So my only experience with crypto is buying a little bitcoin after big crashes, ignoring it for 5 years and selling it when theres hype in mainstream media. Happens reliably enough and i made a little change. Also did some fruitless blockchain work when it was a corporate craze in 2017 but overall, don't care for the tech much.

Anyway, I've been looking into some things for work and a lot of roads lead to cryoto. I'm decent at picking apart a reasonable technical system and can call on people who understand legal, financial, logistical or company structures. But the crypto space is a weid mess. It feels like kids playing a pretend game of being a central bank.

There's official documents and company filings with full corporate structures, but everything is just a bit too juvenile. Like you'll see a Senior Auditor with 10 years experience at KPMG, next to the head of marketing: YoloSwagger with an animated One Piece profile pic. There's also these ambitious White Papers attached to code base that seems like the same boilerplate example but with stupid variable names.

A bulk of the info i need is the diction and syntax. Don't know if its because I'm old because I don't get it. I see a lot of start-up and investment language thrown around. And it's mixed with a plenty of meme terms and some utter nonsense. I can't get a straight answer on the meaning of Utility even though its thrown around like a core metric. And don't get me started on Wallets because that definition seems to change mid sentence.

The other thing I need to understand is the technicalities involved and accessing the right info. Before my searches were polluted with the meme coin story today, there's not a lot of good info. Most of what I found was exchanges telling you to not worry about it and give them money, or crypto bros telling you not to worry about it and give them money for their course.

I understand transactions and how everything is just a pump-and-dump to get at whatever liquidity was raised. All the evidence for fraud is obvious in hindsight. There must be ways to track those trends before it happens and find consistent factors. At the same tine how the hell can people just start a coin and other people throw small fortunes at it for a laugh.

I'd be grateful for any good primer unpacking things. It really looks like the normal education is to jump in with you life savings and sink or swim.

Crypto has always been an odd one for me.

Considering I'm in the IT field and generally techy, I've always remained skeptical. That didn't stop me throwing about £100 into some DOGE, XRP and ETH awhile back. They peaked around $880 and I almost cashed out. I wish I had because they fell back and were worth around $140 for the longest while.

Suddenly it's sitting at around $400 and I'm wondering whether to hold my nerve or cash out.

Anyone big into crypto and have any advice?