Cryptocurrency & Blockchain

Altcoins and the cryptocurrency ecosystem: coins vs tokens, merge mining, atomic swaps, sidechains, ICO lessons, and an evaluation framework.

Smart contracts and Ethereum explained: the EVM, gas and EIP-1559, DeFi and NFTs, Layer 2 rollups, and the risks finance professionals must weigh.

Proof of stake vs proof of work: how Ethereum’s Merge happened, validator economics, slashing risk, liquid staking, and the security trade-offs.

Cryptocurrency regulation explained: the Howey test, SEC enforcement, the FATF Travel Rule, MiCA, and how digital assets are classified and taxed.

Bitcoin privacy and anonymity: address clustering, exchange KYC linkage, CoinJoin mixing, Monero and Zcash, and what compliance teams need to know.

Bitcoin valuation models: fixed supply and halvings, the token valuation equation, stock-to-flow and its failure, NVT, and investment vs transaction demand.

Cryptocurrency wallets and key storage for investors: hot vs cold custody, hardware wallets, multisig, secret sharing, and exchange counterparty risk.

Bitcoin mining economics: hardware efficiency, block subsidies and halvings, pool payment schemes, and the profitability math miners actually use.

Proof-of-work explained: how Bitcoin mining secures decentralized consensus, why difficulty adjusts, and the economics that make attacks irrational.

How Bitcoin transactions work, step by step: the UTXO model, Script execution, blocks and Merkle trees, SPV verification, and hard vs soft forks.

How cryptographic hash functions power Bitcoin: collision resistance, hiding, puzzle-friendliness, SHA-256, Merkle trees, and proof of liabilities.

The history of digital cash, from Chaum and DigiCash through Hashcash, b-money, and Bit Gold, to why Bitcoin succeeded where earlier systems failed.