Unit 3 · Level 5 · AI × crypto
AI-coin diligence
In every hype wave, hundreds of coins bolt the hot word onto their name. In 2024-25 the word was 'AI'. Some projects ship real software; many ship a website, a roadmap, and a token. Your edge is embarrassingly simple: most buyers never check whether the product exists. You will. Ten minutes of verification beats ten hours of Telegram sentiment.
Free to play. No ads, no token, no account needed to start.
What you get asked
What separates a 'narrative coin' from a product with a token?
The dividing line is verifiability: working software, real users, real fees. Exchange listings and price levels tell you about marketing, not substance, and plenty of narrative coins pump for months first.
Order a sensible 15-minute diligence check on a coin claiming 'AI-powered trading infrastructure'
Product first: if step 1 finds nothing to use, steps 2-5 are usually formalities. Vague docs full of adjectives are a finding, not a gap.
A project's site says: 'Our proprietary neural engine leverages advanced AI to optimize yields.' No demo, no docs, no code. How should a graduate read this?
Real teams show something: papers, demos, verifiable results. 'Proprietary and secret' plus 'trust us' is the same pitch as Bitconnect's trading bot, which was, of course, secret too.
When a token's market cap is huge but its product has almost no users or fees, the price is mostly ___ .
Nothing wrong with knowing you hold a story. The danger is believing you hold cash flow. Label the position honestly and size it accordingly.
Why do narrative coins keep working on buyers, cycle after cycle?
FOMO is instant; reading docs takes an evening. Veterans get fooled too, as the psychology course keeps warning. Your checklist is the antidote precisely because it's boring. 🐜
The rest of this unit
Agents with wallets, decentralized compute, narrative coins, and the deepfakes hunting your keys.