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This cryptocurrency educational resource, pertaining to trading and investing, is a continual work in progress and intended for users who are interested in self-educating themselves, there are no fees or classes. For those interested in learning more about the website’s tools, the website guide will be more insightful. As a disclaimer, nothing here is financial advice, and the examples provided are incidental.

Fundamentally, cryptocurrency investing functions the same way as regular investing, purchased cryptocurrencies go up and down the same way as shares of a stock would. There are also a variety of different tools similar to traditional markets like leverage trading. The difference, however, is that cryptocurrencies are significantly more volatile (historical draw downs on Bitcoin have exceeded -70% on multiple occasions) than stocks. There is also far less legislation or accountability from creators of cryptocoins. In the case of Bitcoin (and many others), there is no CEO or corporation of people to deal with upset “shareholders”. This is purely intentional, which is appealing to some, but daunting to others. With that said, there are plenty of massive financial institutions invested in crypto, so things aren’t as decentralized as they were 10 years ago. Generally speaking, cryptocurrencies are not advised for conservative investors, for the above reasons. For those comfortable with the volatility (or see it as an opportunity), we hope to cover some of the basics of getting involved.

There are two main categories of risk profiles for crypto investors.

Buy and Hold Investing

The safer, by far, of the two approaches, is simply buying and holding established cryptocurrencies much like you would a stock. It helps to have an idea of how long you are comfortable with holding any coin you buy and at which price you plan to exit. There are no hard and fast rules with selecting coins, do some research into the use cases for each one and sticking to the top 20 coins is generally ‘safer’. There are also plenty of less established coins with smaller market caps, these are going to be riskier, but should you pick the right one, the gains can be substantially greater.

Degenerate “Investing”

A good amount of the horror stories and success stories in crypto come from this field of “investing”. Things like memecoins, NFTs, and leverage trading is the domain of these sorts of investors. You may have heard of people making millions buying dog coins, getting “rug pulled” and losing everything, buying pictures of apes for tens of thousands and selling them for a fraction, or violent leverage liquidations, these are the tools responsible. Part of what attracts people to these high risk instruments is the prospect of incredible gains, which exist in theory, but in practice there are very many who lose along the way. These are EXTREMELY risky, and you can see money evaporate in minutes if poor choices are made.

2. Comment on Cryptocurrencies

For those looking to engage in buy and hold strategies, Coinmarketcap is as good a place as any to start.

https://coinmarketcap.com/

Every major coin is listed here, and you can view price changes, rank coins by marketcap, or use a variety of different filters to narrow down projects. As mentioned above, larger marketcap coins are more likely to be stable, but will take a lot of monetary inflow to move prices, which effects your potential to make profit. Smaller marketcap coins have greater potential, but unless they have significant market catalysts along the way, there is typically a reason that they are the way they are and many of them stay that way. Cryptocurrencies can rise and fall extremely quickly, to illustrate this point, here is a screenshot of the top 10 coins back on September 6, 2015

Crypto has exploded in popularity in the past decade and from this list of coins, three of them effectively do not exist (Banx, Bitshares, Bytecoin). If the top 20-50 were included instead, there would be many, many more failed crypto projects. Some of you may be impressed by the gains that these coins have made since this screenshot was taken but, remember, that crypto was basically unheard of back then and many that knew about it, doubted it. The marketcaps were extremely low relative to today, and this point is key; crypto will never* see these impressive gains again. The market has become extremely saturated, and the entire crypto sector hovers around 3 TRILLION marketcap. It would take trillions of dollars and massive renewed interest in crypto to move prices at this scale ever again. The truth is, those that got in early made the most money, and this is simply a function of the market, early adopters and founders get the lion’s share of profit, while those that buy in late are typically the exit liquidity. This is not to dissuade people from crypto or participating in investing in general, but just keep realistic expectations in mind. Almost no one knew back then that crypto would explode the way it did, otherwise many more people would have sold all their possessions and bought crypto. The original creator of DogeCoin sold his holdings for a then new Toyota Prius and ended up asking for money from people online after the coins meteoric success years later!

*it is extremely unlikely, especially across the entire market

3. Useful Terms to Know

There is a good amount of overlap for financial terms to know between crypto and traditional finance but many are unique to crypto. This is by no means an exhaustive list and for the sake of brevity these topics are only briefly touched on; most of them leave much more to be said.

What actually are cryptocurrencies?

Digital currencies that are secured by cryptography, making them extremely difficult to counterfeit. The actual purpose of them is varied and depends on the stated intentions of each project.

What is a blockchain?

These are decentralized, distributed ledgers that record each transaction made. Transactions sent over the blockchain are impossible to undo and this permanence is a core feature of crypto. Each transaction made is logged, essentially forever, and can be followed by other users. Despite the identity of the transactors being anonymous, each and every transaction is publicly accessible and irrevocable. This creates a very strong degree of trust in the data published on the blockchain and is the cornerstone of almost every crypto project. This technology has also seen adoption outside of the financial sphere as well.

