How to Learn About Crypto: A Reading List for Newbies (Published in DataDrivenInvestor)
With all the hype around it, crypto had always been on my list of “Things I Need to Know About Because They Seem Relevant (and Everyone’s Talking About Them),” but whenever I’d crack my knuckles and try to dive head-first into the sea of articles out there, I was left feeling confused.
There seemed to be jargon-y words in practically every sentence, from “smart contract” to “DAI” and “liquidity farming.” It was an entire world with its own vocabulary and quirks — what’s this “proof of stake” that everyone’s fussing about? Why are so many people salty about Elon Musk? And how do you keep your head from spinning when you look at all the coins out there with mysterious names like “PancakeSwap” and “Polkadot?”
As you can imagine, I tried breaking into crypto a few times — then gave up and resigned myself to just nodding vaguely when someone would bring up Bitcoin. It was only recently that I figured out how to go from “totally clueless” to “beginner who’s finally starting to pick up on the lingo.” I’m happy to say that I now have a Metamask wallet, I’ve invested in BTC, ETH, and a few altcoins, and I finally understood enough about DeFi to get excited about it.
What happened was I put together a reading list instead of trying to stumble randomly through the online maze of crypto information. I wrote and rewrote the list along the way (based on what I was interested in next). Nobody’s path to learning the basics of crypto will ever be the same, but these are the resources that were the most helpful for me (and yes, I specifically chose them because they kept the esoteric vocabulary to a minimum).
Getting Started with Crypto
If you’re curious about crypto but you’re not sure where to start, here are some ideas:
- The Bitcoin Standard:
This was the first book about crypto that I read — and it did a good job of explaining the implications of Bitcoin beyond the whole “this-can-potentially-make-me-a-lot-of-money” lure that usually gets people interested in crypto in the first place.
There’s a reason why this book has more than 2,500 ratings on Amazon. It drives home exactly how Bitcoin can be so paradigm-changing and why it makes for a better currency and store of value than gold and paper money.
- The Sovereign Individual:
I found this book mind-blowing because it was published in the late 1990s, but so many of its predictions have come true. Its main premise is that we’re entering the “fourth stage of human society,” which will be marked by profound shifts in economics and politics. Although it was written 20 years ago, at a time when computers were far from being mainstream, it actually predicted digital nomadism, remote work, freelancing, and even Bitcoin itself — or specifically, decentralized currency that’s based on cryptographic algorithms.
It’s one of Peter Thiel’s recommended books, and it basically helps set Bitcoin against a wider perspective: a future where more and more power lies in the hands of individuals and national borders collapse
- How to DeFi: Beginner:
When you start exploring crypto, you’ll hear about “decentralized finance” or DeFi pretty quickly. If crypto seems wild, DeFi is even wilder and riskier — you can think of it as a financial revolution that removes banks and other third-party intermediaries from the equation.
CoinGecko is a popular price tracker in the crypto space, and their book explains DeFi in a very clear way, with links to articles and blogs on every chapter. It also goes into the various applications of DeFi, from stablecoins to lending and borrowing.
- Coinbase Learn:
Source: https://www.coinbase.com/learn#crypto-basics
After going through the books above, I felt like I could dive back in to online posts and tutorials. For learning about the basics, I went through the beginner guides on Coinbase Learn.
Bitcoin and Ethereum are still the two biggest players in crypto, so I figured I’d look into them first before moving on to altcoins and exploring DeFi in greater depth. Coinbase Learn’s What is Bitcoin? and What is Ethereum? provide concise explanations about both coins. From there, you can read through the other beginner guides, including What is a blockchain?, What is a smart contract?, and What is a stablecoin?
- Decrypt Learn:
Decrypt is another website with useful guides about pretty much all of the major crypto topics. Although you’ll see mainly see news articles on their homepage, their crypto guides seem very specific and regularly updated.
I’d recommend Coinbase Learn for getting up to speed with the basics, then bouncing over to Decrypt when you want to look into more niche topics such as Axie Infinity, crypto lotteries, decentralized voting, and decentralized exchanges.
- Coin Market Cap:
Okay, this isn’t really for reading, but Coin Market Cap shows you a real-time list of cryptocurrencies that are ranked according to their market cap. Since by now you probably have an idea of what Bitcoin and Ethereum are about, you can dip into altcoins by researching on the top ten coins first at Coin Market Cap.
As of the time that I’m writing this, the top ten coins include ADA (Cardano), XRP (XRP), DOGE (Dogecoin), DOT (Polkadot), and UNISWAP (Uni). Someone on Reddit also charitably made a post with short explanations for each of the top 50 cryptocurrencies (as of early 2021).
- Binance, Coinbase, and Kucoin:
From here, you might want to get your hands dirty and buy some coins (maybe just a small amount at first to be prudent!) or at least poke around with crypto exchanges. Binance, Coinbase, and Kucoin are generally among the most recommended exchanges — I went with Binance because buying from Coinbase isn’t available in my country and it seemed easier to make short-term trades there than on Kucoin.
Whichever exchange you choose, you can learn a lot by going through all of the features of the app and figuring out how it works. For example, Binance had a Binance Earn feature where you could stake certain cryptocurrencies — that got me researching about staking, and it was easy to implement too because it just took a few clicks!
- Bankless
An email from the Bankless newsletter
Bankless is probably one of the most comprehensive crypto newsletters online. I always look forward to receiving their emails in my inbox — even as a free subscriber, I receive emails every day, from practical tutorials about automating liquidity to news bites about NFTs.
If you’re curious about it, this guide is a gold mine that’ll keep you busy for a while! They also have a podcast that digs deep into DeFi and larger trends in crypto, with new episodes released several times a week. For an introduction to the whole idea of going bankless, you can start with their first podcast episode.
- r/CryptoCurrency
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/cryptocurrency
With all of the crypto news websites out there, it might seem strange that I’m recommending the CryptoCurrency subreddit. Yes, there’s a bit of overlap with the infamous WSB (you’re guaranteed to constantly encounter “to the Moon” and “diamond hands”), but once I had a basic understanding of crypto, this subreddit turned out to be great for keeping updated with what’s happening out there! Although there’s a fair share of memes and questionable advice mixed in with informative posts, you’ll also feel like you’re part of a community (and maybe get a few laughs in too).
It took me around two months to go through all of these, but I see it as my “free” initiation to crypto. These cover the basics — from here, you can move on to reading about whichever topic piques your interest, from NFTs to earning interest from stablecoins and even airdrops for free coins.
Of course, the usual investing advice applies here: look into any project before investing into it (don’t put in money just because everyone’s saying so!), and don’t make crypto 100% of your investing portfolio (unless you’re willing to live with the risks). With that said, it’s an asset class that you can’t compare to any other, with lots of exciting developments in the future!
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