i am not afraid to admit that i do not read every single whitepaper of the coins or tokens i have bought or have been interested in. that being said, it is often the case that the most important details from the whitepapers are generally covered in a concise way in the FAQ, or in videos by the developers, or the about section of the website for that coin. combining that with looking up the people who are on the development team tends to give me a good idea of how serious the project is and how likely they are to successfully deliver their product to market. there are some coins like BAT which after i watched the introductory videos i was so interested i wanted to know more about what they were doing in a more technical form, so i went through the white paper.

i believe reading the whitepapers can be kind of difficult to grasp for some people who are not technically inclined. and in that case i feel like a good secondary source of information is if you can find one or two highly qualified youtubers who have done videos breaking down the aspects of the coin which are important. Ivan on Tech is one youtuber whose opinion i certainly trust. though there is SO much money in the space going to marketing, that the blessing of a youtuber with a large following can significantly impact the success of a coin, and for this reason i always take their videos with a grain of salt. sometimes you can stumble across a video where it is the developer themselves doing a lecture on their coin and what makes it different, or an interview between the developer and another knowledgeable person who can ask the hard questions and get the developers answers to questions which may not even be answered in their whitepaper. videos that feature the developers i feel are a reasonably good resource if you are not going to read the whitepaper yourself.