What is a Whitepaper?
When a company intends to launch a new cryptocurrency, they usually set out all the details in a Whitepaper. Technical, financial and commercial information about the project is explained in this document. Normally they aim to provide a document that explains in plain language what they’re planning to do, to attract investors and other interested parties. The Whitepaper is usually accompanied by a One Pager, he project summarized in one page, and a Position Paper, which details the competition and their (better) position in comparison with the competition.

Some companies do not have Whitepapers, but bring out a Blackpaper or they just do a video explainer or presentation.

If you thinking about investing in a cryptocurrency that is doing an ICO (Initial Coin Offering), STO (security Token Offering), IEO (Initial Exchange Offering) or any other crypto project investment, your first stop is reading the Whitepaper. Especially information about the their solution to a specific problem, the Token Allocation, the Team behind the crypto and the roadmap are important factors in assessing a cryptocurrency.

The first and most popular cryptocurrency Whitepaper is the Bitcoin Whitepaper: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System by Satoshi Nakamoto.

This is the abstract of that whitepaper, just to give you an idea what it's all about:

A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending. We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power. As long as a majority of CPU power is controlled by nodes that are not cooperating to attack the network, they’ll generate the longest chain and outpace attackers. The network itself requires minimal structure. Messages are broadcast on a best effort basis, and nodes can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the longest proof-of-work chain as proof of what happened while they were gone.

On my site you can find every cryptocurrency whitepaper, so start doing your own research .