Where to Begin Without Losing Your Mind

Cryptocurrencies are a mishmash of four major fields: cryptography, distributed systems, computer science, and economics. You don’t need to be a master in all four to get some skin in the game—trust me, no one is. But the hard part? Figuring out where to start.

Ask a developer, and they'll tell you to learn Solidity. Ask an economist, and they’ll either scoff or offer you a lengthy monologue on why you’re wasting your time. Computer scientists think they know more than economists, but the real wild cards? Cryptographers. They’re out there running billion-dollar experiments, playing Russian roulette with a trillion-dollar market.

Now, let me give you my two cents. I learned blockchain the hard way, by slogging through scattered articles. Back then (three years ago—practically a lifetime in crypto), we didn’t have the luxury of something like ChatGPT to spoon-feed us the concepts. Now, you can take things bit by bit until you’re ready for the heavy lifting.

When I hit that point, I moved on to more technical books, but let’s be clear: I had a head start. I studied coding, cryptographic hash functions, and economics in college. If these aren’t in your vocabulary yet, don’t panic. That’s why I created this site—to simplify these complex ideas through interactive tools, analogies, and whatever else it takes to democratize this field.

Out of the four pillars I mentioned earlier, I’ll be focusing more on cryptography and distributed systems. For the other two, I’ve curated references to solid, reliable posts across the web. You can browse my content by tags—L1 through L10—where L1 is the most basic and L10 is for when you’ve already got ten concepts under your belt.

One last tip: The crypto world is an ocean of buzzwords, jargon, and hype. At the core of it all is Bitcoin. Master that, and you’ll cut through the noise like a hot knife through butter. Bitcoin is the signal; the rest? Some of it’s worth listening to, but a lot of it is just noise.