The Crypto Academy
A free, structured course that takes you from never having owned crypto to being able to look after yourself in it. 64 modules across five levels, written for someone who knows nothing and useful to someone who has been here for years. No signup, no email, no upsell.
Level 2 comes before anything about making money, deliberately. Almost nobody loses money in crypto because they picked the wrong asset. They lose it to a scam, a signature they did not read, or a seed phrase they stored badly. Every one of those is preventable, and that is what Level 2 is for.
Risk warning: crypto is highly volatile and largely unregulated. You can lose everything you put in. Nothing in this course is financial, investment or tax advice, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy any asset.
How crypto actually works
The machine underneath. Blocks, consensus, transactions, smart contracts and what each major chain actually does differently. You cannot evaluate anything in crypto without this.
What crypto actually is, explained from zero
A blockchain is a shared record that no single company controls. What that means in practice, why anyone built it, what a coin and a token are, and what you actually own when you own crypto.
What actually happens when you press send
Follow one transaction from your wallet to final settlement: signing, the mempool, the fee auction, inclusion in a block, and what finality really means.
Consensus: how thousands of strangers agree without a boss
Proof of work and proof of stake explained properly, what each actually costs, how 51 percent attacks work, and why this determines whether a chain is worth anything.
Smart contracts: programs that hold money
What a smart contract actually is, why immutability is both the feature and the danger, what an audit does and does not prove, and how upgradeable contracts reintroduce trust.
Bitcoin specifically: what makes it different
UTXOs, the 21 million cap, mining economics, why Bitcoin deliberately cannot do what Ethereum does, and what the fee market means for its long term security.
Ethereum specifically: the world computer and its rollups
Accounts, the EVM, why gas exists, what the Merge changed, and how layer 2 rollups actually work rather than just being described as cheaper.
The major chains compared, and what each actually trades off
Ethereum, Solana, the rollups, BNB Chain, Cronos, Cosmos and Bitcoin layers. What each chose to optimise for, and what it gave up to get there.
Custody and security
Keys, seed phrases, hardware, multisig, and every way people are separated from their money. Almost nobody loses money picking the wrong asset. They lose it here.
Wallets, keys and seed phrases: the part you cannot get wrong
What a wallet actually is, where a seed phrase comes from, why no company on earth can recover it, and exactly how to store one. The highest value module here.
How people actually lose money in crypto
A ranked list of what really takes people's money, based on what happens rather than what makes headlines. Bad price calls are far down the list.
The complete crypto scam catalogue
Every common crypto scam explained: how it opens, what it looks like, and the specific detail that gives it away every time.
Spotting a rug pull before you buy
A practical checklist for any new token: liquidity locks, contract permissions, holder distribution, honeypot tests and the social signals that matter.
Approvals, signatures and wallet drainers
What you are really agreeing to when you sign, which signature types are dangerous, and the five minute habit that prevents the most common loss in crypto.
Where to actually keep your crypto
Exchange, hot wallet, hardware or multisig. What each protects against, what each fails at, and a sensible split by amount.
How to verify a site, a contract and a person
A repeatable process for checking that what you are looking at is real, before you connect a wallet or send anything.
Securing a holding large enough to matter
Multisig, geographic separation, decoy wallets, physical safety and the inheritance problem almost nobody plans for.
Markets, venues and execution
Exchanges, order books, order types, liquidity, slippage, MEV and fees. How a trade actually reaches the market and what it really costs you.
Where crypto is actually bought and sold
What a crypto exchange is, the real difference between a centralised exchange and a decentralised one, how an order book works, and what actually happens when you press buy.
Making your first purchase safely
Choosing an exchange, passing verification, buying, and the small test transfer that proves everything works before real money is at stake.
Sending, receiving and reading a block explorer
Addresses, networks, gas, confirmations, and how to look up any transaction yourself. Nearly every lost transfer is one of four avoidable mistakes.
Fees, gas and why transactions fail
What gas actually pays for, why a failed transaction still costs money, and how to stop overpaying on every trade.
Stablecoins: what they are and how they break
The difference between fully backed, over collateralised and algorithmic stablecoins, and why that distinction cost people forty billion dollars in 2022.
Swapping, slippage and getting sandwiched
Why the price you are quoted is not the price you get, what slippage tolerance really controls, and how MEV bots take a slice of your trade.
