# 50 AI Prompts for Crypto Research

DayOneBuilder
Version: 2026-04-01

How to use:
- Replace bracketed placeholders with the token, protocol, chain, or thesis you are researching.
- Ask the model to cite assumptions and separate facts from inference.
- For high-stakes decisions, use these prompts as structure, not as financial advice.

## 1. Quick Thesis

### 1. Token Thesis Snapshot
Prompt:
You are a crypto analyst. Give me a one-page investment thesis for [TOKEN]. Cover what it does, who it serves, what demand driver matters most, what can break the thesis, and what would make the asset obviously mispriced.

### 2. Bull vs Bear Case
Prompt:
Create the strongest bull case and strongest bear case for [TOKEN]. Use the same evidence standard for both sides. End with the 3 facts that would decide which side is winning.

### 3. Why Now
Prompt:
Explain why [TOKEN] might matter now instead of six months ago. Focus on catalysts, narrative fit, product launches, token unlocks, governance events, integrations, or shifts in market structure.

### 4. Fast Filter
Prompt:
I need a 5-minute filter for [TOKEN]. Tell me whether this deserves deeper work. Score it from 1 to 10 on utility, traction, token alignment, moat, and downside reflexivity. Keep it tight.

### 5. Portfolio Fit
Prompt:
Analyze whether [TOKEN] fits a portfolio that already holds [LIST CURRENT POSITIONS]. Explain overlap, diversification, hidden correlation, and whether [TOKEN] adds a new source of upside or just duplicates risk.

## 2. Whitepaper Review

### 6. Whitepaper Summary
Prompt:
Summarize the whitepaper for [PROJECT]. Break it into problem, solution, architecture, token role, roadmap, and open questions. Use plain language and avoid founder marketing phrasing.

### 7. Technical Claims Audit
Prompt:
List every major technical claim in the whitepaper for [PROJECT]. For each claim, explain what evidence would confirm it, what evidence would weaken it, and whether the claim sounds differentiated or generic.

### 8. Token Utility Check
Prompt:
Read the token section of [PROJECT] and assess whether the token is actually necessary. Separate real utility from governance theater, fee abstraction, or vague incentive language.

### 9. Missing Details Review
Prompt:
Review the whitepaper for [PROJECT] and identify what is missing. Focus on assumptions that are hand-waved, incentives that are under-specified, and areas where implementation detail is too thin to trust.

### 10. Rewrite for Clarity
Prompt:
Rewrite the core idea of [PROJECT] as if you were explaining it to a smart crypto user who hates hype. Keep the meaning intact, but strip out buzzwords, padding, and empty claims.

## 3. Tokenomics

### 11. Tokenomics Breakdown
Prompt:
Break down the tokenomics of [TOKEN]. Cover total supply, circulating supply, unlock schedule, insider allocation, emissions, burn mechanics, staking, and likely sell-pressure windows.

### 12. Unlock Risk
Prompt:
Analyze token unlock risk for [TOKEN] over the next 12 months. Explain who unlocks, when, how large each unlock is relative to float, and what the market usually misprices in this type of setup.

### 13. Incentive Alignment
Prompt:
Assess whether the tokenomics of [TOKEN] align users, builders, LPs, and insiders. Show where incentives reinforce each other and where they create exit-liquidity or governance capture risk.

### 14. Emissions Stress Test
Prompt:
Stress test [TOKEN] if emissions stay high while organic demand disappoints. Explain what happens to price, liquidity depth, user quality, TVL, and governance participation.

### 15. Token Sink Map
Prompt:
List every credible token sink for [TOKEN]. Rank them by likely impact over 3 months, 12 months, and 24 months. Be skeptical about sinks that depend on future roadmap promises.

## 4. Competitive Landscape

### 16. Competitor Map
Prompt:
Map the competitive landscape for [PROJECT]. Compare it to [COMPETITOR 1], [COMPETITOR 2], and [COMPETITOR 3] on product scope, token design, distribution, defensibility, and valuation framing.

### 17. Wedge Analysis
Prompt:
What is the wedge for [PROJECT]? Explain the narrow reason a user would switch to it, stay with it, or talk about it. If there is no clear wedge, say that plainly.

### 18. Narrative Positioning
Prompt:
Place [PROJECT] inside the current crypto narrative stack. Is it infra, DeFi, AI x crypto, consumer, yield, restaking, or something else? Explain whether the narrative helps adoption or only helps attention.

### 19. Defensibility
Prompt:
Assess how defensible [PROJECT] really is. Compare switching costs, network effects, liquidity moats, data moats, integrations, and brand. Tell me what part can be copied in a quarter.

### 20. Valuation Relative Check
Prompt:
Compare [TOKEN] to a peer set of similar assets. Highlight which metrics make it look cheap, which make it look expensive, and which comparisons are misleading because the businesses are not actually alike.

## 5. On-Chain and Usage

### 21. Traction Questions
Prompt:
Tell me what on-chain or product usage metrics matter most for [PROJECT]. Prioritize the metrics that reveal durable usage instead of mercenary liquidity or incentive farming.

### 22. Wallet Behavior
Prompt:
Explain what wallet behavior I should inspect for [TOKEN] to detect smart accumulation, insider distribution, sybil activity, or whale concentration risk.

### 23. Revenue Quality
Prompt:
For [PROJECT], explain how to judge whether protocol revenue is real. Separate organic fees from circular incentives, wash activity, subsidized usage, and temporary event spikes.

### 24. TVL Quality
Prompt:
Analyze TVL quality for [PROJECT]. What makes its TVL sticky or fragile? Explain how I should discount TVL when it is driven by point programs, mercenary capital, or recursive collateral loops.