What is a wallet?

Your wallet is a string of numbers and letters that give you access to your crypto holdings and “proves” your ownership. Should you lose or leak the “keys” to your wallet, anyone with access to it can simply access and steal your assets. If the thieves are particularly savvy, the odds of you recovering these assets is almost non-existent. The stress of dealing with wallets has seen many people use stock traded ETFs to hold these on your behalf. ETF ownership of crypto means you don’t actually physically own access to the Bitcoin or use of it on the network, but for a small fee can simply profit on the price increasing. You are also greatly limited in choice by using these, as only a few cryptocurrencies

There are different types of wallets, each with their own use cases.

The most common distinction is between custodial and non-custodial wallets. In the case of custodial wallets, the keys are owned by a third party but you still have access to them. The most common occurrence of this is on exchanges, where you are provided with wallets to send, withdraw, or trade your crypto currency. For those actively trading, it makes sense to keep assets on an exchange, but remember that access to your holdings can be revoked. Exchange failures, like that of FTX, means that you can lose access to all of your assets and at best hope for a fraction of them to be returned during bankruptcy proceedings, probably years down the line. You really do have to trust your exchange, especially if you plan to keep funds on them for long periods of time. Many hardcore crypto enthusiasts suggest non-custodial wallets, where you are directly responsible for safe guarding the recovery phrases and private keys. If done correctly, the risk of losing access to your accounts is essentially 0. There is also a difference between and hardware and software wallets. Hardware wallets, like Ledger, allow you to safely keep cryptocurrencies offline without being connected to any device, decreasing the likely hood of your keys being compromised. Software wallets, like MetaMask, are often attached to your browser and let you access multiple different cryptocurrencies in one place, but since they are actively kept in your browser and connected to the internet, this introduces a potential point of failure.

A more thorough article on the subject:
https://www.usdc.com/learn/the-complete-guide-to-different-types-of-crypto-wallets

What is a public key/wallet address?

This is basically your private routing number, which people can use to send you money. There is no harm in people knowing your public address as it does not give them access to your funds. Making sure you send people the right address over the right network is key, as there’s no worse way to lose money than sending it to the wrong wallet. Double or even triple check when sending large amounts and sending small test amounts is a good habit to get into.

What does decentralized currency mean?

Simply put, cryptocurrency differs from traditional finance in that there is no centralized bureaucracy responsible for calling the shots on the future of each coin. Bitcoin pioneered this approach, with the Bitcoin network being distributed across thousands of computers around the world, meaning that no single attack is likely to bring the network down. This approach also means that decisions require the agreement of most Bitcoin holders, so its extremely difficult for any one entity to dominate (as opposed to a centralized one) but it also means that if, for example, it was necessary to quantum proof Bitcoin, it is unlikely this could be accomplished in a timely manner, or even at all.

What is a DEX vs a CEX? (decentralized vs centralized exchange)

A DEX is an exchange or swap that is ran by smart contracts often times without restrictions or verification on who is trading or where the money comes from. For those partial to privacy, these are the pillars of crypto, though problems with trusting these exchanges is an issue, as they may simply disappear one day with very little legal recourse. A CEX is centralized, in this case meaning it has public owners and employees with a clear hierarchy of responsibility. A CEX must remain compliant with the rules and regulations that are placed on it by financial authorities in whichever country they operate out of. CEXs function in much the same way that stock brokerages do, verifying the identity of anyone using the platform (KYC: know your customer) and reporting tax information to relevant authorities. They tend to be much more reliable than a DEX is, if only because the people who are responsible for the assets on these exchanges are public figures and can be put on trial.

What is a stablecoin?

Coins like USDT and USDC function as intermediaries between different crypto currencies and hold the value of USD almost one to one. Say you want to swap from Bitcoin to Solana, but no currency pair between these two coins exists, you can sell your Bitcoin for USDC (ensuring you have have price stability) and then use USDC to buy Solana. You can also effectively use stablecoins to directly send cash to people without having to use a bank as an intermediary, though cashing it out into physical currency is a separate issue. The mechanics of how these two currencies are minted, funded, and maintained is quite arcane.

What are rugpulls/getting rugged/pump and dumps?

A rugpull is what it sounds like, having the rug literally pulled out from under you. Though rather rare with established coins, it is a daily occurrence in the memecoin world, where either the developers of a memecoin will sell all of their holdings, absorbing all of the liquidity and in most cases completely collapsing the value of said memecoin. This large sale (devs typically own the largest share of a memecoin upon minting) triggers a chain reaction of selling that can lead to -90% drops, or more, in minutes. Rugpulls are basically unheard of in the stock market, where laws and regulations prevent the largest shareholders from unexpectedly dumping all their assets at once, though catastrophic news can trigger massive selloffs. It is funny to joke about rugpulls and anyone active enough in crypto has been rugged before, but it is effectively robbery, and there’s a reason its illegal to do in the stock market. Since there are no real legal repercussions for rugging (case in point, Hawk Tuah) it will continue to be a problem.

