Crypto, Explained by the National Cryptocurrency Association

You bought your first digital assets on an exchange, and the balance is right there on your screen. Then someone online says "not your keys, not your coins," and now you're wondering whether it's really yours. In this solo episode of Crypto, Explained, Ali Tager, VP of External Affairs at the National Cryptocurrency Association, breaks down what custody actually means and what ch...

Most conversations about crypto are really conversations about price. What it did this week, what it might do next, who got in early. There is a whole category that works the other way around, where the entire design goal is that nothing happens at all. A dollar today, and the same dollar tomorrow. In this episode, Ali Tager sits down with Stephanie Chan, enterprise project manager and deputy dire...

Before anyone gets confused by crypto, a lot of people have already decided it isn't for them. Not because they tried and struggled, but because nothing about it ever looked like it was built with them in mind. That decision gets made quietly, usually long before anyone opens an app, and almost nobody goes back and checks it. In this episode, Ali Tager sits down with Jouell Wright, a crypto me...

Most people can name the moment they decided something was not for them. Someone explained it badly, the room seemed to already understand, and asking felt worse than not knowing. That decision gets filed away as a preference and then sits there for years, never reopened. In this episode, Ali Tager sits down with Lauren Weymouth, who leads the University Blockchain Research Initiative, Ripple'...

Picture someone who owns crypto. For most of us the same face shows up: a young guy, a wall of screens, a lot of jargon, and maybe a little too much confidence. That picture is doing real damage, because it tells everyone who does not see themselves in it that this was never meant for them. In this episode, Ali Tager sits down with Kristina Sherk, a headshot photographer and Photoshop educator bas...

Picture someone who owns crypto. For most of us the same face shows up: a young guy, a wall of screens, a lot of jargon, and maybe a little too much confidence. That picture is doing real damage, because it tells everyone who does not see themselves in it that this was never meant for them. In this episode, Ali Tager sits down with Kristina Sherk, a headshot photographer and Photoshop educator bas...

Yesterday the Senate voted on whether to advance the Clarity Act, and it did not get the votes it needed. In this short update, Ali explains what that actually means, starting with the thing worth hearing first: if you already hold crypto, nothing changes. The vote was a cloture vote, not a vote on whether the Clarity Act becomes law. It was a vote on whether the Senate could begin debating it, an...

Open a news app, a feed, or a newspaper right now and the same two words keep showing up together: crypto and AI. They get stacked in headlines so often that it starts to feel like they are merging into one bigger thing. They are not. They are two separate technologies, and what is actually happening between them is smaller, more specific, and a lot more useful to understand. In this episode, Ali...

Picture someone who owns crypto. For most of us the same face shows up: a young guy, a wall of screens, a lot of jargon, and maybe a little too much confidence. That picture is doing real damage, because it tells everyone who does not see themselves in it that this was never meant for them. In this episode, Ali Tager sits down with Kristina Sherk, a headshot photographer and Photoshop educator bas...

There is a specific kind of moment that keeps people out of crypto. You are scrolling, or you are at dinner, and somebody starts talking about yield and liquidity pools and staking rewards like it is all perfectly normal conversation, and you are just sitting there thinking you do not know what any of that means. That feeling is not a knowledge problem. It is a vocabulary problem, and it has a fix...

For a lot of people, the word wealth puts up a wall. It sounds like a club you were never invited to, something for people who already have money and already know the language. But NCA's research found that when everyday crypto holders describe how the technology makes them feel about their financial lives, the top words are not rich or wealthy. They are proud and confident, with 83% reporting...

Sixty-seven million Americans use crypto today, roughly one in four adults, up from one in five a year ago. But NCA's 2026 State of Crypto Holders research found that more than a third of those owners say the thing holding them back from using it more is not money or access. It is that they still do not really understand what they own. Adoption is running ahead of understanding, which almost never...

When people argue about crypto, they usually argue about price. A new economic report suggests the more important story is happening somewhere else entirely: the American job market. In this episode, host Ali Tager sits down with economist Oliver Browne, who helped develop NCA’s Crypto At Work report, to unpack what the numbers say about crypto as a full-fledged American industry rather than just...

