A "mini dive" on 7 core cryptos

As you probably know, I’ve been reporting on crypto for a while now.

I first really got into it in late 2015, after reading a book called The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley.

Right at the end of that book, there was a short section on Bitcoin, and then an even shorter section on the technology behind it: blockchain.

I’d heard about Bitcoin years before, but at the time I never thought much about it. That all changed when I read this passage in the book:

The ‘blockchain’ technology behind bitcoin could prove to be an ingredient of an entire new world of technology, as big as the internet itself, a wave of innovation that drives the middleman out of much commerce and leaves us much more free to exchange goods and services with people all over the world without going through corporate intermediaries. It could radically decentralise society itself, getting rid of the need for banks, governments, even companies and politicians.

This idea really stuck with me and soon led me to research Ethereum, which Ridley describes in the book as, “a decentralised peer-to-peer network ‘designed to replace absolutely anything that can be described in code’.”

Now here we are today, over five years later, and I spend much of my life researching and writing about crypto.

I guess that shows the power of learning about new ideas. And I guess it’s also why I feel the need to share the best of what I discover with you.

With that in mind, this month’s premium issue is a rundown of some core cryptos to learn about.

I wanted to make it a nice round number like a five or a 10. But, after really thinking about it, annoyingly it turns out there are seven.

I guess that’s kind of an interesting number as well as it’s the number of random digits the average person can hold in their short-term memory (plus or minus two).

Now, before we begin, I want to make clear this is not investment advice. (see the disclaimer at the bottom of this page or my full disclaimer page for more on that).

This is all just my opinion. It’s just information. And I would urge you to do your own research before you think about buying into these, or any other, cryptos.

Also, all figures are accurate as of the 16th of April 2021.

Now, let’s begin…