AI x Crypto Lesson 4: How to Research a Crypto Token

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Lesson 4 - How I do research on Token Pages on CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap & DEX Tools

By now you already understand:

• What crypto and blockchain are

• The difference between coins and tokens

• CEX vs DEX

• How wallets and security actually work

Let’s get to the part most beginners rush into with zero preparation:

Looking at tokens and trying to decide what they’re actually dealing with.

In this lesson, I’ll show you how I personally read token pages on sites like CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap, and DEX tools (for example DEX pair pages).

Before that, I’ll walk you through:

• What the main numbers and sections mean

• How I quickly spot “this is at least serious” vs “this smells like a joke or a trap”

• How AI tools help me summarise, compare, and sanity-check projects

I will also give you concrete examples using well-known coins and tokens, so it doesn’t stay abstract.

1. Why I Always Start With Aggregator Sites

When I hear about a new coin or token - maybe from X, Telegram, or a friend, I never rely only on what the project itself says.

The first thing I do is:

• Search the token on CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap.

• If it’s very new and only on DEXs, I look it up on a pair explorer like DEXTools/ DexScreener.

  

These sites are like crypto “profile pages”.

They pull data from the blockchain and from exchanges and put it all in one place:

• Price

• Market cap

• Trading volume

• Liquidity

• Links to website, socials, and contract address

• Sometimes tags (like “meme”, “AI”, “DeFi”, etc.)

  

  Coingecko

If the token isn’t listed anywhere yet and has no reliable page, that’s already a sign for me:
“I’m early, or this is too early or too risky for serious money.”

2. The Basic Structure of a CoinGecko / CoinMarketCap Page

Let me break down the typical sections you might see.
You’ll notice they’re very similar, whether you check:

• A big coin (like Bitcoin $BTC ( ▼ 1.41% ) - BTC, Ethereum - ETH $ETH ( ▼ 1.81% ) , BNB $BNB ( ▼ 2.15% ) )

• Or a smaller token (like CAKE $CAKE ( ▼ 0.2% ) , SHIB $SHIB ( ▼ 1.68% ) , PEPE $PEPE ( ▼ 2.63% ) , a random meme token)

2.1 Top Section - Name, Ticker, Price

At the top of the page you usually see:

• Name - e.g. Bitcoin, Ethereum, PancakeSwap, Shiba Inu

• Ticker - e.g. BTC, ETH, CAKE, SHIB

• Current Price - e.g. $60,000 / $3,000 / $2.50 / $0.00002

Example:

• Bitcoin $BTC ( ▼ 1.41% ) (BTC) - native coin of the Bitcoin blockchain

• Ethereum $ETH ( ▼ 1.81% ) (ETH) - native coin of the Ethereum blockchain

• BNB - native coin of BNB Chain

• CAKE - token of PancakeSwap, built on BNB Chain

• SHIB - meme token built on Ethereum

This is the basic identity of what you’re looking at.

How I think here:
If I see a name that sounds like an obvious rip-off (e.g. “Bitcoiin 2.0”, “EthereumGold++”), I already get cautious.

A legitimate project can have a fun name (like SHIB or PEPE), but clones of well-known names with tiny changes are usually low-effort.

2.2 Market Cap - How Big Is This Thing?

Market cap (market capitalization) is: Current price × circulating supply

It gives a rough idea of the size of the coin or token.

Example:

• If a token is $0.10 and there are 1 billion in circulation, market cap ≈ $100 million.

• If another token is $1 but only 1 million tokens exist, market cap ≈ $1 million.

So a token with price $0.000001 isn’t automatically “cheap” - if there are trillions of tokens, market cap can still be huge.

How I use market cap:

• BTC and ETH are large cap - hundreds of billions.

• Established DeFi tokens like CAKE, UNI, LINK often sit in the hundreds of millions to low billions range.

• New meme tokens launched yesterday might have very small market caps ($100k-$5M).

Market cap tells me:

• How much room there might be to grow

• How much risk I’m taking (small caps can move fast both up and down)

I don’t obsess over the exact number, but I always check it.

2.3 Volume - Is Anyone Actually Trading This?

24h Volume is how much value has been traded over the last 24 hours.

For example:

• BTC might have billions in 24h volume

• A mid-cap token like CAKE might have tens of millions

• A random low-cap meme token might have only a few thousand

Why I care about volume:

• High volume = easier to enter and exit positions

• Ultra-low volume = you might get stuck; you buy, but later there’s nobody to sell to without crashing the price

If I see:

• Market cap $244M

• But 24h volume only $140k

  

  I think: “Hmm, this thing is barely trading. This is illiquid.”

2.4 Price Chart - Past Performance (Not a Crystal Ball)

Every token page shows a price chart:

• 24h

• 7 days

• 30 days

• 90 days

• 1 year

• All time

  

I use this mostly for context:

• Is it in a crazy pump?

• Has it just crashed 80%?

• Has it slowly grown over months?

Examples:

• BTC long-term chart shows multiple cycles (bull runs and big crashes).

• Many meme tokens show a huge spike followed by a slow bleed downward.

I don’t use the chart as a “buy now” signal; I use it to understand the story so far.

2.5 Supply - Circulating / Total / Max

Tokens often display:

• Circulating supply - how many are currently trading in the market

• Total supply - how many currently exist

• Max supply - maximum that will ever exist (if defined)

Examples:

• Bitcoin (BTC) - max supply 21 million; circulating close to that cap

• Ethereum (ETH) - no strict fixed max like BTC, but supply behavior is influenced by burning & issuance

• Many meme tokens - supply can be in trillions or quadrillions

• PancakeSwap - has a tokenomics model with emissions and burns over time

Why I check supply:

• If max supply is huge (like 1 quadrillion tokens), the price can show many zeros - this tricks beginners into thinking “if it just goes to $1 I’m rich”, but that might be impossible with that supply.

