Understanding Cryptocurrencies

This guide is written for people new to digital assets as well as for experienced investors who want practical ways to judge these assets and their valuations. Its main subjects are Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the many smaller coins known as altcoins.

The author takes an evidence-based approach to where digital assets fit in an investor's holdings, either as one part of a mix of conventional financial assets or as a self-contained portfolio within a separate, parallel financial system. Readers are introduced to fundamental, technical, and on-chain analysis methods for reading Bitcoin's price cycles, with the aim of improving returns. Money often moves from Bitcoin into other digital assets as a cycle unfolds, so the book also looks at how that flow builds a wider ecosystem and where investors might find additional alpha.

The book also covers options for holding digital assets in custody and works through common counterarguments so that readers can form more informed views. It examines the economic distortions that decades of central bank interest rate setting and monetary expansion have produced, along with their social, political, and economic consequences. According to the author, these distortions leave a gap in the global market for sound money, and Bitcoin and other digital assets are positioned to fill it.