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Crypto essentials

Altcoins, wallets, halvings, unlocks, volume spikes and the traps that catch newcomers.

Crypto trades around the clock and moves faster than anything else on this site. These guides cover what is different about it, from custody to the way altcoins amplify every bitcoin move.

Several guides use the spikes and fades we cover in the daily news as examples. Finish with the Super Saiyan quiz.

1. What Is an Altcoin? — "Altcoin" gets used constantly in crypto conversation, but it covers an enormous range of risk — from established projects to speculative micro-caps.

2. What Does HODL Mean? — A crypto community meme that turned into shorthand for a genuine investing philosophy: holding through volatility instead of trading in and out of it.

3. What Is a Stablecoin? Crypto Designed Not to Move — Most crypto is famous for volatility. Stablecoins are built to do the opposite — and when one briefly fails at that one job, it becomes one of the more revealing stress tests in the entire market.

4. What Is a Crypto Wallet? Hot Wallets vs. Cold Storage Explained — A crypto wallet doesn't actually 'hold' your coins — it holds the keys that prove you control them. Here's the difference between a hot wallet and cold storage, and why it matters.

5. What Is a Bitcoin Halving? The Scheduled Supply Cut, Explained — Roughly every four years, Bitcoin's own code cuts the rate of new supply in half — a scheduled event known well in advance, yet still one of the most closely watched dates on the entire crypto calendar.

6. Why Altcoins Fall Harder Than Bitcoin When the Market Breaks — On October 10, 2025, Bitcoin fell about 17% peak to trough, Ether about 22% — and one mid-cap AI token lost roughly three-quarters of its price in half an hour. That gap is not random.

7. Relative Volume: Is Anyone Actually Behind This Move? — $40 million of trading in a day can be enormous for one coin and irrelevant for another. Relative volume compares an asset's activity with its own normal — which is how you tell a well-supported breakout from a push into thin air.

8. What Is a Token Unlock Schedule? The Supply Cliff Crypto Charts Don't Show — A large share of a crypto token's total supply is often locked at launch and released gradually — and the specific schedule of when it unlocks can matter more to price than almost anything else.

9. What Is a Pump-and-Dump Scheme? Spotting Manufactured Hype — A coordinated group hypes an asset to drive its price up, then sells into the buying they created — a scheme as old as markets themselves, and still common in thinly-traded crypto tokens.

10. What Is a Perpetual Futures Contract? Futures That Never Expire — Perpetual futures let traders take leveraged, long or short positions on an asset with no expiration date — a crypto-market innovation now central to how much of that market actually trades. Here's how they work.