of you’ve heard about but it’s still worth mentioning. The number of addresses perfectly states the long-term adoption of that crypto. If active addresses increase it means further adoption which is always bullish no matter what crypto we’re talking about.

Those are just two of many useful metrics Glassnode has to offer. However, they don’t offer everything for free. Glassnode has a free plan which in their own words offers the most fundamental on-chain analysis. Then if you need more up-to-date information along with a few additional metrics you’re going to need to pay for their advanced plan at $29 a month. This plan should get you everything you need for even the most thorough analysis. However, Glassnode does offer a plan for $799 a month. Not something the average retail investor might splash out on. That’s why I suggest you start with the free plan and move up to the advanced if you like the service and feel the need to upgrade. 

5. Messari

When first entering cryptocurrencies there’s no denying that many of us were dreaming of finding those 100x altcoins. However, to do that you need to know where to look and scrolling through all the over 11,000 cryptocurrencies might be a pain in the … well you know what...since a high percentage of available cryptos are, as Guy likes to call them, shit coins. 

Luckily for us, we have Messari to help us alleviate the pain. I might have heard from a YouTube video from Coin Bureau that Messari is the go-to place for Guy when he’s searching for those next super altcoins. This is because the Messari crypto screener is one of the best out there. There is a wide range of metrics you can filter by to narrow down the search. These include the likes of market cap, volume, time from ATH, % down from ATH, category, and a lot more. The important thing with Messari and volume is that they report the actual volume and not the one reported by many sketchy exchanges. On top of all that, to make your life even easier when scrolling through these coins, Messari has a trusted badge next to those cryptos that they have verified, they have also listed the top trusted exchanges for you to know where to trade.

Although I mainly use Messari for their crypto screener, they do offer much more. One thing they offer is research reports by the community on several topics. This is a terrific way to find those interesting altcoins without having to dig through everything yourself. Because they offer so much valuable information you will have to pay $29.99 for the pro plan ($24.99 if you subscribe for a year) but if you’re a crypto fanatic then it might be worth it to pay for the plan.

4. CryptoQuant

Keeping us in the same category, here is another awesome analytics tool. CryptoQuant offers visual charts of just about everything, which makes it another tool to use to see what others are doing. I don’t want to bore you with going through everything they offer, which is why I’ll stick to a few metrics and explain why they might come in handy.

First, a particularly useful metric to try to find the top is all exchanges' net flows. Naturally, this gives you a sense of whether people are planning to sell or hold. If there’s an increase in the flow to exchanges then a drop might be near, 'cause if not to sell your coins why would you move them to an exchange? The same goes the other way around. If there’s a growing outflow it means that more and more people are planning to HODL. Although one thing to keep in mind is that if there have been major outflows it might leave the exchanges with small supplies which might lead to stronger price movements both upwards and downwards, so brace yourself for some volatility.

On top of the retail investors who move coins to and from exchanges there are also a few other, bigger, players out there, most notably the miners. Naturally, miners also sell their coins occasionally, whether it be to pay taxes or to invest in new equipment. This mining data can be tracked on CryptoQuant and looking at it might again help you spot the top. If miners are moving funds around then it might mean that they intend to dump certain holdings soon. You can further check this by looking at all miners to exchange flows. 

Combining these fund flow metrics with other metrics from some of the platforms talked about should give you quite a comprehensive view of what’s going on. I therefore strongly suggest you not only look at these statistics alone but rather combine them as much as you can. 

3. Bybt

Now, many of you might have heard or seen the word liquidation used when the market crashed. For those of you who don’t know what it means I’ll explain in one sentence. Liquidations mean that leveraged traders are forced to sell what's left of their holdings due to the price action of the asset which has caused them to lose money. This often happens when BTC plummets and when it happens it makes the dip much stronger.

To track the amount liquidated we have Bybt. Bybt is a derivatives analytics tool that gives more experienced traders a great amount of useful information. However, for more inexperienced traders the number of liquidations offers good insights. This can give you much-needed comfort when seeing that a crash was caused due to liquidations and not any fundamental reasons.