Bridges, chains and cross chain risk
Why the same token exists on several chains, what a bridge actually does, and why bridges have lost more money than almost anything else in crypto.
Order types: every one, what it does, and when it hurts you
Market, limit, stop, stop limit, trailing, OCO, post only, reduce only and time in force. What each guarantees, what it does not, and the specific ways each fails in a fast market.
Order books, depth and what your order is really hitting
How to read an order book, what market makers actually do, why depth matters more than the headline price, spoofing and wash trading, and how to size an order to the liquidity available.
Reading the market
Charts, structure, volume, cycles, sentiment, on-chain data and derivatives positioning. This is the level that separates someone who owns crypto from someone who reads it.
Reading a price chart from absolute zero
What the lines and blocks on a crypto chart actually mean. Candlesticks, axes, what a single candle tells you, and how to read a chart you have never seen before.
Timeframes, and why the same market looks bullish and bearish at once
What changing the timeframe actually does, why traders disagree while both being right, and how to pick the timeframes that match how you actually trade.
Market structure: trend, range, and telling them apart
How to describe what a market is doing using only highs and lows. Uptrends, downtrends, ranges, and the break of structure that signals a change.
Support and resistance: why certain prices keep mattering
What makes a price level significant, why levels flip roles when broken, and how to mark the handful that actually matter rather than covering a chart in lines.
Volume: the one input that cannot be faked
What volume measures, why it confirms or contradicts a price move, and the specific volume patterns that tell you a move is real or hollow.
Indicators: what they measure and where they lie
What moving averages, RSI, MACD and the rest actually calculate, what each is genuinely useful for, and why every one of them fails in the same predictable way.
Market cycles: the rhythm underneath everything
The four year Bitcoin cycle, the four psychological phases every market passes through, how capital rotates between sectors, and why cycles are useful for context and useless for timing.
On chain analysis: reading the blockchain itself
Crypto has something no other market has: a complete public record of every transaction. What the main on chain metrics measure, what they genuinely tell you, and how to look things up yourself.
Derivatives data: reading positioning and crowding
Funding rates, open interest, long short ratios, liquidation maps and basis. What the derivatives market reveals about how the crowd is positioned, and why crowded is dangerous.
Research and fundamentals
Whitepapers, tokenomics, unlocks, teams, traction and competition. Building a repeatable research process instead of reacting to whatever appeared in your feed.
Reading tokenomics and unlock schedules
Supply, float, fully diluted valuation and vesting cliffs. The numbers that quietly determine whether a token can go up at all.
The research process: how a professional actually decides
A repeatable eight stage process for evaluating any crypto asset, in the order a professional does it, with kill criteria at each stage so you stop early on most things.
Reading a whitepaper without being sold to
What a whitepaper is for, the six questions to extract from any of them, the language patterns that signal an absence of substance, and why some of the best projects barely have one.
Evaluating a team when anyone can claim anything
How to verify a crypto team's claims, when anonymity is acceptable and when it is disqualifying, what to read in a code repository, and the specific fabrications that recur.
Supply, unlocks and dilution: the maths that decides most outcomes
Fully diluted valuation versus market cap, how vesting cliffs work, why low float launches are structurally rigged against buyers, and how to model dilution before you buy.
Does it actually earn? Usage, revenue and value capture
Separating real usage from farmed metrics, reading total value locked properly, understanding the difference between protocol revenue and token holder revenue, and valuing a protocol on its cash flows.
Competitive analysis: why being better rarely wins
Mapping a sector, understanding why liquidity and distribution beat technology, identifying real moats in an industry where code can be copied in an afternoon, and knowing when a challenger can actually displace an incumbent.
The research toolkit: where the real numbers live
The categories of tool a professional actually uses, what each is reliable for, where every one of them is wrong or manipulable, and a repeatable workflow using them.
Writing an investment thesis, and the kill criteria that go with it
A one page format that converts research into a decision, why writing down what would prove you wrong is the highest value habit in investing, and how to review a thesis honestly.
Risk and portfolio
Position sizing, correlation, drawdown mathematics, hedging and risk of ruin. The part that decides whether you are still here in five years.
