Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where we spend one minute a day explaining crypto. In plain English.

Changpeng Zhao, in crypto circles also known as CZ, has been making the news lately. He is the founder and CEO of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. But there is much more to him and you should definitely know about him!

CZ was born in China, but his parents - both academics -  got in trouble with the government for voicing their opinions. Quickly, the family emigrated to Canada, where CZ went to school and university. He became a computer scientist and started working on stock exchanges for Bloomberg.

Eventually though, he found his way back into China, and started working in the crypto space. He got so fascinated by it in fact, that in 2015, he sold his apartment in Shanghai and put everything into Bitcoin. Way back then, he already showed his knack for timing trends well.

Not much later, in 2017, CZ founded Binance, which quickly became a household name in crypto trading. What did he seemingly do better than anyone else? Work with or around regulations, which allowed him to expand quickly. He also understood the power of building up others around him - and so he launched the Binance Coin, which became its own blockchain quickly. Thousands of projects build on it today.

At the same time he started Binance, he also rose to Twitter fame and has since become one of the most prolific crypto evangelist out there, never shy to criticize what he doesn’t agree with. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, and he did exactly that, but with extreme consequences: When he called out the house of cards that FTX and sister company Alameda Research had built. He even put in an offer to save FTX, but quickly withdrew it realizing the troubles ran really deep.

Compared to Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s larger-than-life, now former CEO, Changpeng Zhao was always the quieter, less in-your-face voice of crypto… and in the end that prevailed. And although crypto isn’t doing too hot in the markets right now, his share still puts him among the richest people in the world.

Not a bad move, selling his apartment for Bitcoin, don’t you think? And now you know who CZ is, because he will certainly make waves again.

This podcast is produced by Cryptohunt.it, the easiest place to learn crypto. Copywriting is done by Arndt Voges, Social Media is done by Brett Holleman, design is done by Carmen Rincon, and my name is Christian Byza, Co-Founder of Cryptohunt and I am your host of this daily show.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where we spend one minute a day explaining crypto. In plain English.

By now, you’ll have heard this in every corner of the internet: Leaving your money on a so-called centralized exchange could end badly, and if everything were decentralized, the FTX collapse wouldn’t have happened.

But is that actually true? Let’s start by understanding the differences between both concepts.

Think of exchanges as places that let you buy and sell something. Like your farmers market for example - where demand and supply come together. If there are too many merchants with too many eggs, they’ll decrease prices to get rid of them. Too many people want to buy turkeys? Prices shoot up.

A crypto exchange is no different, just that it operates online, and deals with - obviously! - crypto. Traditionally, these exchanges are “centralized”, meaning they operate as the middleman between buyers and sellers. They keep a list of who wants to buy or sell crypto, and at what price. When there is a match,  they make the transaction happen by taking money from the buyer, and crypto from the seller, and if all looks good, send each to the opposite party.

In order for that to happen though, they need access to your funds. This is important to understand: For that to happen, you need to deposit those in their account. The downside is obvious: Your money is not yours to control anymore.

A decentralized exchange replaces the company in the middle with computer code. Insiders call this a smart contract - an emotionless piece of software that does only one thing: trade crypto. And even more importantly, it doesn’t do anything else - so it can’t just decide to take your money for other reasons. This makes it unnecessary to have a middleman, which is why it is called a decentralized exchange.

Crypto proponents are fast to call out that your money is safe with those decentralized exchanges because you never entrust someone else with it in the first place. And to a certain extent, that’s true - when you control the keys to your fortune, nobody else can take it.

But programs are known for one nasty little thing: Bugs. And these smart contracts can have a ton. This is where most crypto hacks happen, actually. Say you are participating in a decentralized exchange, for example, to earn interest. While your money is with the smart contract, that contract could be hacked.

So now you know the difference between centralized and decentralized exchanges. As always, don’t just trust what people claim - the truth is usually somewhere in between and crypto is still just a baby.

We are grateful you are here to learn and will see you in tomorrow’s episode.

This podcast is produced by Cryptohunt.it, the easiest place to learn crypto. Copywriting is done by Arndt Voges, Social Media is done by Brett Holleman, design is done by Carmen Rincon, and my name is Christian Byza, Co-Founder of Cryptohunt and I am your host of this daily show.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where we spend one minute a day explaining crypto. In plain English.