Pump and dumps are similar and is a term borrowed from the stock market, where a small group of investors coordinate a spike in a low volume stock (pumping it), which is seen by other investors as a potential “buy signal”, only to be promptly sold out when new buyers come in (dumped on).

For those interested in a glossary of various crypto terms:
https://www.coingecko.com/en/glossary

4. Cryptocurrency Exchanges

Most exchanges function very similarly, only differing in selection of available coins, fee structures, availability of different derivatives (like futures), and some are only available for users in particular countries.

Some of the largest and most well known CEXs include:

Binance (USA)
Coinbase (USA)
Upbit
OKX
Bybit
KuCoin
MEXC
Kraken (USA)
Pionex
HTX

Do your own due diligence and pick the exchange that works best for you.

Things have changed a bit for DEXs and they tend to be seperated based on whether they function as swaps for spot crypto or trading derivatives like futures.

The largest spot DEXs include:

Pancakeswap
Pumpswap
Uniswap
Orca

The largest derivative DEXs include:

Hyperliquid
Aster
Lighter
EdgeX

5. Introduction to Cryptocurrency Sectors

Not unlike traditional stocks, cryptocurrencies also have dedicated sectors, with different projects seeking to provide value in their respective sectors. The difference is that crypto projects are typically focused on different things compared to stocks. There are plenty of other niche and developing sectors not covered here.

Most of these categories can be seen on CMC, though a lot of the categories are sometimes poorly cobbled together:

https://coinmarketcap.com/cryptocurrency-category/

Memecoins

Probably one of the most well known byproducts of crypto; financial value fixed to memes. Are these intrinsically worth anything? Nope. But they are a fantatic gauge of the most infectious internet memes, and the same way that online memes tend to have short life spans, so do most memecoins. The phenomenon kicked off with DogeCoin, continued with the likes of Bonk, Wif, and PEPE, until finally culminating into the atrocity we have today. Most memecoins today are dead on arrival, with any remotely funny one done a million times over and the entire market is infested with rugpulling, bots, and a desperation to turn any social event into a profit. The creation of pump.fun meant that basically anyone who wanted to make a memecoin, could make a memecoin. Since then, the market sees thousands of daily attempts to repeat the success of the old days. This doesn’t stop people from trying to nail that 1 in a million memecoin that will finally retire them.

A word of caution on these, things have really changed in this market since memecoins started off and they really aren’t that fun to trade anymore. Turning a profit is extremely difficult. We ghost traded 30,000 different coins over a couple day period, only 4 of them closed with >100% returns. It’s still better odds than playing the lottery, but not by much.

AI Coins (Big Data, AI Agents, AI Applications)

These coins exploded in popularity, especially in the past two years, much like they did in the stock market. Anything that could have an AI label slapped on top of it, did, and it usually made a ton of money doing so. Since then, most of these project valuations have collapsed, and in a similar predicament to what companies like OpenAI find themselves in, many of these crypto projects have struggled to find ways to generate a profit outside of the sale of tokens. Still, there are plenty of different projects in this category, so its not impossible for there to be hidden gems here if someone looks hard enough.

Real World Asset Tokenization

If there are any cryptocurrencies that actually find long lasting success in the future, it may just be projects in this sector. One of the main advantages of blockchain technology is the permanence of its logs, which, with appropriate backups, can last forever and be relied upon by different parties without fear of subterfuge. Gold, for example, can be tokenized by a company, selling tokens equal to the value of the gold it has in storage (ideally after having been audited), allowing other people to buy, sell, transfer, or profit on the underlying asset without having to move it or store it themselves. Others have proposed similar schemes with real estate (fractional ownership of rentals or keeping land titles on a blockchain) and a variety of different financial instruments. You can probably tokenize just about anything, so the question is which scheme has the best chance of success? Does it sound somewhat dystopian? Just a touch. But given that most existing real world currencies are mostly just numbers on a screen, this doesn’t seem like a crazy departure from reality.

Gaming

There have been a myriad of crypto projects trying to break into the gaming industry, historically, these have mostly been failures. Most projects here try to connect a crypto token within the in-game economy, which usually ends with the games being a boring cookie clicker cash grab and the project routinely fail. Devs behind these projects are often focused on monetization, which has the games feel like paywalled mobile games. If you find a project in this category that is creating what seems to be a fun and good game with a crypto economy tastefully implemented, it may be worth taking a look into. This is purely speculation, but a game like EVE Online (which features huge player run economies) is probably the only place where crypto being shoehorned into a game could make any sense.