• If circulating supply is small compared to total or max, I know there might be big unlocks or emissions in the future.

I don’t need to calculate everything, but I want a rough sense of:

“Is this supply realistic for the story they are selling?”

2.6 Contract Address & Chain

For tokens, one of the most important pieces of information is:

• Contract address (a long 0x… address)

• Which chain it lives on (Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, etc.)

The contract address is: The technical “home” of the token on the blockchain.

Example:

• CAKE has a BEP-20 contract on BNB Chain.

• SHIB has an ERC-20 contract on Ethereum.

• Many scam tokens try to copy names but use different contract addresses.

When I want to trade on a DEX like PancakeSwap or Uniswap, I always copy the contract address from CoinGecko/CoinMarketCap or from the project’s official links - never from random comments.

If the token you’re checking is not a coin but a token, this contract address is your best friend to avoid fakes.

2.7 Links - Website, Whitepaper, Socials

Good token pages also show:

• Official website

• Whitepaper or docs

• Twitter / X

• Telegram / Discord

• GitHub (for more technical projects)

I click these to check:

• Does the website look somewhat professional?

• Does the story match what I see on CMC/CG?

• Is there an active community?

• Are they promising crazy “guaranteed returns” (red flag)?

Example:

• A serious DeFi token like AAVE has a clean site, docs, and GitHub.

• A meme token might have a funny theme, but should still be clear about what it is (meme/community token) instead of fake utilities.

3. Reading DEX Pair Pages (Like DEXTools/DexScreener)

When a token is very new, it might not be listed on CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap yet.

In that case, a lot of on-chain traders use tools like:

• DEXTools

• DexScreener

• GeckoTerminal

These sites show pair information:

• Token vs base asset (e.g. TOKEN / BNB, TOKEN / ETH, TOKEN / USDT)

• Liquidity in the pool

• Volume

• Price chart

• Recent trades

• Sometimes basic security flags (honeypot, max tx, etc.)

3.1 Liquidity (Explained in Lesson 2) - How Much Is in the Pool?

For a DEX pair, I always look at liquidity:

• If a pool has $5M liquidity, that’s plenty for normal trading.

• If it has $5k, then even a small buy or sell may move the price massively.

Example:

• A new BNB Chain meme pair with $20k liquidity is extremely fragile.

• A more established CAKE/BNB pool with millions in liquidity is much more stable.

This is crucial for understanding slippage and execution risk.

3.2 Basic Risk Flags

Some DEX tools (or linked scanners) show warnings like:

• “Honeypot: can’t sell”

• “Owner can blacklist”

• “High tax”

It’s not perfect, but if I see multiple red warnings, I automatically consider it high risk, especially for beginners.

4. How AI Helps Me Read and Compare Tokens

Now for the fun part: using AI as my research assistant.

I don’t sit there manually reading every token page for 2 hours.
I use AI to compress information and highlight what matters and here is exactly how.

4.1 Summarising a Token Page in Plain Language

If I’m looking at a new project and the page is full of buzzwords, I often open an AI chat (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity) and do something like:

• Copy the token description from the website or CMC/CG page

• Paste it into AI and ask:

  “Summarise this project in 5-7 bullet points for a complete beginner. Focus on what it does, what chain it runs on, its token use, and main risks. Don't hype it, just explain.”

AI then rewrites it into something I can digest.

If it still feels like nonsense, that tells me a lot about the project.

4.2 Comparing Two Tokens Side by Side

When I’m torn between two projects, I ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude to compare:

“Compare Token A (link/description) and Token B (link/description).
Explain how they differ in use case, chain, tokenomics model, and level of risk. Keep it neutral and beginner-friendly.”

For example:

• Compare CAKE (PancakeSwap token on BNB Chain) vs UNI (Uniswap token on Ethereum)

• Or LINK (Chainlink) vs AAVE

I still make my own decision, but this saves me hours of researching.

4.3 Getting Clarification on Specific Metrics

If something confuses me, like:

• “What does fully diluted valuation mean here?”

• “Why is volume high but market cap low?”

• “What does this tag (AI, DeFi, RWA) really mean in this context?”

I just ask AI:

“Explain what [metric] means in this token page. Use this example: [paste relevant numbers]. Explain like I’m new to crypto.”

AI gives me a custom explanation based on the exact numbers I’m seeing, not just general theory.

4.4 Asking AI to Highlight Red Flags

Sometimes I go a step further:

“Here is some info about a token (description, tokenomics, links).
Pretend you are my risk manager. List potential red flags or questions I should ask before I think about investing. Don’t assume or guess, just give me things to double-check.”

AI might point out:

• Anonymous team

• No audit

• No clear utility or roadmap

• Very concentrated holders

• High buy/sell tax

This doesn’t mean “it’s automatically a scam,” but it gives me a checklist.

5. Key Takeaways From This Lesson

By the time you finish this lesson, here’s what I want you to feel:

When someone sends you a token name on Telegram, you no longer feel lost. You know exactly where to go and what to look at.

You now understand that on a token page you can quickly find:

• What it is - coin or token, on which chain

• How big it is - via market cap

• How active it is - via 24h volume

• How it has moved - via price chart

• What its supply looks like - circulating vs total vs max

• How to avoid fakes - using official contract addresses and links

• Where to dig deeper - website, socials, docs

And you saw how AI can act like your:

• Summariser

• Translator

• Comparison engine

• Risk assistant

This combination - basic reading skills + AI support is incredibly powerful for beginners.

In the next lessons, we’ll go a level deeper into tokenomics and narratives and then into using AI to create your own token idea, but everything starts from being able to read a simple token page without feeling overwhelmed.

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