Paper2008
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
Satoshi Nakamoto
Nine pages solving double-spending without a trusted third party by making history expensive to rewrite.
9 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Crypto & Digital Assets
A new asset class with an unusually high ratio of noise to substance.
11 topics · 11 curated works
Topics
- 01Foundations & Overviews
- 02Blockchain Fundamentals1
- 03Bitcoin1
- 04Ethereum & Smart Contracts1
- 05Consensus Mechanisms1
- 06Tokenomics1
- 07Decentralised Finance2
- 08Stablecoins1
- 09Crypto Market Structure1
- 10Regulation of Digital Assets1
- 11Crypto Fraud & Failures1
Reading in Crypto & Digital Assets
11A way in
Start here
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
Satoshi Nakamoto · 2008
Nine pages solving double-spending without a trusted third party by making history expensive to rewrite.
+5 more at this level
Go deeper
Primary sources and full treatments.
PPCoin: Peer-to-Peer Crypto-Currency with Proof-of-Stake
Sunny King & Scott Nadal · 2012
Replaces Bitcoin's energy-intensive proof-of-work with a proof-of-stake mechanism in which the chance of validating a block is weighted by coins held…
+4 more at this level
11 works
Book2014
Mastering Bitcoin
Andreas M. Antonopoulos
Walks through the cryptographic and network mechanics underneath a blockchain — hashing, keys, the mempool, mining — on the premise that trusting the system requires understanding what it actually does rather than what it promises.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Paper2014
Ethereum: A Next-Generation Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform
Vitalik Buterin
Proposes a blockchain with a built-in Turing-complete programming language, so arbitrary contracts rather than only currency transactions can be encoded and enforced by the network's consensus.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Paper2021
Decentralized Finance: On Blockchain- and Smart Contract-Based Financial Markets
Fabian Schär
Explains how DeFi protocols replace financial intermediaries with self-executing smart contracts and automated market makers, arguing this composability is DeFi's genuine innovation and also its main systemic risk.
FreeIntermediate
Book2021
DeFi and the Future of Finance
Campbell R. Harvey, Ashwin Ramachandran & Joey Santoro
Works through lending, decentralised exchanges and derivatives protocols as instances of the same pattern, arguing DeFi's real innovation is composable, permissionless financial infrastructure rather than any single application.
PaidIntermediate
Report2023
High-Level Recommendations for the Regulation, Supervision and Oversight of Crypto-Asset Activities and Markets
Financial Stability Board
Sets out a global framework requiring crypto-asset activities to be regulated according to the same-risk-same-regulation principle applied to traditional finance, rejecting a crypto-specific carve-out.
FreeIntermediate
Paper2012
PPCoin: Peer-to-Peer Crypto-Currency with Proof-of-Stake
Sunny King & Scott Nadal
Replaces Bitcoin's energy-intensive proof-of-work with a proof-of-stake mechanism in which the chance of validating a block is weighted by coins held rather than computation spent, aiming to secure consensus without the mining arms race.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeAdvanced
Paper2016
Some Simple Economics of the Blockchain
Christian Catalini & Joshua S. Gans
A blockchain lowers the cost of verifying transactions and the cost of establishing a network without a central operator, and separating those two effects explains which business models blockchains actually change versus merely rebrand.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeAdvanced
Paper2020
Trading and Arbitrage in Cryptocurrency Markets
Igor Makarov & Antoinette Schoar
Documents large, persistent price differences for the same coin across exchanges and countries, showing crypto markets are far less integrated than conventional asset markets and that arbitrage capital has been slow to close the gaps.
FreeAdvanced
Paper2020
Stablecoins: Risks, Potential and Regulation
Douglas W. Arner, Raphael Auer & Jon Frost
Argues that stablecoins recreate century-old problems of private money — runs, opacity, concentration — inside new technology, and that their stability ultimately depends on the same public backstops as bank deposits.
FreeAdvanced
Paper2020
Is Bitcoin Really Untethered?
John M. Griffin & Amin Shams
Traces blockchain transaction data to show Tether issuance was used to purchase Bitcoin during price declines, arguing much of Bitcoin's 2017 rally was driven by unbacked stablecoin creation rather than organic demand.
FreeAdvanced