Crypto Course Cheat Sheet (PDF)
Master crypto terms, technical patterns, risk rules, and trading psychology — all in one sharp, pro-written PDF. Click below for more context.
Lesson 1: Intro to Trading & Markets
Trading isn’t just about buying low and selling high — it’s about deeply understanding how markets behave and how participants respond to price movement in real time. Market structure is driven by human psychology: fear, greed, hesitation, and conviction. This lesson introduces how price is formed, the role of buyers and sellers, and how news, events, and even rumors can cause major shifts in sentiment. You'll also learn the distinction between different types of markets (such as spot, derivatives, and futures) and why liquidity, volatility, and volume shape trade opportunities. We’ll explore how trading is not gambling — it's calculated risk, where understanding the game improves your edge over time.
Key Terms:
- Market: A place or system where trading activity happens, like the stock or crypto market.
- Exchange: A digital or physical platform where buyers and sellers interact to trade assets.
- Volatility: How much and how quickly a price moves; high volatility means bigger price swings.
- Trader: A person who actively buys and sells assets with the goal of making a profit.
- Liquidity: How easy it is to buy or sell an asset without affecting its price too much.
Additional Resources:
Lesson 2: Understanding Crypto & Blockchain
Before you start trading crypto, you must grasp what gives it any value at all. Cryptocurrency is more than digital money — it’s built on a technology called blockchain, which acts like an unchangeable public notebook, shared across thousands of computers. Every transaction is recorded, verified, and publicly accessible. This lesson breaks down what blockchain really is, how decentralization works, and how peer-to-peer networks create trust without needing banks. You’ll learn about mining, nodes, consensus mechanisms, and how different blockchains (like Bitcoin vs Ethereum) serve different purposes. We’ll also explore the historical context of how crypto emerged as a response to financial system weaknesses, giving you a foundation to understand why it matters today.
Key Terms:
- Blockchain: A digital, public ledger that records transactions in a secure and permanent way.
- Decentralization: The distribution of control away from a central authority, like a government or bank.
- Token: A digital asset that represents value or access to a specific blockchain-based project.
- Wallet: A software or device that stores your crypto and lets you send or receive it securely.
- Ethereum: A blockchain platform known for smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps).
Additional Resources:
Lesson 3: Technical Analysis 101
Technical analysis is the art and science of reading price charts to interpret market sentiment. Instead of relying on financial statements or news, traders study historical price and volume behavior to predict future moves. You’ll learn to recognize patterns such as head and shoulders, wedges, triangles, and flags — formations that often precede breakout or breakdown moves. This lesson also introduces trendlines, support and resistance zones, and popular indicators like RSI (Relative Strength Index), MACD (Moving Average Convergence Divergence), and Bollinger Bands. We’ll also touch on the importance of multiple time frame analysis — how a pattern on a daily chart may behave differently than one on a 5-minute chart. By the end of this lesson, you’ll be able to understand why price "respects" certain levels, and how traders use technical analysis to anticipate opportunities with an edge.
Key Terms:
- Candlestick: A visual representation of price movement within a set time period, showing open, high, low, and close prices.
- Support/Resistance: Price levels where buyers or sellers tend to step in and reverse price movement.
- Trend: The general direction in which price is moving: up (bullish), down (bearish), or sideways.
- RSI: Relative Strength Index — an indicator that shows if something is overbought or oversold.
- Moving Average: A smoothed line on a chart that tracks average price over a given time period.
Additional Resources:
Lesson 4: Fundamental Analysis for Crypto
Fundamental analysis focuses on what gives a cryptocurrency long-term value. In traditional finance, fundamentals include earnings, debt, and economic indicators. In crypto, it revolves around a project's whitepaper, team, utility, tokenomics, community strength, and roadmap. You'll learn to analyze a project's goals, use cases, scalability, and governance model. This lesson explains how to dissect token supply metrics — such as total, circulating, and max supply — and how inflationary vs deflationary models influence price. We also explore how social signals like active developers, GitHub activity, and partnership announcements can be critical. The goal is to train you to evaluate whether a token is under- or overvalued based on its real potential, not hype.
Key Terms:
- Whitepaper: A document that explains a crypto project’s purpose, tech, and vision.
- Tokenomics: The supply and demand design of a token, including issuance, allocation, and burn.
- Utility: The actual function or use of a token in its network or product.
- Supply: Total amount of tokens in circulation or available overall.
- Market Cap: Price multiplied by circulating supply, used to estimate project size.
Additional Resources:
Lesson 5: Risk Management & Psychology
Risk management is what separates amateurs from professionals in trading. This lesson explores how to systematically limit losses, preserve capital, and survive losing streaks — which are inevitable for every trader. You’ll learn the importance of risk-to-reward ratios, position sizing based on account equity, and how to place effective stop-loss orders. We’ll also dig into psychological traps like revenge trading, overconfidence after wins, and panic during drawdowns. Psychology plays a critical role: successful traders build habits and routines that minimize emotional interference. Through examples and frameworks, you’ll understand how to create a personal risk protocol and emotional response system that keep you consistent even during market stress.
