Crypto for Beginners (100 episodes)

EPISODE 104 — What Is a Crypto Airdrop — and How Do You Qualify? In November 2024, Hyperliquid distributed over $2.5 billion in HYPE tokens to users who had simply used the trading platform. Some wallets received tokens worth $10,000. Some received $50,000. Some early power users received hundreds of thousands of dollars — for using a platform they were already using because they found it useful....

EPISODE 103 — What Is Web3 — The Internet Crypto Is Building The internet has changed twice since it was invented. Web1 was read-only: static pages you could look at but not interact with. Web2 gave everyone a voice — you could create, post, connect, and build audiences of millions — but the platforms that enabled this owned everything you created, collected everything about you, and could remove...

EPISODE 102 — Turbo — The AI-Created Meme Coin In April 2023, a digital artist from Melbourne sat down and gave ChatGPT $69 and a challenge: design the most successful meme coin possible, start to finish, without breaking any laws. He livestreamed the entire process on social media. ChatGPT selected the name TurboToad, a pink cartoon frog mascot, a supply of 69 billion tokens, a zero-tax policy, a...

EPISODE 101 — Solana vs Ethereum — Which Blockchain Wins? The Solana versus Ethereum debate is the longest-running and most heated rivalry in crypto — and in 2026 it is more relevant than ever, because both blockchains are simultaneously thriving with very different strengths. Ethereum holds over $55 billion in DeFi total value locked, the largest and most decentralised validator set of any smart...

EPISODE 100 — Episode 100 Special — The 10 Biggest Lessons in Crypto One hundred episodes. One show. And after covering Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, DeFi, stablecoins, meme coins, airdrops, NFTs, Layer 2 networks, oracles, restaking, DAOs, and dozens more topics, there are ten lessons that stand above all the others. Ten things that — if you had understood them from your very first day in crypto — w...

EPISODE 99 — EigenLayer — Ethereum's Restaking Revolution Bootstrapping economic security for a new decentralised protocol is one of the hardest problems in blockchain. You need validators with locked capital, but convincing validators to lock capital in an unproven system requires rewards that often compromise your token economics before you have any revenue. EigenLayer solved this by asking...

EPISODE 98 — What Is a Bull Run — and How Do You Spot One? Bitcoin hit $126,000 in January 2025 — its highest price in history. By early 2026 it had fallen more than 40% from that peak, and debates about whether the cycle was over or simply pausing were dominating every corner of crypto. These debates happen at the end of every bull market, and the same costly mistakes are made by the same types o...

Episode 97 — Mog Coin — The Culture Coin Taking Over Crypto Twitter In July 2023, a group of friends launched a cryptocurrency they described as a joke. No whitepaper, no team page, no venture capital, no presale, no utility, no roadmap. They named it MOG, adopted a laughing cat wearing Pit Viper sunglasses as the mascot, and described the project as "tokenised winning" and "the int...

EPISODE 96 — What Is a Blockchain? The Technology Behind Every Coin Every cryptocurrency, every DeFi protocol, every NFT, every smart contract, and every stablecoin runs on blockchain technology. Understanding what a blockchain actually is — not the marketing version but the real technical explanation — is the foundation that makes everything else in crypto genuinely comprehensible. In this episod...

EPISODE 95 — Ethena (USDe) — The Synthetic Dollar Explained Ethena's USDe is one of the most innovative — and most debated — financial instruments in DeFi. It is not backed by dollars held in a bank. It is not backed by overcollateralised crypto. It maintains its dollar peg through a delta-neutral trading strategy: holding crypto as collateral while simultaneously holding a short futures posit...

EPISODE 94 — What Are Crypto Taxes — What You Actually Need to Know From January 2026, cryptocurrency exchanges in the United States are legally required to report your complete transaction history to the IRS. The EU's DAC8 directive requires all crypto service providers to share user account data with tax authorities across every member state. HMRC in the UK has been receiving exchange data f...

EPISODE 93 — Movement (MOVE) — The Blockchain Reinventing Itself Movement launched in late 2024 as an Ethereum Layer 2 using the Move programming language, raised significant venture capital, generated enormous community anticipation — and then ran into one of the most damaging token launch controversies of the current cycle. A market-making arrangement that should have provided liquidity for the...

EPISODE 92 — What Is Crypto Mining — and Is It Still Worth It? When Bitcoin launched in 2009, you could mine it on a standard home computer. The block reward was 50 Bitcoin per block — worth millions of dollars at today's prices. Today, mining a single Bitcoin block requires enormous data centres filled with specialised ASIC hardware, consuming as much electricity as a small city, operated by...

