Basics
Ten lessons from the very beginning. What a blockchain is, how a wallet works, how an exchange differs from a broker, what it really costs and what you owe in tax.
9 of 10 lessons readyWhat Is a Blockchain, Really, and Why the Ledger Nobody Owns Matters
A blockchain is a shared ledger whose copies are held by thousands of computers at once, so no single company or person can secretly rewrite who sent what to whom. That is the whole trick. The rest is just details.
Wallets and keys: what you actually own and why "not your keys" holds true
A crypto wallet does not store coins, it stores the keys that control them. "Not your keys, not your coins" is not a slogan but a plain technical description: whoever holds the private key can move the funds, and no one else.
Exchange vs broker vs DEX: who holds your coins, how the price is set, and what each one charges
In short: an exchange matches buyers and sellers in an order book and holds the coins for you, a broker sells you the coin from its own stock (or buys it elsewhere) at a price it sets, and a DEX (decentralized exchange) lets you trade directly from your wallet against a smart contract, so you hold the coins the whole time. Who holds the keys, who sets the price, and who takes the fee differs across these three, and that is exactly where the whole difference lies.
Why a European platform asks for your ID and what a MiCA license actually means
When an EU exchange asks for your ID card, it is not arbitrary: it follows anti-money-laundering rules and the MiCA regulation (Regulation EU 2023/1114), whose rules for service providers have applied since 2024 and which sets out who may even offer crypto-asset services in Europe. In this lesson we explain what a MiCA license means and how you can check for yourself whether a platform really holds one.
Fee, spread, and exchange rate: three costs almost nobody adds up when buying crypto
When you buy crypto, you don't just pay the visible fee. You pay three things: the exchange fee, the spread (the gap between the buy and sell price), and the exchange rate when your currency is converted into the one the exchange trades in. The real price is the sum of all three.
Leaving Coins on an Exchange, or Holding Them Yourself: What You Risk on Both Sides
When you leave coins on an exchange, you are relying on the exchange not going bust or locking you out; when you hold them yourself, you are relying only on yourself and on not losing access. Both are forms of risk, the risk just shifts to a different side.
How to Read a Price Chart Without Fooling Yourself: Timeframe, Scale, Volume, and Why a Candle Is Not a Prediction
A chart shows what happened, not what will happen. Before you read anything into it, check four things: which timeframe you are looking at, whether the price axis is linear or logarithmic, how much was actually traded (volume), and the fact that a single candle is a record of the past, not a signal about the future.
What Triggers a Taxable Event in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland, and What Belongs in Your Records
A taxable event usually arises the moment an exchange happens: selling crypto for koruna/euros/zloty, swapping one crypto for another, or paying for goods. Simply holding, or moving coins between your own wallets, is generally not a taxable event. This is an educational lesson, not tax advice.
Account security in practice: 2FA that actually helps, phishing, SIM swap, and what to do first when something goes wrong
The strongest account protection is not a password, but a second factor that cannot be sent to an attacker remotely: a hardware key or passkey, never an SMS code. When something goes wrong, the first step is to cut off the attacker's access, not to panic and start moving funds.
The remaining 1 lessons are being written and appear as they land.