Contents​
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Chapter 1: Money
Chapter 2: Bitcoin
Chapter 3: Ethereum
Chapter 4: On-Chain Applications
Chapter 5: US Law & Regulations
Chapter 6: Specific Issues Under US Law
Chapter 7: International Law & Regulations
Chapter 8: Central Bank Digital Currencies
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What to expect.
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Expect to read this and learn 90% of all there is. Expect technical details explained by a non-technical person, and laws and regulations explained by a legal person.
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This book is a compilation of the listed sources into a structured, coherent whole. You will find few words of my own. The intention here is to curate the best resources and assemble them into an all-encompassing compendium. All credit goes to the sources and their authors; all mistakes are mine.
Foreword
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This little book changed everything.
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It was born as a blank Word document on 11 May 2021. At the time, I had just left an unfulfilling career in commercial litigation with no clue what was next and no obvious transferable skills. I quit the only thing I knew how to do, and now I did not know how to do anything else.
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Crypto was certainly not on my mind. Bitcoin was a scam, Ethereum was that wobbly red infinity stone, and anyone who bought them had to be clinically insane.
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But people much smarter than I am kept saying that it was going to change the world. I did not believe them, but I wanted to know why they could say that with so much conviction.
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And so I committed the next 4 months to learning what crypto was. In that process, I became convinced that a decentralised world is better than the one we have, and that crypto can get us there. Still, those 4 months were lived in quiet desperation. I was still unemployed, and I could not see how reading The Bitcoin Standard in my old school library would change that.
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The product of all that learning was a 400-page set of study notes – a rough first draft of this book. I published it online for free. Ten days later, folks at the Ethereum Foundation picked it up, and I was lucky enough to join their mission to help create the decentralised world that I and so many others dream of.
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So this little book changed everything for me. It is not so little anymore because I continue to work on it today, and nothing would delight me more than if you found it useful in any way.
DISCLAIMERS​
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The Crypto Compendium is separate from my work at the Ethereum Foundation.
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I have refrained from expressing my own views. This is deliberate. I would much rather you come to your own conclusions based on the objective facts. That said, where there are opinions, they are solely my own and do not represent those of anyone else, including the Ethereum Foundation.
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And of course, I have created and shared these notes strictly for research, study, educational, and non-commercial purposes only. None of it is or should be taken as investment, financial, or legal advice.