Crypto Starter Guide

Overview

This post will provide you with learning resources for getting started with crypto. Crypto and the blockchain contain many topics that can take months to understand fully. This post is intended to help newcomers easily find learning resources for valuable topics.

I will primarily provide links to Youtube videos. You will see many links to WhiteBoardCrypto. Their Youtube channel and website are both fantastic. A few tips:

• It’s recommended that you go in order, as some concepts are built on top of each other.

• You might want to consider watching videos at 1.5x speed.

The Value of Learning

If you plan on being in the crypto space for a long time, I highly recommend you take a couple of weeks to go through the content on this page. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Understanding the underlying concepts and technologies will allow you to be a better investor.

2. You can sniff out bad investments and projects. The space is full of scams, and they usually target people who lack fundamental knowledge.

3. It will allow you to find underappreciated projects before others.

4. Learning is fun, and with all the resources available today, it can be easy.

Basics

Let’s start with the basics. I recommend that all crypto newcomers have a decent understanding of the topics mentioned in this section. Even if you’ve been in the space for a while, you might have skipped a few topics. Make sure you take a moment to get your feet under you.

What is:

• A Blockchain

  • Proof of Work

  • A Mining Pool

• Bitcoin

• Ethereum

  • Ethereum Gas

  • Ethereum 2.0

• An NFT

• A Crypto Wallet

  • Metamask

  • Private Key

• Coin Versus a Token

  • Layer 2 Scaling

• Proof of Stake

• Dex (Decentralized Exchange)

• Popular Crypto Scams

• Ways to Do Your Own Research

• Great Learning Resources

  • WhiteboardCrypto - Great learning resources

  • Jesse Eckle - One of my favorite channels. Jesse goes through projects and investments he’s tried. He does a great job of covering his wins, losses, and lessons he’s learned along the way.

  • Max Maher - An excellent channel to keep up with all things crypto.

  • Taiki Maeda - A fantastic channel, Taiki focuses on yield farming and gives high-level insight. He’s knowledgeable, and what his videos lack in flash makes up for in the value of the content.

A Few Popular Crypto Projects

These are a few popular crypto projects. It would serve you well to get a grasp of them and the functionality they provide.

What is:

• Avalanche

• Polygon (Matic)

• Terra

• Solana

• Cardano

• Monero

• BNB

• Chainlink

Intermediate Topics

Here is where things start to get interesting. If you are interested in DeFi and understanding the true power of crypto, check out the topics here.

What is:

• Web3

• Smart Contracts

  • Oracles

• Stable Coin

• Staking

• DeFi (Decentralized Finance) - This is where things start to get fun.

  • DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization)

  • Liquidity Pool

    • Automated Market Maker

    • Impermanent Loss

    • Yield Farming

      • The Humble Farmer Thesis

  • Popular Projects

    • Uniswap

    • Aave

    • Anchor Protocol

• Bridge

• Cryptographic Hashes

Advanced Topics

The following topics are for people interested in the underlying technology and advanced topics.

What is:

• Scaling

  • Rollups

  • Sharding

  • Sidechains

• Bitcoin Halving

• Dollar-Cost Average

• Soft Forks Versus Hard Forks

• Crypto Lingo

  • A Rug Pull

    • How to Avoid Rug Pulls

  • Diamond Hands

  • Airdrop

  • FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt)

• Flash Loans