Library — TXKN

Foundations

01 What crypto is A coin is a record on a network. It is not a share in a company, and it is not a promise that anyone will pay you. 02 Why it exists Crypto was built so people could move value without asking a bank for permission. It did not remove power. It moved it. 03 Keys, hashes, and signatures Three ideas sit under every wallet. You do not need a maths degree. You need to know which one is the secret. 04 Consensus A network agrees on one history. That agreement is what people mean when they say the chain cannot be quietly edited by one company. 05 Nodes, clients, and forks A node is a computer keeping the history. A client is the software it runs. A fork is a disagreement about the rules.

Bitcoin and chains

06 Bitcoin Bitcoin is a public list of transfers, aimed at moving value without a bank's permission. It is not a company, and it is not a promise of price. 07 Mining and the halving New bitcoin is paid to miners who add blocks. About every four years that new supply is cut in half. The cut is not a promise that the price rises. 08 Lightning and bitcoin payments Lightning is a way to pay quickly by updating a private channel, and settling on Bitcoin only when needed. The speed is real. So is the way people lose funds. 09 Ethereum and smart contracts A smart contract is a program on a chain. People send it transactions. It follows its code. Code is not the same thing as fairness, and someone may still be able to change it. 10 Accounts, gas, and blocks A transaction asks the network to do work. Gas is what you pay for that work. A block is a batch of transactions that became part of the history. 11 Other chains Other chains change the speed, the fee, the language, and who runs the validators. They do not change the check. 12 Layer 2s and rollups A layer 2 tries to do the busy work elsewhere and post a summary back to a chain like Ethereum. You need to know where the money actually sits, and how long a withdrawal can wait.

Wallets

13 Wallets and seed phrases The app does not hold a pile of coins. It holds keys. The keys move the record. 14 Hardware wallets and cold storage A hardware wallet keeps the private key off the computer you browse with. Offline reduces some risks. It does not stop you approving a bad transaction. 15 Hot wallets A hot wallet lives on a phone or a browser, online, ready to sign. That readiness is why people use it, and why it gets drained. 16 Multisig Multisig means more than one key must agree before the money moves. It is how a group, or a careful person, avoids a single lost phone becoming a total loss. 17 Account abstraction and passkeys A smart wallet can add recovery, spending limits, and passkeys. Those are useful. They also add a new set of people who can help, and therefore interfere.

Custody and cash

18 Exchanges and custody An exchange is a company in the middle. You deposit, you trade, you withdraw. Those are three different steps. 19 How exchanges fail Exchanges fail in ordinary ways. They freeze withdrawals, they lose keys, they lend out deposits, or they are robbed. The screen can still show your balance while the money is already gone. 20 Proof of reserves A proof of reserves tries to show that an exchange holds assets. It is a snapshot, not a full audit, and it often says little about what the firm owes. 21 Fiat on-ramps and off-ramps An on-ramp turns dollars into coins. An off-ramp turns coins back into dollars. Both ends are usually companies, with bank accounts, checks, and the power to stop. 22 KYC, freezes, and withdrawals Know-your-customer checks are how a firm ties an account to a person. They are also how an account gets stuck. A freeze is the firm using its power to stop the money. 23 Peer-to-peer trades A peer-to-peer trade is you and another person, plus a platform in the middle. The extra risk is the human on the other side, and the payment method they chose. 24 OTC desks OTC means a large trade arranged off the public order book. It is a meeting, a wire, and a wallet. Robberies wear this costume because the amounts are large and the setting feels private.

Transactions

25 Transactions and finality A transaction is a signed request to change the record. It is final when rewriting it would cost more than anyone will pay. Pending is not final. 26 Signing and connecting Connecting a wallet is permission for a site to ask you to sign. It is not, by itself, a payment. A later signature or approval can be the payment. 27 What the chain makes public Most chains are a public noticeboard. Anyone can see transfers, amounts, and addresses. Private means something narrower than people hope. 28 Address poisoning Someone sends you a tiny transfer from an address that looks like yours, so the next time you copy from your history you copy theirs.