Another useful insight Bybt offers is the flow of funds to and from Grayscale. As many of you might know, Grayscale is by far the largest digital assets manager and is also the go-to place for institutional investors looking for crypto exposure. Looking at these statistics is important for seeing how institutional adoption is moving forward. However, one thing I want to mention that was recently announced is that ARK invest is moving its Bitcoin exposure away from Grayscale to Canadian ETFs. This will then show a negative impact on Grayscale statistics but naturally, it shouldn't harm the wider crypto markets since the amount invested is the same but just on a different platform. So, keep your eyes open for any news if you see some abnormalities in the statistics. 

2. Lunar Crush

To save yourself from countless hours scrolling through YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter to gather information on whether the community is positive about a project you can use Lunar Crush. Lunar Crush gathers all the information found on the web from the price actions to Google search trends. Then, using AI and a lot higher IQ technologies way out of my knowledge level, they form a few different rankings for you two to know what the sentiment around a crypto is.  

The first is their Galaxy score. This is a score that measures the crypto against itself using four performance indicators, found in the picture below. When all of these are combined it gives you the Galaxy score. The higher the score, the better the project. The other ranking system is the Altrank. This compares the project's price actions and data to Bitcoin, and number 1 is the best. You can also easily sort the list to show you the best first.

If you don’t like Lunar Crush then I have another suggestion for you, CryptoMood. This is a pure sentiment analysis tool that can give you much-needed information for trading. However, it will cost you if you want full access, which is why you might want to head to their website to do some research and see if it might be something for you.

1. 3Commas

This is for all those who like to trade. 3Commas has been in the industry since 2017 which has given them time to create a platform that offers a variety of different things including both crypto bots and normal trading. However, why I wanted to bring this platform to this list is the same reason as Guy had in his video on crypto research tools. Their ability to test your trading strategy and paper trading.

**Important Security Notice** In December 2022, 3Commas users reported unauthorized transactions on their exchange accounts, resulting in unauthorized trading and there have been claims of stolen funds. At first, 3Commas stated that the result was likely a large-scale phishing attack that customers fell for, but further investigations show that there was a hack and users' API keys were leaked. 3Commas is recommending all existing users review and update their API keys.

3Commas has since upgraded its security, but users were left upset and demanding apologies after the 3Commas team handled the event very poorly and were criticized for "gaslighting" and falsely blaming users.

Yes, 3Commas has had community traders create a way to test your own trading strategy on historic price actions. And while it’s said that you can’t rely on past success, you still must acknowledge that all trading strategies have been formed on the premise that they have worked in the past. However, it’s not guaranteed, which is why paper trading is a safe way to further test your strategy. Although I haven't myself tried paper trading on 3Commas, I have heard a lot of good things. The only criticism is that it doesn't consider volumes. Therefore, keep that in mind and stick to cryptocurrencies with large volumes since that’ll be more realistic. Trading a low liquidity crypto is of substantial risk and can cause some major losses. 

Conclusion

Finishing this article was painful for me since there are many great platforms left unmentioned and I bet that many of you feel that some of my picks should be swapped with something else. However, as I mentioned in the beginning, a lot is based on personal preference. Some platforms might have the same information but maybe the other one uses your favorite color. Naturally, the platform with your favorite color will be your pick. Also, if you’re interested in what Guy at Coin Bureau picked for his top 10 then you should watch this video. 

Additionally, if I write this same list in one year it might be completely different. New research tools and firms are appearing rapidly and keeping up with all of them is impossible. The platforms chosen for this article are well established and shouldn't be gone anytime soon but the chance that someone creates an even better version of the same thing isn’t unlikely at all. The ones here can also work for you as benchmarks for any other platforms you use. It’s extremely good to compare sites head-to-head to find out which one can offer you better information along with a better user experience and for the cheapest price. 

Finally, now that you have these tools along with the ones you have used before, the only thing left to do is to open your portfolio and review your holdings. Find out if you need to adjust anything before heading out and hunting for those 100x projects.