Before a company makes an initial public offering, it has to release a certain amount of information. It has to tell potential shareholders the current value of its assets, what it does, how much it earns and how much it spends. It has to give investors enough knowledge to make an intelligent decision about whether to invest. That information is regulated by law.

Companies that make initial coin offerings (ICOs) are also governed by regulations, but those regulations and their jurisdictions remain unclear. Cryptocurrencies are still new, and rulings can be inconsistent. In 2015, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission defined Bitcoin as a security. In July 2017, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission defined the DAO token as a commodity. Add in the international nature of cryptocurrencies that allow companies to launch coins and tokens in places with lighter regulations, such as Singapore, and it’s no wonder that investors looking to put their money into ICOs might struggle to make their assessments.

Forget the regulations and forget the numbers. There are four things that you need to look at when you’re assessing an ICO, and they should be available for every coin.

First, look past the coin towards the product.

A cryptocurrency isn’t meant to operate in a vacuum. It’s supposed to support a product. There’s no point in buying casino chips at a discount if no one is going to build the casino that uses them or if the casino that was built was so run-down and poorly managed that no one would want to gamble in it.

The same principle applies to a cryptocurrency. All cryptocurrencies are similar. They’re all built on the blockchain. Some, like Ripple, might be pre-mined while others, like Bitcoin, will have a set release. Some, like Tether, might be linked to a fiat currency, while most others will be allowed to float freely. But each of those coins has their own use, and it’s much easier to assess that use than it is to assess the characteristics of the coin itself.

Ask yourself if you think there’s a real need for the product the coin is supporting. Ask yourself if you would use the product the coin is supporting. Assess the product in the same way that you’d assess a company looking for investment — and avoid any coins that aren’t funding a viable project.

You’ll find information about the product in the whitepaper, which is the second thing you should examine. In an area with as much regulatory mess as ICOs, the whitepaper is the closest you’re likely to get to a proper financial report. Because companies are using ICOs at an earlier stage of funding than traditional businesses use IPOs, the whitepaper is unlikely to contain much in the way of numbers and statistics. What you will get is a description of the vision behind the venture. You’ll get an explanation of why the company needs a cryptocurrency and what it’s trying to do with it.