Key Terms:
- Risk-to-Reward: How much you're risking compared to how much you aim to make.
- Stop-Loss: A predefined exit to limit loss on a trade.
- Position Size: The number of contracts or coins used in a trade relative to account size.
- Discipline: Sticking to your rules no matter how you feel.
- Fear/Greed: Powerful emotions that often lead to impulsive trading decisions.
Additional Resources:
Lesson 6: Trading Strategies & Backtesting
In this lesson, you’ll learn how to create and test a rules-based strategy. A trading strategy is a consistent plan for entering and exiting trades. It can be based on technical indicators, chart patterns, or price action setups. You’ll explore strategies like breakouts, trend-following, and mean reversion. Backtesting involves applying a strategy to past market data to see how it would have performed — this helps assess the effectiveness of your system before using real money. You’ll also learn the importance of forward testing and refining strategies as market conditions change. The more you test, the more confidence you gain in execution.
Key Terms:
- Backtest: A method of testing a strategy using historical market data.
- Breakout: A price movement outside a defined level of support or resistance with increased volume.
- Mean Reversion: A strategy assuming price will revert to its average or mean over time.
- Trend-Following: A strategy that aims to enter and ride the direction of a trend.
- Strategy: A predefined plan for executing trades under certain conditions.
Additional Resources:
Lesson 7: Order Types & Market Mechanics
To execute trades efficiently, you must understand the types of orders available. Market orders fill instantly at the best available price, while limit orders wait until a specific price is reached. Stop orders trigger once a certain level is hit, and they’re often used for risk management. This lesson covers order books, bid-ask spread, slippage, and how high-frequency trading influences liquidity. By mastering order mechanics, you reduce slippage, manage risk better, and avoid unwanted fills. You’ll also learn how different order types behave in volatile and low-volume conditions.
Key Terms:
- Market Order: An order that executes immediately at the current market price.
- Limit Order: An order to buy/sell at a specified price or better.
- Stop Order: An order that triggers when a certain price is reached, often used as protection.
- Slippage: The difference between expected and actual execution price.
- Order Book: A list of buy and sell orders organized by price level.
Additional Resources:
Lesson 8: Leverage & Margin
Leverage allows traders to control larger positions with less capital. It magnifies both gains and losses. Margin is the amount of capital required to open and maintain those positions. In this lesson, you’ll learn how leverage works, how margin calls happen, and how to calculate liquidation prices. We’ll also explore risk management techniques to prevent over-leveraging and how exchanges offer different margin types (cross vs isolated). Using leverage without a strong plan is one of the fastest ways traders lose money — so respect it and use it wisely.
Key Terms:
- Leverage: Using borrowed capital to increase trade size.
- Margin: The deposit required to open or maintain a leveraged trade.
- Liquidation: Forced closure of a position due to insufficient margin.
- Cross Margin: Shares margin across all positions; riskier but flexible.
- Isolated Margin: Margin is isolated to each trade, reducing overall account risk.
Additional Resources:
Lesson 9: Security & Avoiding Scams
Crypto is a self-custody world — you are your own bank, and with that comes responsibility. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to store your crypto safely and avoid common scams. We cover wallet security, phishing, seed phrases, rug pulls, and fake exchanges. You’ll understand the importance of using cold wallets for long-term storage and enabling 2FA on all your accounts. Crypto gives you freedom, but also puts the burden of security on you — don’t take shortcuts. One careless click can cost you everything.
Key Terms:
- Seed Phrase: A list of words used to recover a wallet. Must be stored offline.
- Phishing: Tricking users into giving up private keys or login info.
- Rug Pull: A scam where developers run off with investors’ funds.
- Cold Wallet: An offline wallet not connected to the internet.
- 2FA: Two-factor authentication to add a layer of login protection.
Additional Resources:
Lesson 10: Building a Trading Plan
Every successful trader has a plan. A trading plan defines what setups you trade, when you enter, when you exit, how much you risk, and how you handle different scenarios. This lesson guides you in developing a clear, structured plan you can follow with discipline. It also introduces journaling — recording your trades and thoughts — as a way to improve. Without a plan, emotion takes over. With one, you have direction, clarity, and a way to evaluate your performance over time.
Key Terms:
- Trading Plan: A set of rules for how you trade — what, when, how, and why.
- Journaling: Documenting your trades and lessons to track progress.
- Risk Limit: Maximum amount you’re willing to lose in a session or trade.
- Accountability: Taking ownership of your results and process.
- Consistency: Repeating good behaviors and following rules over time.