You’ve seen the news: People fear a so-called "crypto contagion", which could cause the collapse of more crypto companies as a result of FTXs downfall. But what does the word mean, and why isn’t something like the FTX collapse more contained?

The word contagion comes from the world of biology: it describes that a disease spreads from one person to another.

And that’s exactly what we’ve seen happen in crypto markets a lot lately: One company goes down, and like they are infected by the same virus, others follow one by one.

This is because they are tightly financially entangled. Unlike product or service companies, in the world of finance the core business is moving money around. And when the source of that money goes bankrupt, it’s a big problem.

In the case of FTX, there are two such problems actually: First, it owes significant sums to other companies, and they simply won’t get it back. That debt can cripple them. And second, FTX was paying everyone with their FTT token, which went down to zero in value. So these companies made financial bets assuming their FTT holdings were worth enormous sums, and in the end they just weren’t.

That's why it is called a contagion. It’s bad all around. And in the end the buck stops with you, the little investor. So make sure to take control of your crypto before its too late. Tune back to last week’s episodes where we explained the process in depth.

And enjoy the Thanksgiving holidays, and keep an eye out for a little Cryptohunt surprise: We are launching a crypto certificate for you to take over the long weekend. You'll find it at www.cryptohunt.it. Have fun!

This podcast is produced by Cryptohunt.it the easiest place to learn crypto. Copywriting is done by Arndt Voges, Social Media is done by Brett Holleman, Design is done by Carmen Rincon and my name is Christian Byza, Co-Founder of Cryptohunt and I am your host of this daily show.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Get Crypto Certified Here!

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where we spend one minute a day explaining crypto. In plain English.

… But today, we mix it up again. It’s a special episode. For 1 and a half years I have been recording an episode every day of the week here in my garage studio… and today we are at number 300.

And with everything happening in the crypto market, this episode is long overdue. If you’ve been sitting out there, asking yourself if it’s all still worth it despite all the bad news, we got you covered.

That’s why today’s format will be a little different!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where we spend one minute a day explaining crypto. In plain English.

Just when you thought the drama around FTX, the recently collapsed crypto exchange, is over, a court filing has brought to light, just how shockingly bad the situation was. You may have seen the early warning signs: When rival Binance made a takeover bid, they walked away in less than a day.

The process Binance went through is called due diligence, and it involves going through the accounting books, employee records, legal documents, and so on to get a complete picture.

And this week we found out why Binance ran far away quickly: Through a filing in bankruptcy court.

Just so you understand what happens when a company goes down: It files for bankruptcy, which is a legal process to put it into a sort of deep sleep, while control gets transferred to new management. Their job is only one thing: Find where the remaining money is, get as much of it back, and then pay off the debt as much as they can.

It’s a dirty job. Bankruptcy managers see some really bad stuff and debtors rarely get all their money back. But this one was even worse: The guy they brought in had previously overseen some of the worst corporate scandals in America, including Enron. And in his first days at FTX, he flat-out said: I have never seen something as bad as this mess.

FTX had no good record of who its employees were. Passwords were exchanged through a shared email account. Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder, got a personal loan of over a billion dollars. There was no trustworthy accounting. In fact, the firm in charge of bookkeeping prides itself on being the only one with a headquarter in Decentraland - a virtual world. What could possibly go wrong?

But the worst part was how SBF handled customer money. When Alameda Research, his closely entangled trading firm made some really bad choices and owed billions of dollars to outside lenders, guess what he did? Stuck his hands into the customer funds and just paid Alamada’s debt off from there.

Yes… It was bad. But hang in there. There is more to crypto and Web3. So in the next episode, we’ll lift you up. Because we really think this world is quite amazing and can be the future of your internet. Stay tuned for a special tomorrow, when we celebrate episode 300!

This podcast is produced by Cryptohunt.it the easiest place to learn crypto. Copywriting is done by Arndt Voges, Social Media is done by Brett Holleman, Design is done by Carmen Rincon and my name is Christian Byza, Co-Founder of Cryptohunt and I am your host of this daily show.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain English.

