Desk notes
Further reading
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Stablecoin mechanics: identify the route back to the target value
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Stablecoin reserves: read the assets, liabilities, and access terms
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DeFi collateral: calculate the buffer before borrowing
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AMM liquidity: what a pool position actually owns
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DEX slippage: distinguish the quote, price impact, and tolerance
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Oracle design: examine where a protocol gets its facts
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Blockchain bridges: trace the claim on both sides
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Rollups: separate execution speed from settlement guarantees
Latest stories
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Data availability: why a valid commitment is not enough
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Protocol governance: follow a proposal through to execution
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Multisig wallets: a threshold is only the beginning
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Wallet backups: test recovery before you need it
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Crypto phishing: inspect the requested authority, not the urgency
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Transaction explorers: read evidence without overreading labels
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Onchain metrics: define the observation before telling a story
02 / Explore the complete library
The mechanism, explained
Go beyond the headline: understand how the moving parts fit together.
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Trading volume quality: inspect what was counted and where
Separate spot turnover, derivatives notional, liquidity depth, and suspicious patterns before comparing markets.
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Market capitalization: useful arithmetic with important limits
Calculate circulating and diluted valuations while separating marginal price, supply estimates, liquidity, and token rights.
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Crypto research sources: build a claim-to-evidence trail
Use documentation, code, governance records, and independent observations without confusing first-party claims with proof.
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Protocol upgrades: distinguish proposal, release, activation, and migration
Follow network and contract changes through their actual lifecycle instead of treating an announcement as completed behavior.
Practical reading
Worked examples, verification steps and the limits of each tool.
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Staking: separate validator rewards from the service wrapper
Compare direct operation, pooled participation, liquid claims, penalties, fees, and withdrawal dependencies.
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MEV: understand how transaction ordering changes outcomes
Learn the differences between arbitrage, liquidation, and sandwich behavior, plus the limits of private transaction routes.
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NFT metadata: separate token ownership from the file it references
Inspect contract identity, token URIs, content addressing, storage persistence, and the limits of ownership claims.
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How to read a crypto whitepaper as a testable argument
Turn architecture and economic claims into questions about assumptions, implementation, incentives, and failure cases.
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Bitcoin UTXOs: why a balance consists of individual outputs
Understand inputs, change, coin selection, and the cost of spending many small receipts.
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Bitcoin confirmations: reading settlement as a process
Separate broadcast, inclusion, confirmation depth, and service crediting when receiving a payment.
Questions worth asking
Read the assumptions before drawing a conclusion.
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Bitcoin fees: calculate cost before choosing a speed
Learn fee rates, virtual size, input count, and the difference between accelerating and refunding.
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What a Bitcoin full node verifies for you
Distinguish validation, mining, wallet signing, and storage when deciding what a node accomplishes.
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Bitcoin custody: who can authorize a withdrawal?
Compare service balances, self-custody, hardware signers, and recovery responsibilities.
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Bitcoin mining: from candidate block to accepted history
Connect proof of work, validation, pool shares, and operating economics without confusing their roles.
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Ethereum accounts: addresses, keys, contracts, and nonces
Read account behavior without confusing a wallet application, an address, and the authority behind it.
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Ethereum gas: distinguish work, price, and spending caps
Calculate a hypothetical fee and learn why a reverted transaction can still cost ETH.