Guides
In-depth, plain-English guides to evaluating exchanges, securing your wallet, and using crypto safely.
Independently written — no sponsor input
29 guides
Markets & tokensLast reviewed Aug 18, 2026
An ETF Share or the Coin Itself
Both track the same price and they are not the same asset. What each one actually makes you own, the three-way choice most people mistake for a two-way one, and which risk you are picking up.Exchange safetyLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026API Keys and Third-Party Trading Tools
Bots, trackers and tax tools all ask for exchange API keys. What each permission actually grants, and the one you should almost never hand over.Wallet securityLast reviewed Aug 18, 2026Bridging Crypto Between Chains Without Losing It
A bridge is a custody decision dressed up as a transfer. What the three designs actually do with your coin, why bridges are the most attacked component in crypto, and the checks that survive all of them.Wallet securityLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026How to Check a Crypto Address Before You Send
A crypto transfer cannot be recalled, and the most common way people lose money is sending to an address that was never the one they meant. Here is the check that catches it.Tax & recordsLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026The Crypto Records to Keep Before Tax Time
What you owe is set where you live, and this page does not touch it. What travels between jurisdictions is the record-keeping — and the fact that exchanges are not archives.Wallet securityLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026Custodial vs Non-Custodial Wallets Explained
The single biggest decision in how you hold crypto: who controls the keys, and what that means for security and responsibility.Exchange safetyLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026How to Evaluate a Crypto Exchange's Safety
Before you deposit a dollar, run any exchange through this checklist — proof-of-reserves, custody model, licensing, and security track record.Wallet securityLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026Hardware Wallets Explained
What a hardware wallet actually protects you from, what it does not, and how to buy and set one up without undoing the point of owning it.Crypto basicsLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026How Crypto Withdrawals Work
Networks, addresses, confirmations and fees — what actually happens when you withdraw crypto, and the mistakes that make it unrecoverable.Crypto basicsLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026How to Buy Bitcoin for the First Time
The purchase takes ten minutes. What takes longer are the four decisions around it: where the coin will live, which venue may legally sell to you, and what the quote really costs.Markets & tokensLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026How to Check a Token Before You Buy
Six checks you can run yourself on any token, with a block explorer and the contract. None of them require trusting the project's own description.Exchange safetyLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026How to Check an Exchange Licence Claim
A licence badge in a footer is a claim, not evidence. Four steps to verify it against the register, and what the answer does and does not cover.Markets & tokensLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026How to Read a Crypto Whitepaper
A whitepaper has no standard, no reviewer and no obligation to stay true. What to read first, what to verify elsewhere, and which sections to skip.Crypto basicsLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026How to Spot a Crypto Scam
The patterns behind almost every crypto scam are older than crypto. Learn the five that keep working, and the checks that defuse them.Markets & tokensLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026How to Trade Crypto Futures, Starting With the Risk
A perpetual costs you money whether you are right or wrong, and the venue picks the moment your position closes. The numbers to know before the entry, not after it.Markets & tokensLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026Market Cap and Supply, Explained
Why a coin's unit price tells you nothing, what market cap actually measures, and the supply figures that quietly change the answer.Exchange safetyLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026Proof of Reserves Explained
What a proof-of-reserves report actually proves, what it quietly leaves out, and how to read one without mistaking it for a full audit.Crypto basicsLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026How to Read a Block Explorer
A block explorer is the public record every claim about a transaction can be checked against. What the fields mean, and the three things worth verifying yourself.Wallet securityLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026How to Store a Seed Phrase Safely