In light of FTX’s collapse, the amount of money people have pulled out of centralized exchanges has never been higher. For good reason as you know by now: A bankrupt exchange will take your money down with them and not even care one bit about you.

If you are just tuning in, go back a couple of episodes where we explain the concept, but in a nutshell you will need to create your own wallet to do that.

Before you get started though: There is no single wallet supporting all blockchains. In fact, most wallets are specific to just one. So you may need several wallets depending on what you hold. Sorry! Crypto is still pretty annoying to use.

The way to find those is to Google for  “non-custodial wallet for Bitcoin” for example - “non-custodial” just means you are the master of your keys, not Sam Bankman-Fried. Read reviews first though to make sure your choice is legit!

Once installed, you’ll want to back up your secret key to a safe place, like those that we detailed in yesterday’s episode. In your wallet, look for the word “seed phrase”, “recovery phrase” or “private key”. Copy or print it and put it somewhere safe. And never share it with anyone!

Lastly you’ll move your funds out of the exchange, and into your wallet. Look for the “wallet address” in your newly created wallet, often that is near a QR code, and put it into the withdrawal feature of your exchange. It’ll look strange, made up from numbers and characters, so copy-paste is the safest way to get it right. Always send yourself a small test transaction first to make sure it all works.

And that’s it. Your funds are now yours again. If you’ve saved your key in a good place, all you have to do now is wait. And if you haven’t moved your funds yet, strongly consider it: With the recent crypto turmoil, seemingly every day a new exchange or crypto bank freezes customer funds.

We hope you found this week-long special helpful! And make sure to sign up at www.cryptohunt.it because we are launching a crypto beginner certification over the Thanksgiving week - so you can stuff yourself with turkey and new knowledge!

This podcast is produced by Cryptohunt.it the easiest place to learn crypto. Copywriting is done by Arndt Voges, Social Media is done by Brett Holleman, Design is done by Carmen Rincon and my name is Christian Byza, Co-Founder of Cryptohunt and I am your host of this daily show.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain English.

Remember yesterday's episode about those pesky, hard to memorize crypto keys? By now you know that there is unfortunately no way around them if you want control over your funds, so let's learn how to save those keys so you can't lose them.

There are a few ways crypto keys can vanish: You can simply lose them, because you never wrote them down or that piece of paper you printed disappeared years ago. They could also be destroyed - rain through an open window made your documents illegible, or your dog ate them. Often times the material they are on won't last through many common situations. Or, worse case, someone steals them.

With all that in mind, it's clear: You want them on a medium that lasts, in a location that is safe. Let's look at a few options we like.

The simplest is to print them out and putting them in a safe place. Bonus points if you protect the paper some more, like laminating it. Water damage is no joke. There are also water and fire resistant document pouches you can buy online. But things can still happen to printed documents, regardless of where they are.

Another interesting example is a metal card that you engrave with your key or passphrase. That'll last much longer and even water and fire will do limited damage to it. Some, like the SteelWallet, come with letters you can insert. Be aware though: Making a mistake in copying over your key manually could be costly!

Last, and most expensive, are so-called hardware wallets. They are small USB-like devices made by companies like Trezor and Ledger that save your keys and let you access your wallets through their software. The trick is that the software is on the device, and entirely isolated from the internet. This is almost like the best of both worlds. Just make sure you have a backup - because if the device refuses to power on, you'll otherwise be in a bad place.

Whatever they are on, make sure they are in a safe place as well. Like a safety deposit box or your safe at home. You are unlikely to throw them away if they are in there, and they protect against the elements reasonably well.

And those are some more popular options to make sure you never lose your crypto again. And tomorrow, we'll talk about how to set up a wallet and move your funds there.

This podcast is produced by Cryptohunt.it the easiest place to learn crypto. Copywriting is done by Arndt Voges, Social Media is done by Brett Holleman, Design is done by Carmen Rincon and my name is Christian Byza, Co-Founder of Cryptohunt and I am your host of this daily show.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain English.

