Best Crypto Analysis Tools for Investing [2023]

Introduction

Investing in cryptocurrencies is difficult. While Bitcoin has been around for over a decade, most of the applications and sectors being built today have only emerged in the past few years. In traditional markets, you rarely get the opportunity to invest in companies so early in their life cycle. This leads to greater upside potential for crypto investors, but also increased volatility and difficulty in evaluating investment opportunities.

In this article, we will cover some of the best tools to help you on your crypto investment journey. If you’re new to the space, check out our guide on things to look for when investing in cryptocurrencies and why blockchain analytics is the ultimate tool for understanding the space to lay a foundation for the tools which are listed below.

Note: The list of tools provided above is not exhaustive and there are numerous other tools that can be used. View the list as a set of complementary tools that can be used in conjunction with each other during your research process.

Nansen

Nansen is the leading blockchain analytics platform with a major emphasis on uploading the signal with real-time on-chain data by tagging crypto-wallets. With over 120 million wallets tagged, Nansen offers the most comprehensive coverage of what’s really happening in crypto. Investors, both retail and institutional, use Nansen to discover opportunities, conduct due diligence and defend their portfolios.

The platform currently has support for 9 chains – Ethereum, Polygon, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Fantom, Arbitrum, Ronin, Celo and Terra Classic. New chains are constantly being added, with Solana being next on the roadmap. This provides users with deeper insight into what is actually happening on the chain via their own blockchain investigation and helps users make more informed decisions.

One key advantage of Nansen is its Smart Money tags that allow users to keep an eye on what’s doing best in the space.

Everything about the instrument is provided to see the signal to the surface. The homepage shows users the hottest contracts in the last 24 hours, top increases in Smart Money holdings and top inflows/outflows from Smart Money wallets.

The other dashboards are broadly divided into 2 main categories – discovery and diligence. Discovery dashboards are intended to help users discover new opportunities, surface signs and emerging trends before they become mainstream. Diligence dashboards allow users to take deep dives once opportunities are identified to make more informed investment decisions.

The two most popular diligence dashboards are Token God Mode and Wallet Profiler.

Token God Mode provides detailed on-chain data about a specific token. Users are able to view transactions, token holder distribution data (number of smart money holders, number of unique holders, length of holding, top wallets, etc.) and even track crypto exchange balances.

Wallet Profiler gives you insight into a specific wallet. It shows you a comprehensive overview of the holdings in the wallet, a breakdown of the counterparties the wallet has interacted with, recent crypto transactions and even NFTs.

There are other common dashboards that provide high-level overviews of various segments in crypto – Project, Multichain, DeFi Paradise & DAO Analytics. Project dashboards show on-chain data about various projects such as Axie Infinity, Lido and LooksRare.

Multichain dashboards provide overviews of your favorite blockchain, giving you insight into key metrics such as daily active users, daily transactions, and number of users/transactions the protocols built on top of the chain have. DeFi Paradise provides users with an overview of what’s going on in DeFi and what Smart Money is doing in the space. DAO Analytics provides an overview of DAO’s liquid assets and active voters in DAO Paradise and lets you deep dive into specific DAO’s on-chain data via DAO God Mode.

If you’re interested in learning more about the product, we have weekly office hours episodes on Youtube where we go through various dashboards and occasional alpha leaks. For all you readers out there, we have written an article covering how to invest in Cryptocurrencies that contains a bunch of Nansen dashboards.

If you’re more of a hands-on person, sign up today to get started!

Glass button

Similar to Nansen, Glassnode is also an on-chain analytics platform. However, the difference lies in the focus of the two platforms. Nansen focuses on enriching on-chain activity with tags and mapping a multichain world, Glassnode is best known for their BTC analytics covering every metric you can think of.

Besides on-chain data, such as exchange inventory, circulating supply, daily active addresses, transaction counts, etc., Glassnode covers many other statistics for BTC. Derivatives, miner data, potential market top/bottom indicators (NUPL, percentage of addresses in profit, etc.) and Purpose BTC ETF data are examples of other metrics they cover.

CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap

Two of the most scrutinized sites in the entire cryptoverse. CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap are the two leading cryptocurrency price tracking websites. Both provide users with a view of how the overall market is doing from a price action standpoint. Both sides segment the tokens into categories that allow users to get overviews of the performance of various categories as well as bring forward possible new projects.

If you prefer to check prices on mobile, you’ll be pleasantly surprised that both sites have mobile apps that offer excellent user experiences. A great replacement for checking prices when it’s too painful to open your favorite exchange program.

DeFiLlama

DefiLlama is the source for Total Value Locked (TVL) numbers for DeFi protocols and blockchains. The platform has TVL numbers for DeFi protocols across more than 120 different chains and for the chains themselves. TVL is one of the most commonly cited metrics when it comes to evaluating a DeFi protocol and sometimes even for evaluating blockchains. TVL can be considered as a measure of users’ trust and interest towards a specific protocol. Protocols that are more reliable and have attracted real users are likely to see their TVL increase over time as user activity increases.

Token Terminal

Token Terminal is a fan favorite among those who are more traditionally financially inclined. The platform has metrics commonly used when evaluating stocks and traditional companies. Revenue, Price to sales ratio, Price to earnings ratio and Treasury value are the most important metrics that they provide to users. This allows investors to evaluate crypto-protocols in the same way they would evaluate traditional companies.

The site has a “Weekly Movers” summary tab that can bring to your attention protocols you may have overlooked. There is also a data table showing the changes in the different metrics over different time periods.

TradingView

TradingView probably needs no introduction. If you have spent any time investing, be it in traditional markets or in crypto, you would have definitely heard of the tool. The tools mentioned above all lean towards fundamental investment, helping you understand a particular protocol in greater detail. TradingView, on the other hand, helps with technical analysis and is one of the best charting tools out there. You can overlay charts with just about every technical indicator in existence and set up alerts based on trading indicators or trading strategies of your choice.

Closure

Blockchain technology makes data more readily available, opens up new methodologies and statistics when analyzing a crypto project compared to traditional markets and companies. Besides relying on traditional metrics such as financial ratios, the quality of the team behind the project, the actual product itself, you have the added benefit of on-chain data. On-chain data allows you to see who is actually buying the token, what the profiles of these buyers are and spot patterns before things are actually announced. Using all the tools listed above helps you do more holistic analysis of protocols you are interested in and can help you become a better investor over time.