I can’t wrap my head around some articles in this platform showing up in my feed praising Charles effin' Hoskinson.

I know, you’re probably new in this space. For that, let me slap some sense into your head and help you get through this much-needed orientation.

Cardano is a joke. That’s it. That’s the number one rule for getting into crypto.

A lot of new entrants often get attracted to it because as you type “what crypto to invest”, Google will show you Cardano results just because it has one of the biggest market caps in the mainstream crypto ranking platform.

But if you look at DeFiLlama — the analytic platform anyone calls themselves a crypto native would use — you will see that Cardano is not even in the top 10.

Not even in the top 20 either.

Crypto space and its community come in a spectrum. There are groups, divisions, and sub-sectors, where each is intertwined and overlaps with at least another entity. Which can best be described — roughly — with the Venn diagram below.

Yes. That’s where I’d put Cardano. Along with Ripple, and BSV. The outcasts. And all for the right reasons.

Not only they’re a joke, but they’re also borderline scams. I wrote last year about how Cardano could be a bigger scam than Tether. Even FTX. (Cardano's market cap was $60 Billion at the time, compare that to the $10B loss of FTX.)

Cardano is a joke no respectable builders would love to be associated with it, let alone work with them. Name me one well-known builder from Cardano besides Charles. None, nada. The one that’s broadly respected in the industry as a whole, by the way. Not just within the Cardano bubble.

Think about it, thinkers and builders in the space, like to dab into tech explorations in various chains as long as it’s interesting, has potential, or is challenging, but why don’t they go anywhere near Cardano?

Major cross-chain bridges don’t provide asset transfer to Cardano. Yes, they will provide transfers to obscure Polkadot parachains or a Cosmos weird new chain, how incompatible they may be, but not Cardano.

Not even bitcoin maxi considers Cardano as their bitter competitor. (Instead, it’s Ethereum they fear.)

Charles Hoskinson was a co-founder of Ethereum who was kicked out from the team for being a narcissist and an all-around bitch. This is old news from some cycles ago.

Do you know how lame Cardano is? Not even predatory VCs in the space want to pump and dump on it. (Instead, Cardano is funded by the 'Japanese investors' Charles somehow managed to convince — or swindle — some years ago.)

Respectable TradFi institutions and TradTech companies won’t form partnerships with Cardano. Yeah, even the ones who are dumb enough to be duped by FTX or settled with ‘lesser crypto tech’ like Polygon. But even Cardano couldn’t manage to attract these more naive smart money.

Nobody even cares about Cardano that during the peak bull market in 2021, ADA was already in a bear market.

Even Shiba Inu got more love from market participants. Cardano was not even a memecoin.

CT likes to ridicule Bitcoin maxi. With Cardano maxi, they simply forgot their existence.

What’s development happening on there? Just the founder who’s trying hard to keep relevant by mentioning Elon Musk on Twitter — without any response — and hopped into Twitter space with a scammer trying to capitalize on FTX clout.

I doubt Cardano even got invited to serious crypto conferences around the world. I don’t mean the marketing 'normies' one— but the more native crypto ones.

Cardano is close to a Ponzi scheme, and one day it’d fall. Remember that in crypto, if you don’t know where the yield comes from, you are the yield.

Avoid it.

The information asymmetry, and how to deal with it

To the extent, I can help but be concerned about why such information keeps circulating as time goes on. Cardano is such old news, and by this time even a newbie should be aware of its shadiness. But the reality is, the scams in crypto keep looking for new victims.

It doesn’t apply to just Cardano. If you look at content like this, turn on your scam radar quickly.

I doubt even people like CZ ever heard about this project. Can you believe that such contents are what I see often on this platform’s timeline?

After all, crypto adoption and education generally aren’t widespread, while the industry itself is too big and broad to explore in one’s lifetime.

The crypto space is far and wide, with intersections and corners and hidden nooks.

This is something that you have to realize before deciding to navigate the industry. Even I, who would call myself a native, an OG who has seen it all, don’t claim expertise in every part of crypto. (In my case, NFT space is one of the areas I’m waving my white flag in.)

If you are a beginner, it’s understandable to get overwhelmed. You can hide in the mountains for two weeks watching all the Finematics videos and still barely scratching the surface.

Gut channel for beginners, although for a crypto veteran, some old content feels outdated due to the fact that crypto moves fast! (But gut intro for beginner regardless.)

So, how do you deal with all of the new information? How to not unknowingly waste your time with the not-cool parts of cryptos. How to quickly mingle with the insiders, the natives, and the in-the-knows?

It’s better to stick to what’s proven

For most people that means sticking with Ethereum at first. The biggest and oldest smart contract platforms are undoubtedly the king of the blockchain space. It is the most decentralized, has the most vibrant community of builders and users, and the ecosystem is battle-hardened. The development is relentless (the Merge, Layer 2s), the money flowing in (from users and investors, through projects built on them) is endless, the liquidity is abundant, and the reputation and acknowledgment from the Traditional world are only getting more widespread.

The surface clique of crypto

Make sure to know that at the beginning, you would get attracted by what I call, the superficial part of crypto. The surface, the first 100 meters of the crypto oceans.

It means loud influencers like Saylor, Charles Hoskinson, or some random guys with 200k followers who posted generic stuff about crypto and NFTs. You’d be attracted to them in the first place because of vanity metrics, such as the number of followers, associations with some well-known names, or appearances on mainstream media.

My advice? Immediately follow the real ones. Yes, you might not know what the heck they’re talking about, but over time, you will get the gist of their message even though you don’t really understand it on the technical level. Following them really accelerates your crypto learning.

You aren’t really in crypto if you don’t see this on your Twitter timeline.

Who to follow? The easiest way to find out is to pick several respectable names like Vitalik and stalk their following lists. Some other good accounts to start on Twitter: @hasufl @samczsun @0xngmi Nick.

The circle is actually pretty small and tight-knit in crypto. Everyone follows each other. Before long, the algorithm would recommend you and show you tweets from really interesting people in crypto.

Sometimes you don’t even need to follow them because show up regularly on your Timeline

Listen to natives, not tourists.

It’s easier now in a bear market because a lot of tourists are leaving.

In conclusion, things will take time. Being overwhelmed, being lured into the wrong thing, is like a rite of passage.

But it’s better to weed out the trash from the beginning, especially now that you stumble upon yours truly who just informed you.