Finance Illustrated

Make sense of crypto, step by step.

Understand coins, wallets and fees. Explore past price shocks, check the claims and decide what to practise.

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Save your place at the end of each lesson. Progress stays on this device.

Two learners hold notebooks with lock symbols; one holds a yellow key, illustrating signing control.
Chapter 1

Know what you hold

Separate the asset, its network and who controls access.

  1. Lesson 1Start hereHow crypto assets and networks work
  2. Lesson 2Who holds your crypto keys?
Chapter 2

Understand changes in value

Explore transaction costs and the climb back after a loss.

  1. Lesson 3What does a crypto trade cost?
  2. Lesson 4How much must a price rise after a loss?
Chapter 3

Learn from past shocks

Explore Bitcoin events from 2013 to 2017 and Ethereum events from 2016 to 2017.

  1. Lesson 5Bitcoin crashes from 2013 to 2017
  2. Lesson 6Ethereum crashes from 2016 to 2017
Chapter 4

Give yourself room to think

Check the claims and give your practice a clear purpose.

  1. Lesson 7Spot a crypto scam
  2. Lesson 8Plan your crypto practice

Try it yourself

Try to rewrite history

Change an amount in block 1, for example make Ana pay Ben 5 BTC. Watch the fingerprints and the links. Then try to fix the chain.

If Ana's payment in block 1 changes from 0.5 to 5 BTC, block 1 gets a new fingerprint. Block 2 still points to the old one, so the link breaks, and so does every link after it. Hiding the change means redoing blocks 2, 3 and 4.

What would you expect?

What this shows: Change one old payment and every later block stops matching. To hide it you must redo them all, while other computers keep the original.

Each block stores the fingerprint (hash) of the block before it, and its own fingerprint depends on everything before it. That is why a blockchain record is so hard to change quietly.

Keep exploring

All crypto articles in the Library