The fundamentals,
in plain language.

Foundations

What is cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency is digital money that lives on the internet and, in most cases, isn't issued or controlled by any single government or company. Instead of a central bank keeping the books, a network of computers maintains a shared record of who owns what.

That shared record is called a blockchain. Picture a ledger copied across thousands of machines and continuously re-checked: every transaction ever made in that currency is written into it, and once confirmed it is extremely difficult to alter. Anyone can inspect it, and no single party can quietly rewrite it.

Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency and remains the largest. Thousands have followed — some closely modelled on Bitcoin, others designed to do far more than move value from one person to another.

Bitcoin

What is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin was described in a 2008 white paper by Satoshi Nakamoto — a pseudonym whose true identity is still unknown — and the network went live in early 2009. The idea was disarmingly simple: money that two people can send directly to each other over the internet, securely, without asking anyone's permission.

The payment apps most of us use still lean on banks and card networks behind the scenes. Bitcoin doesn't. A sender and a receiver anywhere in the world can transact without a bank, payment processor or government standing in the middle.

Every transfer is recorded on Bitcoin's public blockchain, so its full history can be independently verified by anyone who cares to look. Its supply is capped at 21 million coins — one reason it is often described as "digital gold."

Ethereum

What is Ethereum?

Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value, but it is better understood as a global computing platform. Alongside its currency, ether, it runs programs — known as smart contracts — that carry themselves out automatically once agreed conditions are met.

Those programs power a broad range of applications: lending and borrowing services, exchanges with no company behind them, games, digital collectibles and more. Together this ecosystem is usually called decentralised finance, or DeFi.

Like Bitcoin, ether can be sent directly between people without an intermediary, and many investors hold it as part of a wider digital-asset allocation. Its price can move sharply, though — knowing why it moves matters as much as owning it.

Strategy

When is the right time to invest?

Digital assets can swing in value within days, sometimes within hours. That volatility tends to stir up two opposite fears: missing out on a rally, and buying just before a fall. Both can nudge people toward poorly timed decisions.

The textbook answer — buy low, sell high — is far easier to say than to do, even for professionals. Many investors take another route called dollar-cost averaging: putting in a fixed amount on a regular schedule, whatever the price. Over time this softens the effect of short-term swings, because you naturally buy more when prices are low and less when they're high.

Dollar-cost averaging suits people with a long horizon who can live with bumps along the way. It doesn't remove risk, and it won't shield you from an asset that declines over the long run — which is why understanding what you're buying still comes first.

That idea runs through everything in our learning hub. We believe digital assets will play a growing part in how the world saves, spends and invests, and that the people taking part deserve to do so with their eyes open. Our job is to help you see clearly.