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Market structure
A balance on an exchange screen is a database entry and a claim on a company, not a coin the account holder controls.
10lessons
80 minreading in all
Foundationwhere it starts
01
Lessons in this track
01
What custody at a centralized exchange really meansA balance on an exchange screen is a database entry and a claim on a company, not a coin the account holder controls.
7 min · Foundation
02
Automated market makers versus order booksOne mechanism collects the intentions of traders in a queue; the other quotes from a formula and lets arbitrage supply the price.
8 min · Working knowledge
03
Liquidity, depth and slippage: what market cap omitsMarket capitalization is a multiplication, not a pool of money; depth and slippage are the figures that describe what can actually be traded.
8 min · Working knowledge
04
Perpetual futures and the funding rate that anchors themA futures contract with no expiry needs another way to track spot, and periodic payments between longs and shorts do that work.
8 min · Working knowledge
05
Leverage and the mechanics of a liquidation cascadeHow a modest price move becomes a violent one: margin arithmetic, forced selling into thinning depth, and the loop between them.
9 min · Advanced
06
Who market makers are, and when they step awayContinuous two-sided quotes are a commercial service with an inventory problem, not a permanent feature of a market.
8 min · Working knowledge
07
Wash trading and volume figures that cannot be realSelf-dealing volume costs almost nothing to manufacture and leaves statistical fingerprints; the cross-checks that expose it are simple arithmetic.
8 min · Working knowledge
08
A market that never closes: weekends, gaps and no haltsContinuous trading removes the overnight gap and the circuit breaker, while the banking system that funds it still keeps office hours.
7 min · Foundation
09
How price discovery actually happens across venuesThere is no consolidated tape, so any single reference price is a constructed estimate drawn from venues that legitimately disagree.
9 min · Advanced
10
Reading a drawdown, a volatility figure and a correlationThree risk numbers that are simple to compute and easy to over-read; what each measures, and the assumptions each one hides.
8 min · Working knowledge
10 lessons
DeFi
10 lessons
How networks work
10 lessons
Institutional access and regulation
10 lessons
Protocol economics
12 lessons
Risk
8 lessons
Stablecoins and payments
10 lessons
Start here
10 lessons
Supply and issuance
6 lessons
Using this site
12 lessons