Assets

29 Stablecoins A stablecoin is a token that claims to stay near a dollar. The claim depends on what it is pegged to, and on who can refuse a redemption. 30 How pegs fail A peg fails when people ask for the real asset and the issuer or the design cannot produce it fast enough. The price on a market then drops below the promise. 31 Wrapped assets A wrapped asset is a stand-in. A token on one chain claims to represent a coin locked somewhere else. Someone, or some contract, can fail to unlock it. 32 NFTs An NFT is a record that says a particular token id points at some data, often a picture or a membership. You own the token. You may not own the picture. 33 NFT markets NFT markets are websites that list tokens and take a fee. Volume can be painted. Royalties can be switched off. The market is a company plus a contract. 34 Memecoins A memecoin is a token whose main product is attention. Attention is real. It is not a reason to ignore who can mint more, or who holds the supply. 35 Inscriptions, ordinals, and runes Inscriptions and ordinals attach data to bitcoin. Runes are a way to make simple tokens there. They are not bitcoin itself, and they inherit bitcoin's fees. 36 Token supply, unlocks, and vesting Supply is how many tokens exist and who will receive more later. An unlock is a date when locked tokens become sellable. That date is when insiders can get paid. 37 Market cap and FDV Market cap multiplies the price by the coins that are already trading. Fully diluted value multiplies the price by every coin that could exist. The second number is often much larger, and easier to hide.

The leaks

38 Scams Anything can be a scam, because a bad actor only needs you to trust the costume. The test is short enough to use today. 39 Gurus, KOLs, and signal rooms A guru sells certainty. A KOL is often paid to post. A signal room is a hallway into paid calls. The free content is the costume. 40 Pig butchering and recovery scams Pig butchering is a long kindness that ends in a fake investment. The recovery scam is the second thief, who arrives after you have already lost. 41 Fake support, fake jobs, and Discord theft Support, jobs, and Discord mods are costumes. The ask is the same: move to a private chat, then hand over the seed, a code, or control of the machine. 42 Approvals and drainers An approval lets a contract move a token from your wallet later. A drainer is a page that asks for that permission, or for a signature, and then takes what it can. 43 Bridges A bridge moves value from one chain to another by locking it in one place and issuing a stand-in in the other. The lock, and the people who run it, are the risk. 44 Rugs, honeypots, and blacklists A rug pulls the money out of a market. A honeypot lets you buy and blocks the sale. A blacklist is a list the contract uses to freeze you. All three are someone keeping the exit. 45 Fake volume and painted charts Volume is how much supposedly traded. A painted chart is a price drawn by the same people on both sides. Busy is not the same as real. 46 Audits An audit is a report by someone paid to read the code, usually for a short time. A logo that says audited is not a warranty. 47 Admin keys and upgradeable contracts An admin key can change the program after you have deposited. Upgradeable means the address you trusted can point at new code tomorrow. 48 Oracles A contract cannot see the outside world by itself. An oracle is the feed that tells it a price. If the feed lies, the contract acts on the lie, and people lose deposits. 49 Exploit patterns People have lost deposits because a contract did the steps in the wrong order, trusted a price it should not have, or let someone borrow for one transaction and take the pool. This course names the losses. It does not teach the attack. 50 Governance attacks If voting power is a token, someone can buy or borrow enough votes to pass a proposal that sends them the treasury. The vote was valid. The outcome was a theft. 51 51% attacks and chain halts A chain can fail as a chain. An attacker with enough mining power or stake can rewrite recent history. A small validator set can halt, or be ordered to halt.

DeFi

52 Swaps An automated swap sells you one token for another from a pool, at a price that moves as you trade. The number you see and the number you get can differ. 53 Liquidity pools and impermanent loss A pool holds two assets so other people can swap. If you deposit both, you earn fees, and you can still end up with less than if you had simply held the coins. 54 Concentrated liquidity Concentrated liquidity puts your deposit in a narrow price range. You earn more in fees while the price stays there. When it leaves, you may earn nothing and hold only the worse asset. 55 Lending and liquidation Lending protocols let you deposit collateral and borrow against it. If the collateral's price falls, the protocol can sell it. That sale is a liquidation. It is automatic, and it is not on your side. 56 Yield and liquidity mining A high yield is a number. It comes from fees other people pay, from a subsidy of new coins, or from a design that only works while new money arrives. 57 Liquid staking and restaking Liquid staking gives you a receipt for coins you staked with a provider. Restaking takes that receipt and pledges it again. Each layer is another way the money can fail. 58 MEV MEV is value taken by whoever can reorder, insert, or censor transactions. Your swap can be pushed behind someone else's, so you get a worse price. 59 On-chain derivatives Perpetuals and options can live in a contract. You do not call a broker. You do call a liquidation engine. The engine is the product. 60 Prediction markets A prediction market pays out based on an outcome someone has to judge. You are betting. You are also trusting the judge and the oracle.

