Crypto Crash Course —A newbie’s guide to Cryptocurrencies, DeFi, and NFTs — the 2021 version– Crypto Knowledge Tree — SharkHacks Guide to Crypto
Disclaimer: Content below is for educational purpose only and is NOT to be considered Financial Advice!
Note: This is a work in progress guide, that will be updated as I go teaching, learning more, and discovering new projects, tools, and tips and tricks
Last update : Sep 11, 2021 L2 Arbitrum
I’ve been fascinated with Crypto for a long time, I stumbled on Crypto first in 2011, I was part of the rise in 2017, participated in the first DAO, then fell in love again in 2020 and 2021.
One of the hardest things about learning, and mastering a new subject is knowing where to start, and what are all the concepts that one has to understand in order to be effective. Understanding the core concepts, the ‘lattice work’, and developing a mental model around these concepts.
Below I have outlined the core concepts that one has to understand to be effective in the Crypto, DeFi, and NFT World, along with the best resources I have found to date around these concepts.
Note that this is written for investors and non – technical audiences and was put together to help my non-technical friends and family.
Money 101
What is money ?
Time Value of Money
How the economy works
Market Supply & Demand
Inflation and deflation
Crypto 101
Bitcoin
Ethereum
Proof of work vs Proof of stake
Crypto-economics
Tokenomics
Metcalf’s Law
L1 ecosystems
Bitcoin
Ethereum
Ethereum 2.0
L1 comparison and trade offs
L2 ecosystems
Other critical pieces
Interoperability
Oracles
DeFi 101
Stablecoins
Synthetics
Staking
Lending and borrowing
Liquidity mining
DAOs 101
NFTs 101
Gaming
Metaverse & Web 3.0
Money 101
What is Money?
Time value of money
How the Economy Works?
The world’s most famous Ray Dalio about how the economy works
Market, Supply, and Demand
Inflation and Deflation
Why the current financial system is broken?
And Now …. Bitcoin
2008 Satoshi Released his white paper “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
What is Cryptocurrency?
Proof of Work (Mining) , Proof of Stake (Staking)
Tokenomics:
Metcalf’s Law:
One way to think of demand/value of cryptocurrencies (and Crypto networks) is in terms of Metcalf’s law (the networking effect) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law
Larger Networks, Projects, and Ecosystems
Bitcoin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scZBwQW7h0E
Ethereum
Ethereum as explained by the founder:
Ethereum 2.0
Layer 2 Protocols (for Ethereum)
Due to the current nature of Ethereum, it has scaling problems. Layer 2 scaling solutions, are other crypto projects, and tokens, that are meant to help Ethereum scale:
Polygon / Matic (one of the larger L2 solutions for Ethereum)
Arbitrum
Avalanche
Official video :
Solana
Beyond the Currencies
Decentralized Finance (DeFi)
What is DeFi?
The best “Model” to think about DeFi that i have found around is the Bankless Skill Cube: : https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/the-bankless-skill-cube
History of DeFi — DeFi Summer of 2020
Liquidity Pools:
Liquidity Pools sound great, but you need to be aware of IL
Impermanent Loss (IL)
IL is one of the hardest concepts to wrap your head around, it was like that for me, so here are two videos that helped me.
Yield Farming:
Stablecoins
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/12/29/what-is-a-stablecoin/
Fiat Currency Backed
USDT
USDC
DAI
Algorithmically Stable
UST / LUNA
FRAX
Gold
https://www.paxos.com/paxgold/
Memecoins (Shitcoins)
Interesting Memecoins with PonziNomics
Oracles
Keep an eye on Chainlink, it’s everywhere.
Bridges
Identity
NFT
NFT like the pros, Follow the money
Crypto collectibles
Is one type of NFTs, think baseball cards
Great video discussing NFTs
Gaming
Axie Infinity — Huge Potential
and Entertainment
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)
DAOs are organizations, and communities. From one standpoint you can think of a DAO as a CEO-less company, where shareholders vote directly on the direction of the company, the projects and initiatives it should execute on.
A more recent DAO report can be found here:
Metaverse
Web 3.0
How to buy Crypto ?
Centralized exchanges
Decentralized Exchanges (DEX)
You should never leave your crypto on the exchange
Crypto Wallets, self custody, and security
You are now your own bank, and so the security of your money is your own “problem”
Investing & Trading
Opportunity Cost
Dollar Cost Average (DCA)
a great strategy to accumulate
Market entry
Market exit
https://youtu.be/ZGd6O79_MOc
Follow Innovators, Investors, and Big Money
Stalk those people on twitter, their projects, what they say, and what they invest in
Trading
Macro
Tokenomics, Ponzinomics, and Game Theory
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftCaqG7wckg
Crypto is about aligning incentives.
Market Cycles
Relationship between BTC, and Altcoins
Technical Analysis
Security, Trust, FUD and FOMO
Follow “Trusted” people, and make sure you don’t fall to scams
Don’t leave your money on the exchange
Tools
CoinGecko
A site listing many of the “larger” coins/tokens/projects, with information about them, market cap, linking to their sites, addresses, etc.. a great resource
see also CoinMarketCap (might be biased/owned by Binance) http://coinmarketcap.com
TradingView
DexTools
Block Explorers
For every blockchain network / project, there are Blockchain explorers, or tools that you can use to lookup addresses, transactions, contracts, tokens, etc.
- For Ethereum https://etherscan.io
- For Binance https://bscscan.com
Wallet
Trusted Resources
Coin Bureau is one of the quality news, and information resource in Crypto:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqK_GSMbpiV8spgD3ZGloSw
Jargon:
Paper Hands
Diamond Hands
FUD
FOMO
Ape