EPISODE 91 — Pyth Network — The Real-Time Data Oracle Every DeFi lending protocol needs to know whether your collateral is still worth enough to keep your loan open — right now, not fifteen minutes ago. Every on-chain derivatives platform needs the exact asset price at the moment of settlement. Every prediction market needs the actual outcome of a real-world event to resolve correctly. Blockchains...

EPISODE 90 — What Is a DEX vs a CEX? Two Ways to Trade Crypto In November 2022, FTX was the second-largest crypto exchange in the world. Its CEO appeared on magazine covers, testified before regulators, and was celebrated as a visionary. Within a week of the first news reports about the exchange's financial situation, it had filed for bankruptcy and over eight billion dollars in customer funds...

EPISODE 89 — Dogwifhat (WIF) — The Hat-Wearing Meme Coin A photograph of a Shiba Inu wearing a pink knitted hat became the basis for one of the most successful meme coins of the 2024 bull market — and the image ended up on the Las Vegas Sphere, one of the most visible and expensive advertising surfaces in the world, funded entirely by the token's community. Dogwifhat launched on Solana in late 202...

EPISODE 88 — What Is a Stablecoin — and Which One Should You Trust? In May 2022, TerraUSD was an $18 billion stablecoin pegged to the US dollar. Within 72 hours it had collapsed to near zero. Billions were permanently wiped out. Hundreds of thousands of investors lost everything they had put into what was supposed to be a stable, dollar-pegged asset. The collapse was not caused by a hack or fraud...

EPISODE 87 — Celestia — The Modular Blockchain Revolution For most of blockchain history, every network tried to do everything: execute transactions, reach consensus on their ordering, ensure data remains available, and settle finality — all in one monolithic system. Celestia's founders argued this design is fundamentally flawed — that doing everything in one layer forces every component to be...

EPISODE 86 — What Is a Seed Phrase — and Why It Can Never Be Lost There is no password reset in crypto. No customer support team can restore your access. No bank or government agency can help. If you lose your seed phrase and your device fails, is stolen, or is destroyed, your funds are gone permanently — every token, every satoshi — forever, with no possibility of recovery. An estimated three to...

EPISODE 85 — Bonk — Solana's Meme Coin King Christmas Day 2022. Solana was at its lowest point in years. The FTX collapse had occurred weeks earlier, devastating confidence in the entire ecosystem. Token prices had fallen by 90% or more. Developer morale was at rock bottom. Then an anonymous group of community members created a token called BONK and airdropped it to NFT holders, developers, ar...

EPISODE 84 — What Is a Crypto ETF vs Buying Crypto Directly? Two investors both want Bitcoin exposure. One buys shares in the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust through their existing brokerage account. The other downloads Coinbase, buys actual Bitcoin, and moves it to a hardware wallet. Both have Bitcoin exposure — but the differences between these two approaches in actual ownership, annual costs, t...

EPISODE 83 — JasmyCoin — Japan's Data Privacy Blockchain JasmyCoin is one of the most quietly persistent projects in crypto — a Japanese blockchain initiative that has maintained a dedicated community across multiple market cycles while pursuing a specific and increasingly timely vision: giving individuals sovereign control over their own personal data in a world of connected devices, artifici...

EPISODE 82 — What Are Gas Fees — and How Do You Avoid Paying Too Much? Gas fees are the transaction costs you pay to use a blockchain — and if you have tried to interact with Ethereum during periods of peak demand, you may have paid twenty, fifty, or even one hundred dollars for a single swap or token transfer. Gas fees have frustrated users for years, pricing ordinary people out of DeFi, creating...

EPISODE 81 — Notcoin — The Telegram Game That Became a Token In early 2024, a Telegram mini-app called Notcoin asked users to tap a coin on their phone screen. That was the entire game. No complex mechanics, no blockchain knowledge required, no wallet setup, no seed phrase. Within weeks, tens of millions of people were playing. When the NOT token launched and accumulated points converted into real...

EPISODE 80 — How to Buy Crypto for the First Time Millions of people try to buy their first cryptocurrency every year and make avoidable mistakes that cost them money, time, or both. They choose an unregulated exchange operating from an unknown jurisdiction. They fail to complete identity verification before the price moves. They buy on the wrong network and discover the difference between ETH on...