Trading

61 Orders and the book An order book is a list of people waiting to buy and sell. A market order takes what is there. A limit order waits for your price, and it may never fill. 62 Fees, spread, and slippage You pay to get in and you pay to get out. A hope that looks small can be smaller than those costs. 63 Leverage, margin, and liquidation Leverage means you control a larger position than the money you put up. A small move against you is magnified. Past a line, the position is closed for you. 64 Shorting A short is a bet that the price will fall. You can be wrong by more than you planned, because a rising price has no neat ceiling. 65 Perpetuals and funding A perpetual is a derivative with no expiry. Funding is a fee paid between longs and shorts so the contract price stays near the spot price. You can pay it all night. 66 Options A call is the right to buy at a strike. A put is the right to sell at a strike. Both expire. This is what they are. It is not a book of trades. 67 Size, stops, and the journal Size is a number you write before the story gets good. A stop is an exit you wrote before. Hope is moving that exit because the price disagreed. 68 Charts A candle is a picture of the price over some minutes. It shows where trades happened. It does not show the future, and it does not show who was painting it. 69 Bots, grids, and copy trading A bot follows a rule when you are not watching. A grid places orders above and below a price. Copy trading follows someone else's clicks. All three still pay fees, and all three can follow you off a cliff. 70 Open interest, volume, and smart money Open interest is how many derivative contracts are still open. Volume is how much traded. Smart money is a label someone put on a wallet. None of these is a person who owes you a profit. 71 Backtests A backtest shows how a rule would have done on old prices. Old prices do not include every fee, every moment you would have hesitated, or the future.

The wider world

72 Airdrops and points An airdrop pays tokens to people who used a product. Points are a score that might become a token. You are being paid to show up, often in a coin the issuer can create. 73 Launchpads and presales A launchpad or a presale sells coins before the public market. Early buyers often get a cheaper price. The unlock is when they can sell it to you. 74 DAOs and governance A DAO is a group that says it decides by vote, often with a token. A vote cannot protect you from a treasury that moves before you notice, or from a vote you cannot afford to join. 75 Name services A name service points a human name at an address. The name can be stolen, expire, or point somewhere you did not check. The name is not the address. 76 Gaming, play-to-earn, and DePIN Play-to-earn pays players in a token. DePIN says physical machines, like hotspots or sensors, will be paid in a token. The payout usually depends on new buyers of that token. 77 Real-world assets A real-world asset token claims to be a treasury bill, a house, a share, or an invoice. The token is only as good as the legal claim and the company in the middle. 78 Funds, ETFs, and wrappers A fund or an ETF can hold crypto so you hold a brokerage product instead. You did not step away from a firm. You hired one. 79 Payments and crypto cards A crypto card spends coins by selling them for dollars at a company, then paying the shop. There is a fee, a spread, and a firm that can freeze the card. 80 Privacy tools Privacy coins and mixers try to break the public trail. This course says what they are. It is not a guide to hiding money from the law. 81 Rules Promoting crypto, and telling a person what to do with their money, is regulated. In the UK the rules are strict. This page is not legal advice. 82 Records Swaps, sales, and some payments can be tax events. This course is not tax advice. The record is so you can ask someone who is qualified, with numbers instead of guesses. 83 Security habits The habits are boring, which is why they work. Bookmark the real site. Split the wallets. Never put the seed in a chat. 84 Inheritance and lost keys If the seed is lost, the money is gone. If you die and nobody can find the seed, the money is gone. There is no probate department on the chain. 85 Reading a project Read a project with the same list every time. The list does not name a winner. A project that paid TXKN for a listing still has to pass it, and the payment is not a blessing. 86 The desk One session, in order. Then you decide alone. There is no coin list after this.