Position sizing when 80 percent drawdowns are normal
How to size a crypto position given that even the best assets routinely fall 80 percent, and why most people are accidentally over exposed.
Buying over time versus buying in one go
What dollar cost averaging actually does, when a lump sum is mathematically better, and why the psychological answer often beats the mathematical one.
Taking profit, and why almost nobody does
Deciding your exit before you enter, why round numbers fail, and the simple rules that stop a large gain becoming a round trip.
Drawdown maths and the risk of ruin
Why a 50 percent loss needs a 100 percent gain, how position size interacts with losing streaks, why a positive expectancy strategy still goes to zero if sized wrongly, and the arithmetic behind survival.
Correlation: why owning twelve tokens is one position
What correlation means practically, why it rises in exactly the conditions where diversification matters, how to identify genuinely independent holdings, and what real diversification looks like for a crypto portfolio.
Building a portfolio: tiers, allocations and rebalancing
A tiered structure for crypto exposure, how to decide the total allocation first, when and how to rebalance, and why the rules must be written before the market tests them.
Hedging, and the cheaper alternatives most people should use instead
What hedging actually costs, why selling is usually better than hedging for retail, how shorts, options and stablecoin rotation compare, and the specific situations where a hedge genuinely makes sense.
DeFi and yield
Lending, liquidity, staking, restaking, perpetuals and options. Where the yields are, where the losses are, and why those are the same place.
DeFi: lending, liquidity and impermanent loss
What providing liquidity actually pays you for, why impermanent loss is a badly named but very real cost, and how DeFi lending liquidations work.
Staking: real yield, lock ups and what can go wrong
Where staking rewards actually come from, the difference between native staking and liquid staking, and the risks nobody mentions in the marketing.
Perpetuals, funding rates and liquidation
How perpetual futures work, what funding actually costs you to hold a position, and why liquidation takes everything rather than something.
DeFi lending and borrowing: collateral, health factors and liquidation
How overcollateralised lending actually works, what a health factor is and how to read it, why people borrow against assets they own, and the specific ways lending positions go wrong.
Providing liquidity: AMMs, impermanent loss and whether the fees cover it
How automated market makers price assets, what impermanent loss actually is with the numbers worked through, concentrated liquidity, and how to decide whether providing liquidity is worth it.
Liquid staking and restaking: yield, derivatives and layered risk
How liquid staking tokens work, what a depeg means and when it happens, what restaking actually adds, and why layering yields multiplies risk faster than it multiplies return.
The DeFi risk stack: every layer that can fail
A complete map of DeFi failure modes from the chain up, why composability makes failures chain together, how to assess a protocol before depositing, and the questions that separate real yield from a countdown.
Professional practice
Psychology, journaling, performance measurement, macro drivers, regulation, tax and building a written policy you actually follow. What separates a professional from a talented amateur.
Tax and record keeping without the panic
Why every trade is usually a taxable event, what records to keep from day one, and the mistakes that turn a small tax bill into a nightmare.
Writing your own crypto policy
The final module: turning everything here into a short written set of rules you actually follow, decided while calm.
Psychology: the specific ways your mind will cost you money
The named biases that actually damage crypto outcomes, why knowing about them does not fix them, and the structural changes that work where willpower does not.
Journalling and review: the only mechanism that improves judgement
What to record so that review is possible, the monthly and quarterly review processes, how to separate a good decision from a good outcome, and the specific patterns a journal reveals.
Measuring performance honestly: benchmarks, risk adjustment and the numbers people avoid
Why percentage return alone is meaningless, how to benchmark a crypto portfolio properly, time weighted versus money weighted returns, and the risk adjusted measures that reveal whether you are actually good.
The working routine: daily, weekly, monthly and annually
What consistent practice actually looks like, why most screen time is negative value, the checks worth doing on a schedule, and the security and record keeping that only happen if they are scheduled.
What actually moves crypto: liquidity, rates and flows
The macroeconomic forces that drive crypto prices, why liquidity conditions matter more than adoption news, how ETF and stablecoin flows work as signals, and how to build a macro view without becoming an economist.
Regulation: how it works, what it actually changes, and how to stay on the right side of it
The frameworks that matter, why regulation is a slow structural force rather than a headline event, what compliance means for you personally, and how to handle a jurisdiction that changes around you.