DeFiBeginner
A Beginner's Guide to DeFi: How Decentralized Finance Works
DeFi uses blockchains and smart contracts for trading, lending, and borrowing. Learn how wallets, returns, fees, and risks fit together.
26 min read · reviewed
Mining guides
How Bitcoin mining works, from the first machine to the hosting contract. Each guide states when it was last reviewed, names who wrote and checked it, and links to the calculators and data pages where the numbers live.
Start here
No prior knowledge assumedDeFiBeginner
The five most common types of DeFi
Almost every DeFi protocol is a variation on five activities: swapping, lending, staking, issuing stable value and trading derivatives. Knowing which category a protocol belongs to tells you in advance what its main failure mode is.
5 min read · reviewed
Mining PoolsBeginner
What are mining pools?
A mining pool combines many miners' hashrate so that rewards arrive as a steady income rather than a rare jackpot. What differs between pools is who absorbs the variance, what that costs, and who decides which transactions go into a block.
5 min read · reviewed
StablecoinsBeginner
What are stablecoins?
A stablecoin is a token designed to hold a fixed value, almost always one US dollar. What separates the designs is what stands behind the peg, and what happens to redemption when the market stops believing it.
6 min read · reviewed
By topic
Mining Basics
Proof of work, hashrate, difficulty, block rewards and the halving.
3 guides
Mining Pools
How pools work, PPS vs PPLNS vs FPPS, fees, payouts and centralization.
2 guides
Hardware
ASICs, efficiency in J/TH, buying used, hosting vs at home, cooling.
Coming soon
Profitability & Economics
Hashprice, break-even electricity, payback periods and difficulty risk.
1 guide
Setup & Operations
Firmware, configuration, wallets and payouts, heat, noise and monitoring.
Coming soon
Tax, Regulation & Risk
Tax treatment of mined coins, the regulatory landscape, custody and opsec.
Coming soon
DeFi
Understand DeFi, its financial building blocks, and its risks.
10 guides
Stablecoins
What backs a stablecoin, which ones matter, and how lending against them works.
3 guides
Regulation
The rules crypto firms operate under, who holds a licence, and where the perimeter ends.
1 guide
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Recently reviewed
Ordered by last editorial reviewRegulationAdvanced
What MiCA covers, and what it leaves out
17 min read · reviewed 10 Sept 2026
DeFiBeginner
A Beginner's Guide to DeFi: How Decentralized Finance Works
26 min read · reviewed 9 Sept 2026
StablecoinsIntermediate
Can you borrow and lend stablecoins?
6 min read · reviewed 9 Sept 2026
DeFiBeginner
The five most common types of DeFi
5 min read · reviewed 9 Sept 2026
Profitability & EconomicsIntermediate
How to Calculate Bitcoin Mining Profitability
7 min read · reviewed 9 Sept 2026
DeFiAdvanced
Is curation asset management?
6 min read · reviewed 9 Sept 2026
Mining glossary
76 terms, each defined in one sentence you can check against the guides that use it. Terms are linked on first mention inside each guide.
Guides by level
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