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One phrase covers seven very different instruments; telling them apart is the first skill, because each is measured and fails differently.
10lessons
64 minreading in all
Foundationwhere it starts
01
Lessons in this track
01
What a digital asset actually is, and how the categories differOne phrase covers seven very different instruments; telling them apart is the first skill, because each is measured and fails differently.
6 min · Foundation
02
What a blockchain does that an ordinary database cannotThe useful property is not speed or storage but that no single party can quietly rewrite what the record already says.
6 min · Foundation
03
Why anyone pays for block spaceEvery block is a small, perishable auction for inclusion, and its clearing price is the closest thing a chain has to a demand signal.
7 min · Working knowledge
04
What happens between pressing send and a confirmationA transaction is signed locally, gossiped to strangers, selected into a block by someone competing to build it, and only then becomes hard to undo.
6 min · Foundation
05
What you actually own when you own a tokenHolding a token means holding the key that can move a ledger entry; it rarely means holding a claim that anyone is obliged to honor.
7 min · Working knowledge
06
Keys, wallets and custody, without the jargonA wallet stores keys rather than assets, and the choice of who holds those keys decides which kinds of loss are possible.
6 min · Foundation
07
How to read a price, and why two sites disagreeA headline price is a constructed average of many venues, and the construction choices explain nearly every discrepancy a reader notices.
7 min · Working knowledge
08
Where the numbers on this site come fromFour kinds of source feed every field here, each with its own characteristic error, and knowing which produced a number tells you how to doubt it.
6 min · Working knowledge
09
What market capitalization does and does not tell youPrice times circulating supply is a scaling figure, not money invested, not realizable value, and not a valuation in the equity sense.
7 min · Working knowledge
10
The twenty words you will meet on every page of this siteTwenty terms carry most of the vocabulary load across the data pages, and each has a common misreading worth removing early.
6 min · Foundation
What a digital asset actually is, and how the categories differOne phrase covers seven very different instruments; telling them apart is the first skill, because each is measured and fails differently.
6 min · Foundation
02
What a blockchain does that an ordinary database cannotThe useful property is not speed or storage but that no single party can quietly rewrite what the record already says.
6 min · Foundation
03
Why anyone pays for block spaceEvery block is a small, perishable auction for inclusion, and its clearing price is the closest thing a chain has to a demand signal.
7 min · Working knowledge
04
What happens between pressing send and a confirmationA transaction is signed locally, gossiped to strangers, selected into a block by someone competing to build it, and only then becomes hard to undo.
6 min · Foundation
05
What you actually own when you own a tokenHolding a token means holding the key that can move a ledger entry; it rarely means holding a claim that anyone is obliged to honor.
7 min · Working knowledge
06
Keys, wallets and custody, without the jargonA wallet stores keys rather than assets, and the choice of who holds those keys decides which kinds of loss are possible.
6 min · Foundation
07
How to read a price, and why two sites disagreeA headline price is a constructed average of many venues, and the construction choices explain nearly every discrepancy a reader notices.
7 min · Working knowledge
08
Where the numbers on this site come fromFour kinds of source feed every field here, each with its own characteristic error, and knowing which produced a number tells you how to doubt it.
6 min · Working knowledge
09
What market capitalization does and does not tell youPrice times circulating supply is a scaling figure, not money invested, not realizable value, and not a valuation in the equity sense.
7 min · Working knowledge
10
The twenty words you will meet on every page of this siteTwenty terms carry most of the vocabulary load across the data pages, and each has a common misreading worth removing early.
6 min · Foundation
10 lessons
DeFi
10 lessons
How networks work
10 lessons
Institutional access and regulation
10 lessons
Market structure
10 lessons
Protocol economics
12 lessons
Risk
8 lessons
Stablecoins and payments
10 lessons
Supply and issuance
6 lessons
Using this site
12 lessons