What I check before buying anything
Not a formula, and not a signal service. The questions I actually work through, in the order I work through them.
People assume there is a screen somewhere with the answer on it. There is not. What I have is an order of questions, and most things fail before I reach the end.
First: what am I actually buying
Not the story. The thing.
Who runs it, what it does that something else does not, and who is paying for it to exist. If I cannot answer those three in plain Hindi to someone who does not follow crypto, I do not understand it well enough to own it.
That test is harsher than it sounds. A lot of projects survive only because the explanation stays vague.
Second: who is already holding it
If a small number of wallets hold most of the supply, then the price is a decision those wallets make, not a market. Token unlock schedules matter for the same reason. A project with a large release coming has a known seller arriving on a known date, and the people selling know it before you do.
Third: what would prove me wrong
I write this down before buying, and it has saved me more money than any indicator.
Not a price, a reason. “I bought this because the team ships every month” has a clear failure condition. “I bought this because it will go up” has none, which is why it turns into holding something for two years out of stubbornness.
Fourth: how much, and can I sit through the fall
I assume a 70% fall at some point, because in crypto that is normal rather than exceptional. Then I ask whether I would hold calmly through it at the size I am considering.
If the honest answer is no, the size is wrong. Not the idea, the size. This is the question most people skip entirely, and it is the one that decides outcomes.
Fifth: tax
In India a gain is taxed at 30% and a loss offsets nothing. So a plan that involves trading in and out repeatedly is worse here than the same plan elsewhere, even when every call is right. That belongs in the decision, not in a panic each filing season.
Sixth: what would make me sell
Decided now, while I have no position and no feelings about it. Later, when it is up 200% or down 50%, I will be a measurably worse decision maker than I am today.
What is not on the list
Anyone else’s conviction. Including mine.
If the only reason you can give for owning something is that a person you trust owns it, you have not bought an asset, you have borrowed a belief. When it falls you will have no way to tell whether to hold or sell, because the reasoning was never yours.