Your recovery phrase is the account. Here is how to back it up so a fire, a flood, a thief or a phishing site cannot take your crypto with it.Wallet securityLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026Token Approvals and How to Revoke Them
Most wallet drains are not stolen keys. They are permissions the owner granted once and forgot. Here is what an approval is and how to take it back.Exchange safetyLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026Two-Factor Authentication for Crypto Accounts
Not all second factors are equal. Why SMS codes are the weakest option, what a security key does that an app cannot, and what to fix first.Markets & tokensLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026Understanding Crypto Exchange Fees
Trading fees are the smallest part of what an exchange charges you. Here is where the rest of the cost hides, and how to measure it.Markets & tokensLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026What a Smart Contract Audit Does and Does Not Prove
An audit is a review with a scope and a date, not a guarantee. How to read one, and the four things a badge on a website never tells you.Crypto basicsLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026What Actually Backs a Stablecoin
A stablecoin is only as stable as whatever stands behind it. The three designs, what an attestation does and does not prove, and the question that matters most.Exchange safetyLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026What Happens When a Crypto Exchange Fails
If an exchange freezes withdrawals or files for bankruptcy, what actually happens to your balance — and what you can do before that day.Crypto basicsLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026What Staking Actually Involves
Staking is not a savings account. What you commit, what can reduce it, and the difference between doing it yourself and letting a platform do it.Wallet securityLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026What to Do If Your Wallet Is Drained
The first hour matters, and instinct gives the wrong advice. What can still be saved, what cannot, and why recovery services make it worse.Exchange safetyLast reviewed Aug 18, 2026When an Exchange Freezes Your Withdrawal
Most frozen withdrawals are a compliance review, not a collapse. How to tell which one you are in, what shortens a hold, and the signals that mean stop waiting.Crypto basicsLast reviewed Aug 17, 2026Why a Transaction Is Stuck, and What to Do
A pending transaction has not failed and has not happened. Why fees, ordering and nonces leave transactions waiting, and which fixes are real.Coin guides
Plain-English risk levels for the assets people ask about most — not investment advice, just what to know before you buy.
Aave AAVEVolatileA decentralised lending protocol where deposits sit in shared pools and borrowers take overcollateralised loans against assets they lock, with interest rates set by how much of a pool is in use.Algorand ALGOVolatileA smart-contract network whose consensus draws a fresh random committee for every block and finalises it on the spot, so the chain never reorganises and confirmations are not a waiting game.Aptos APTVolatileA proof-of-stake layer-1 launched in October 2022 by engineers from Meta's abandoned Diem project, built around the Move programming language and an execution engine that processes independent transactions in parallel rather than one after another.Arbitrum ARBVolatileAn optimistic rollup that executes transactions off the Ethereum main chain and posts the results back to it, so users pay Ethereum-level security costs only once per batch.Avalanche AVAXVolatileA proof-of-stake smart-contract platform designed around fast transaction finality and the ability for projects to run their own separate, application-specific chains.Bitcoin BTCEstablishedThe original cryptocurrency and still the largest by market value, with over fifteen years of continuous operation and no successful attack on its core network.Bitcoin Cash BCHVolatileA network created by a 2017 hard fork of Bitcoin, taking the opposite side of a long argument about whether to scale by enlarging blocks or by moving activity to other layers.BNB BNBVolatileThe token issued by Binance: it discounts trading fees on the exchange and pays transaction costs on BNB Chain, so its usefulness is tied to one company.Cardano ADAVolatileA proof-of-stake smart-contract platform whose development is driven by peer-reviewed academic research, which makes it deliberate and slow-moving by design rather than by accident.Celestia TIAVolatileA network launched in October 2023 that does one job on purpose: it accepts data from other chains, orders it and guarantees it was actually published, leaving execution and settlement to whoever builds on top.Chainlink LINKVolatileA network of independent operators that delivers outside information — most often prices — into smart contracts, which cannot fetch data on their own.Cosmos ATOMVolatileA framework and messaging standard for building independent blockchains that can pass tokens and messages to one