Gambling

A few years ago, crypto casinos and sportsbooks were all the rage, since if you lived in a country or state that did not allow gambling, all you needed was a VPN and wallet to gamble to your heart’s content. Since then, legislation (particularly in the USA) has eased many of these restrictions, and sites like Polymarket have further streamlined the online betting experience. There are plenty of different projects to choose from here and there’s a chance one of them has some new edge or exchange listings that can pump their prices up.

Privacy Coins

Privacy and anonymity were once core tenets of the early crypto movement but as mass adoption of crypto required a degree of regulatory cooperation, only a few projects have remained committed to these original beliefs. Bitcoin was initially a champion of this movement, but now that most Bitcoin transactions can be traced and most entry and exit points of Bitcoin end up with you going through an exchange you have to register with using your identity to cash out, calling it a privacy coin is generous. The OG privacy coin is Monero, which was so successful at being used for illicit purposes that many exchanges have since delisted it. The coin has one of the most extensive black market economies out there and sees a mixture of libertarians and criminals (most likely) upkeeping the project. Zcash has recently returned to relevance after languishing for years. The only strange thing about it is, unlike Monero, it has managed to maintain listing on major exchanges, which suggests that it isn’t as truly private as it is made out to be.

NFTs

NFT stands for Non-fungible token.

6. Useful Links

Excellent source for legal proceedings and crypto:

https://www.crypto-law.us/news-library/

Plenty of custom alerts, new coin listings in particular:

https://cryptocurrencyalerting.com/

User based web3 community, focused on Etherem

https://debank.com/

Basic crypto price terminal

https://orionterminal.com/screener

A neat little website to visualize crypto movement

https://fiatleak.com

Significant volume tracker across cryptomarkets

https://whale-alert.io/

Dedicated calendar for various crypto events, usually listing schedules

https://coindar.org/

ICO (initial coin offering) drop calendar

https://icodrops.com/

7. Investing & Trading in Crypto with a Stock Brokerage

For those who don’t want to deal with the stress of handling their own crypto and dealing with exchanges, or are trying to include crypto exposure to their IRAs, purchasing crypto through ETFs is your best bet. The selection is limited to only the largest crypto projects by marketcap, which include, Bitcoin/BTC, Ethereum/ETH, Ripple/XRP, Solana/SOL, Dogecoin/DOGE, Litecoin/LTC, and Chainlink/LINK. Some of these, like BTC, ETH, and XRP, also have 2x leveraged ETFs. For example, a -4% gain on BTC becomes a -8% gain on BITU, the same goes the opposite way. There are plenty of different funds offering ETFs, your best bet is to pick the one with the highest liquidity.

For a complete list of crypto ETFs:

https://stockanalysis.com/list/crypto-etfs/

8. The Big Three: BTC, ETH, and XRP

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple are among the oldest and best preforming crypto projects to date. Generally speaking, any of these three could be considered the “safest” projects one can invest into, if only due to their longevity and market support.

Bitcoin is the progenitor (though not the absolute first) of the crypto currency movement and has a fascinating history. No one actually knows who created Bitcoin; Satoshi Nakamoto is not a real name. The coin was originally founded as a means to facilitate online exchange of money, rather than be hoarded like digital gold, without the intereference of a centralized authority. With a fixed supply of 21 million, the coin is also intended to be inflation proof. The project is largely maintained by Blockstream, which has made many decisions that early adopters found to be in conflict with the original ideals set by Satoshi. Purist coins like Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin have been created in protest, but despite this, Bitcoin continues to be the largest crypto project by far.

Ethereum was founded by Russian emigre Vitalik Buterin, and shares many basic features with Bitcoin, including Proof of Work, which necessitates real world energy consumption in order to “mine” more of the token. In 2022, ETH moved to Proof of Stake, which greatly lowered its energy consumption needs. The key innovation that allowed Ethereum to flourish was the first implementation of smart contracts, which are programs that can be implemented and traced on the blockchain, allowing users to create applications or settle transactions without the need of a middleman. Smart contracts are the building blocks of ETH, with which it hopes to develop Web 3, its decentralized vision for the future of the internet.

Ripple was originally founded by David Schwartz and Jed McCaleb (who has since went on to found Stellar/XLM). The idea started with the creation of a “Bitcoin without mining”. The structure of Ripple is much different in comparison to BTC or ETH, as Ripple Labs controls a huge stake in XRP and is active in developing the project. This means that it is not a truly decentralized coin, since it has a central authority, which earned it a negative reputation with early crypto adopters. In addition to this, Ripple is focused on rapid and large scale transaction settlement, meaning that its use case is intended for large financial institutions and banks. Ripple recently finalized a long battle with SEC, which settled in its favor, and is now pursuing its goals with a legal clarity that no other crypto projects possess.

Intro to Crypto Investing