Shanzhai Bull Market Profits: How to Choose Between Tenfold and Hundredfold Coins

Many investors often ask the same question during a bull market—since you can earn 100x, why bother with 10x coins? This question is well-phrased, but the answer might challenge your perception.

The Risk and Reward Balance Game

During a bull market, altcoins indeed rarely go to zero, but that doesn’t mean every one will rise. Projects with small market caps and lacking full recognition often have only two outcomes: either they skyrocket far beyond 100x or see modest gains or even losses. Lack of capital attention, institutional support, or team strength can cause projects to quickly decline after the market enthusiasm wanes.

Therefore, smart investors need to build a portfolio—using fundamentally supported 10x coins as a base layer for guaranteed profits, and high-growth potential 100x coins for big gains. 10x coins can give you certainty in profits during a bull market, with a limited ceiling but a guaranteed lower bound; 100x coins offer unlimited possibilities, at the cost of accepting more uncertainty.

The Logic of Identifying 10x Coins

Before starting the screening process, there’s an important premise to unify: the following standards ignore sector rotation effects and unexpected events—latter are hard to predict, former are impossible to foresee. You can use this basic logic to add positions in strong-performing sectors, potentially achieving 100x or even higher returns.

Leading coins are usually the starting point for 10x. Besides major public chains like Bitcoin and Ethereum, and niche sectors like privacy coins, IoT, wallets, most mainstream sectors have clear valuation repair space.

For example, in the DEX sector, the historical peak market cap was $110 billion, currently only $14.57 billion, leaving nearly 8x room to the high point. The leading Uniswap (UNI) also has innovations like V3 and UniswapX supporting it, making a 10x space easy to buy into.

Emerging sectors’ leaders are even more explosive. The L2 sector’s OP now has a total market cap of $2 billion, while the previous leader Polygon (MATIC) peaked at $26 billion, leaving 3.5x growth potential for OP. When you are optimistic about a new leader in a sector being undervalued, buying often means jumping 10x.

For non-leader coins, the criteria are more complex. These coins are not the top players, and their gains could even far exceed 10x, making them candidates for “tens of times coins” screening.

How to evaluate specifically?

Step 1: Confirm the project is still alive

Check trading volume and price trend on CoinMarketCap to see if they are normal, and whether they are listed on major exchanges. For on-chain tokens, look at liquidity conditions. Review social media engagement—Telegram and Discord follower activity often reflects real heat.

Step 2: Dig into the project’s background strength

See if founders and project teams are publicly visible or have given interviews. Check discussion activity and likes on YouTube and Twitter. Use sites like ChainBroker to verify backing from investment institutions—support from well-known VCs greatly enhances credibility. Then, check the project’s official website and data platforms like Dextool for trading volume, TVL, and other indicators, and see if the trend is upward.

Step 3: Can the tokenomics support a skyrocket?

Circulating supply and max supply (corresponding to MC and FDV) are key. If there will be large token unlocks soon, FDV becomes the valuation ceiling; if unlocks are minimal, focus on MC. Check the project’s market cap ranking within its sector—preferably a “hidden dark horse” with a ranking not at the top but with fundamentals far exceeding its position.

Token psychology cannot be ignored—lower price per token often attracts retail investors more strongly. Like SHIB back then, where hundreds of yuan could buy hundreds of millions of tokens, this “sense of quantity” easily attracts later buyers.

Issuance method also matters—fair issuance may lack funds but can generate heat with support from big VCs; pre-mined tokens depend on VC and team share and lock-up periods. Honest projects usually won’t dump early.

Step 4: Chip and empowerment analysis

Check whale holdings on blockchain explorers. Early accumulation by whales can be good for price manipulation, indicating a whale-controlled project. Review the white paper’s token empowerment design—projects with actual token utility often have stronger upward momentum. Compare with tokens like CRV, which initially had no utility, but when new use cases (like minting) appeared, demand surged, and the price naturally soared.

The Importance of Continuous Monitoring

After selecting targets, monitoring must continue. Regularly search for relevant news on top domestic and international media (relying on a single media can miss info), and compare the latest developments with the project roadmap to judge if progress is normal. Focus on positive news about token utility and token burn—these short-term catalysts often help identify secondary opportunities through chart patterns.

If recent news is frequent, it indicates either the project’s heat is rising or the project is starting to spend on marketing. Both situations warrant close attention to secondary price movements.

Mastering this 10x coin screening logic, combined with deep understanding of 100x coins, will enable you to ensure profit certainty while not missing explosive opportunities during a bull market.