another, rather than a single chain that hosts every application.Curve DAO CRVVolatileA decentralised exchange launched in 2020 and specialised in swapping assets that are supposed to trade at the same value — stablecoins, staked and unstaked versions of the same coin — plus a governance token whose influence is bought with time rather than size alone.Dogecoin DOGESpeculativeStarted in 2013 as a joke based on an internet meme, with no roadmap or scarcity mechanism comparable to Bitcoin's — its price is driven almost entirely by sentiment.Ethereum ETHEstablishedThe leading platform for smart contracts and decentralized apps — most of DeFi, NFTs and stablecoin activity runs on it or a network derived from it.Ethereum Classic ETCVolatileThe continuation of the original Ethereum ledger by participants who rejected the 2016 hard fork that reversed The DAO theft, on the principle that a ledger should not be rewritten.Filecoin FILVolatileA network that turns file storage into an open market: clients pay providers to hold data, and providers must keep proving to the chain that the data is still there.Hedera HBARVolatileA public ledger that records transactions in a gossip-based graph rather than a chain of blocks, and whose consensus nodes are run by a defined council of named organisations.Lido DAO LDOVolatileA protocol that pools deposited ether, stakes it through a curated set of node operators, and issues a transferable token that represents the staked position.Litecoin LTCVolatileOne of the oldest surviving cryptocurrencies, launched in 2011 from Bitcoin's codebase with faster blocks and a larger maximum supply.Monero XMRVolatileA network that conceals sender, receiver and amount by default, unlike Bitcoin, where every transaction is permanently public and traceable.NEAR Protocol NEARVolatileA proof-of-stake smart-contract platform that splits its workload across shards and uses readable account names instead of raw hexadecimal addresses.Optimism OPVolatileAn optimistic rollup that executes transactions off Ethereum and settles them there, built on an openly published stack that other networks also run.Polkadot DOTVolatileA network where separate specialised chains connect to a central relay chain and borrow its security instead of each having to recruit validators alone.Polygon POLVolatileA scaling network that processes transactions cheaply alongside Ethereum, aimed at applications for which Ethereum's own fees are prohibitive.Shiba Inu SHIBSpeculativeA meme token launched on Ethereum in 2020 with an extremely large supply, whose price is driven by social attention rather than by any underlying revenue.Solana SOLVolatileA high-throughput blockchain built for speed and low transaction fees, popular for trading apps and consumer-facing crypto products.Stablecoins USDT/USDCIssuer riskTokens designed to track the value of a fiat currency, usually the US dollar — useful for moving value without crypto's usual price swings, but you're trusting the issuer's reserves.Stellar XLMVolatileA payment-focused ledger designed to move value between currencies, where assets other than its native token are issued by named organisations that promise redemption.Sui SUIVolatileA smart-contract network that models state as individually owned objects rather than one global account table, which lets transactions that touch nothing in common be processed at the same time.Tezos XTZVolatileA smart-contract network built so that changes to its own protocol are proposed, voted on and installed by the chain itself, rather than agreed off-chain and shipped as a fork.The Graph GRTVolatileA network that indexes blockchain data into queryable APIs called subgraphs, so applications can ask structured questions instead of scanning every block themselves.Toncoin TONVolatileA smart-contract network whose design splits work across many shards, with contracts communicating by asynchronous messages rather than direct calls within one global state.TRON TRXVolatileA smart-contract network known mainly for cheap, fast stablecoin transfers, secured by a small elected set of validators rather than an open one.Uniswap UNIVolatileThe governance token of one of the largest decentralised exchanges, where trades are executed by smart contracts rather than by a company's order book.VeChain VETVolatileA chain aimed at enterprise record-keeping — product provenance, logistics, certification — built on a two-token model that separates the asset held from the asset spent on fees.Wrapped Bitcoin WBTCIssuer riskAn Ethereum token meant to be backed one-for-one by bitcoin held in custody, so bitcoin can be used inside Ethereum applications.XRP XRPVolatileDesigned for fast, low-cost cross-border settlement, and closely tied to Ripple, the company most associated with promoting it.Zcash ZECVolatileA payments chain that offers two kinds of address — transparent, which behaves like Bitcoin, and shielded, where a zero-knowledge proof validates a transfer without revealing sender, receiver or amount.