Somewhere out there is a person who wants to try crypto but keeps hearing the same kind of story: someone lost everything because of a private key or a seed phrase, terms they never fully understood. That fear keeps a lot of people on the sidelines, and honestly, that is fair. The good news is that almost all of the confusion comes down to a small handful of words nobody ever bothers to explain cl...

Splitting a dinner bill, paying a freelancer for work they just finished, sending money to someone across the world. The payment usually gets where it needs to go, but rarely as easily as it should, slowed down by fees, delays, and banking hours. Even the apps that feel instant, like Venmo, are really just moving IOUs behind the scenes, and the money is not always yours to use the moment it lands....

If you have watched the news lately, you have probably seen a percentage tucked in the corner of the screen next to the polling numbers, pulled from a place called Polymarket or Kalshi. Most people glance at it, wonder for a second where it came from, and move on. But that small number sits on top of one of the fastest-growing corners of finance, where billions of dollars now move every month on t...

Real estate has long been one of the clearest ways for everyday people to build something lasting, but getting started can come with a high price tag. Down payments, financing, paperwork, closing timelines, and the challenge of managing property from far away can make ownership feel out of reach before the process even begins. In this episode of Crypto, Explained, host Ali Tager sits down with Bra...

Memecoins are one of the loudest, funniest, riskiest, and most misunderstood corners of crypto. They can start as jokes, spread through online communities, and suddenly show up everywhere in your feed, but that does not mean they work like major crypto tokens, stocks, or traditional investments. In this solo episode of Crypto, Explained, host Ali Tager breaks down what memecoins actually are, why...

Market cap. Cost basis. Realized gains. Dollar cost averaging. For a lot of people, the vocabulary around crypto can feel like it requires a finance degree just to follow along. In this solo episode, host Ali Tager makes the case that it doesn't, and breaks down five personal finance terms you will hear in crypto so you can make sense of a chart and follow a conversation about the market witho...

For more than a decade, blockchain has come with a lot of promises about what it could do someday. This episode is about what it is actually doing right now. In this episode of Crypto, Explained, host Ali Tager sits down with Asheesh Birla, CEO of Evernorth, a digital asset treasury focused on XRP that is preparing to go public. Asheesh has spent 13 years at the intersection of blockchain infrastr...

For a long time, the honest answer to "how is crypto regulated in the United States?" was some version of "it's complicated, it's evolving, the rules aren't clear yet." That answer is finally starting to change. In this episode of Crypto, Explained, host Ali Tager sits down with Zunera Mazhar, VP of Policy and Government Affairs at The Digital Chamber, to make sense...

If you've ever sat through a crypto conversation feeling like everyone else got handed a glossary you didn't, you're not alone. Terms like altcoin, memecoin, NFT, and ETF get tossed around constantly, but the truth is they're all just different flavors of the same world. In this episode of Crypto, Explained, host Ali Tager pulls together five of the most common digital asset types...

When you think about crypto, the first thing that comes to mind probably isn't cattle ranching. But that is exactly where some of the most interesting real-world blockchain use cases are happening right now. In this episode of Crypto, Explained, host Ali Tager sits down with Rob Jennings, President and Co-founder of CattleProof Verified, and Dr. Evan Whitley, Executive Director of Agriculture and...

Most online safety advice falls into one of two camps. It is either too vague to be useful, or so overwhelming that you tune it out before you can act on it. The truth sits somewhere in the middle. In this episode of Crypto, Explained, host Ali Tager sits down with Patrick Wyman, Chief of the Virtual Assets Unit at the FBI, and Travis Wiehn, Supervisory Special Agent at the FBI, for a candid conve...

Two years ago, the picture of a typical crypto holder was a 25-year-old guy in his mom's basement, chasing meme coins and dreaming of a Lambo. The data today tells a very different story. In this episode of Crypto, Explained, host Ali Tager sits down with returning co-host Stu Alderoty, President of the National Cryptocurrency Association and Chief Legal Officer at Ripple, to unpack the brand new...