Markets, financialization, and risk

Connect protocol mechanics to real financial systems without confusing forecasts with facts.

Follow these 8 lessons in order, or choose the topic you need. Each lesson combines an explanation, a worked example and practice inside the Guild.

1. Spot, forwards, and futures

   Market instruments differ in settlement, leverage, margin, counterparty exposure, and relationship to spot bitcoin.

   Open lesson

2. The basis trade

   A cash-and-carry trade holds spot and shorts a premium future, earning convergence while bearing funding, custody, margin, and execution risks.

   Open lesson

3. ETFs and custodial products

   Exchange-traded products improve access but introduce custody, authorized participant, tracking, jurisdiction, and redemption structures.

   Open lesson

4. Liquidity and market microstructure

   Order books, spreads, slippage, fragmentation, leverage, and liquidation cascades shape realized execution.

   Open lesson

5. Mining economics

   Revenue depends on subsidy, fees, hash price, energy, hardware efficiency, uptime, financing, and difficulty.

   Open lesson

6. Treasury strategy

   Holding bitcoin changes liquidity, refinancing, accounting, governance, and drawdown risk rather than simply adding upside.

   Open lesson

7. Stablecoins and bitcoin-backed credit

   Credit systems add liquidation, oracle, governance, and maturity risks around otherwise bearer collateral.

   Open lesson

8. Scenario modelling

   Forecasts must expose assumptions, ranges, sensitivities, and version history instead of presenting a single projected number as truth.

   Open lesson