### 25. User Funnel
Prompt:
Break down the likely user funnel for [PROJECT] from first touch to repeated usage. Identify where users drop off and which metric would best reveal whether adoption is actually compounding.

## 6. Risk and Red Flags

### 26. Red Flag Scan
Prompt:
Do a red-flag scan on [PROJECT]. Look for token unlock cliffs, opaque treasury control, unaudited contracts, admin key risk, dependency on one chain, governance theater, and low-quality traction.

### 27. Failure Modes
Prompt:
List the top 10 failure modes for [PROJECT]. For each one, explain probability, severity, early warning signs, and what evidence would tell me the failure mode is starting to happen.

### 28. Governance Capture Risk
Prompt:
Assess whether governance in [PROJECT] is meaningfully decentralized or functionally controlled by insiders, whales, or a foundation. Be specific about how capture could affect tokenholders.

### 29. Smart Contract Risk Questions
Prompt:
Give me the best due-diligence questions to ask about the smart contracts behind [PROJECT]. Focus on upgradeability, privilege boundaries, external dependencies, oracle assumptions, and blast radius.

### 30. Reputation Risk
Prompt:
Analyze founder, treasury, and reputation risk around [PROJECT]. What behavior patterns from the team, treasury management, or communication style would make you distrust the project?

## 7. DeFi Strategy and Yield

### 31. Yield Quality
Prompt:
Assess yield quality for [PROTOCOL OR POOL]. Separate real cash flow or economic activity from token subsidy, leverage loops, and hidden counterparty risk.

### 32. LP Position Review
Prompt:
Evaluate whether providing liquidity to [POOL] makes sense. Cover fee opportunity, impermanent loss risk, depth, volatility regime, and what kind of market conditions would break the trade.

### 33. Strategy Comparison
Prompt:
Compare three ways to get exposure to [TOKEN OR THESIS]: spot, staking, and LPing. Rank them by expected upside, risk, complexity, and suitability for a medium-term investor.

### 34. Stablecoin Exposure Audit
Prompt:
Audit the stablecoin and bridge exposure inside [PROTOCOL]. Tell me where hidden chain risk, depeg risk, or bridge risk can leak into what looks like a simple yield position.

### 35. Exit Liquidity Risk
Prompt:
Analyze exit liquidity risk for [TOKEN OR POOL]. If I need to unwind a position quickly, what depth, slippage, bridge congestion, or governance restrictions could trap me?

## 8. Governance and Community

### 36. Governance Proposal Review
Prompt:
Review this governance proposal for [PROJECT]: [PASTE PROPOSAL]. Summarize what changes, who benefits, who pays the cost, and whether the proposal improves long-term tokenholder alignment.

### 37. Community Quality
Prompt:
Assess community quality for [PROJECT]. Distinguish real builders and users from mercenary speculators, incentive farmers, and empty engagement. Tell me what signals matter.

### 38. Treasury Strategy
Prompt:
Evaluate treasury strategy for [PROJECT]. How should I think about runway, diversification, token exposure, stablecoin reserves, and whether the treasury can survive a bad market regime?

### 39. Founder Messaging Audit
Prompt:
Analyze the communication style of the founders of [PROJECT]. What parts build trust, what parts feel evasive, and what repeated claims need verification before I rely on them?

### 40. Governance Timeline
Prompt:
Build a timeline of the most important governance decisions in [PROJECT]. Explain what each decision reveals about power, priorities, and the maturity of the protocol.

## 9. Trade Framing

### 41. Entry Framework
Prompt:
Help me define a rational entry framework for [TOKEN]. Cover thesis trigger, invalidation level, sizing logic, time horizon, and what would make waiting better than buying now.

### 42. Scenario Matrix
Prompt:
Build a base, bull, and bear scenario matrix for [TOKEN] over the next 12 months. Include likely catalysts, probability weighting, and what metrics would signal each path is playing out.

### 43. Position Sizing
Prompt:
Suggest a position sizing framework for [TOKEN] inside a crypto portfolio with risk tolerance [LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH]. Focus on uncertainty, liquidity, and thesis confidence, not price prediction.

### 44. Thesis Invalidation
Prompt:
Define a clean thesis invalidation checklist for [TOKEN]. What facts would make the long thesis weaker, broken, or fully dead? Make it practical enough to use in a monthly review.

### 45. Sell Discipline
Prompt:
Help me design sell discipline for [TOKEN]. Separate reasons to trim because of valuation, reasons to exit because of broken fundamentals, and reasons to keep holding despite noise.

## 10. Research Operations

### 46. Research Checklist
Prompt:
Create a repeatable research checklist for evaluating a new crypto project like [PROJECT]. Include product, tokenomics, traction, risks, team, governance, and distribution.

### 47. Weekly Monitoring
Prompt:
Create a weekly monitoring template for [TOKEN]. What should I check every week to know whether the thesis is improving, deteriorating, or staying roughly the same?

### 48. Source Prioritization
Prompt:
Rank the best information sources for researching [PROJECT]. Tell me which ones are most likely to be signal, which are marketing, and which should only be used as secondary context.

### 49. Debate Prompt
Prompt:
Stage a debate between a bullish analyst and a skeptical risk manager about [TOKEN]. Force both sides to respond directly to the other side's strongest point instead of talking past each other.

### 50. Final Investment Memo
Prompt:
Write a concise investment memo for [TOKEN]. Include thesis, edge, key risks, tokenomics, catalysts, invalidation, and a final call of pass, watchlist, or buy-on-condition.

## Optional Follow-Up Prompt

After any of the prompts above, use this follow-up:

Prompt:
Now list the assumptions in your answer. Mark each assumption as high confidence, medium confidence, or low confidence. Then tell me which 3 assumptions I should verify first in primary sources.