# 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.

- URL: https://pushpendra.info/articles/what-i-check-before-buying
- Author: Pushpendra Singh
- Language: English
- Topics: process, research, risk

---

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.

---

Written by Pushpendra Singh, crypto educator and founder of SmartViewAI, Top Crypto Educator at
Consensus 2025. Not financial or tax advice. https://pushpendra.info