Today, we’ll pick up where we left off yesterday. Remember that our goal is to get your crypto funds off centralized exchanges that control your money, and into your own crypto wallet. And also recall that anyone who has the key to your wallet controls access. Likewise, because these keys can look so complicated, forgetting them means you’ll never get your money back.

Ready then? Let’s get started and talk about things to do and things not to do with your keys.

Obviously, the biggest thing to do is to make sure you can always remember the key when you have to.

We’ll go into more detail tomorrow, but this is not as easy as writing it on a piece of paper, because that can be stolen or destroyed and misplaced.

The list of dont’s is much longer: And it starts with the way you write down the key. Try to avoid copying it manually if you can. Lower and upper case matter, and it’s easy to make a mistake because it’s so complicated. And who knows if you’ll still be able to read your handwriting in a few years?

Secondly, don’t share it with anyone. Nobody who asks you for the key has anything good in mind, they are, without exception, scammers. Don’t write it down on a place where people can find it either.

And lastly, make sure it can stand the test of time. How you write it down will impact how long you can keep it. And tomorrow, we’ll talk about places to store that secret key of yours safely.

This podcast is produced by Cryptohunt.it the easiest place to learn crypto. Copywriting is done by Arndt Voges, Social Media is done by Brett Holleman, Design is done by Carmen Rincon and my name is Christian Byza, Co-Founder of Cryptohunt and I am your host of this daily show.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain English.

This week, we’ll host several episodes to help you move your crypto into wallets only you control, so you can’t fall victim to a collapsing exchange. We’ll start today by explaining why crypto keys are the literal key to achieving that.

Remember: When you have your money parked with an exchange, like Binance, Coinbase, or the now collapsed FTX, you don’t own it. They do.

But crypto was invented to avoid this ownership problem. Crypto wallets on every blockchain can only be accessed by the owner of the wallet’s key - so our goal is to make you one.

Here’s why it works that way. Think of crypto wallets as safes, made from indestructible glass, on display in a public place. Everyone can see what’s in them through that glass, yet only the person who knows a safe’s combination code can unlock it.

But the safe was constructed by engineers. They are really good programmers, so good in fact that it is virtually impossible for anyone to guess a safe’s password. But engineers rarely make things very usable, and the same is the case here: The tradeoff is, that the password is so hard to remember, that you’ll want to write it down. It’s a mess: random characters and numbers, and lots of them.

This is the reason why you hear about people in the news who lost a fortune in an old crypto wallet: They didn’t make a note of the password way back in the early days, and now they are locked out forever.

So: Now that you understand all of that, you are thinking: I want my money in a safe that I control, not someone else or a company I don’t fully trust. But how do I make sure I don’t lose that stupidly complicated password?

Don’t worry. We are here to help. Tomorrow we’ll discuss how to set up a wallet, and then we’ll talk about options to keep the key safe.

Also: We’ve collaborated with my old friend Alex Valaitis from Web3 Pills on a course about Solana! Be sure to check out the new course on Cryptohunt and make sure to subscribe to the outstanding Web3 Pills newsletter at Web3Pills.com. He covers crypto news every day. So if you  are ready to go deeper into crypto and web3 Alex has the right content for you.

This podcast is produced by Cryptohunt.it the easiest place to learn crypto. Copywriting is done by Arndt Voges, Social Media is done by Brett Holleman, Design is done by Carmen Rincon and my name is Christian Byza, Co-Founder of Cryptohunt and I am your host of this daily show.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain English.

Just when you thought the drama around FTX was over, things keep getting worse. The collapsed exchange just announced that they lost between $500m and an entire $1bn of customer funds due to an alleged hack. Nobody really knows what’s going on, only one thing is for sure: People who had money in an FTX account will have a really hard time getting it back.

But how is that possible? Afterall crypto was supposed to be decentralized, meaning no single person or company can control where the money flows?

Well, the problem is that exchanges like FTX operate as so-called custodians of your funds, meaning they have the keys to it.

Think of it as parking your car: If you drive it into your own garage, and never give your car keys to anyone, chances of it being stolen are slim. But if you drive up to a restaurant, give the key to the valet, anything can happen. They might take it out for a spin, or someone might steal the key from them and then your car.

That’s how a lot of exchanges work. Because creating your own crypto wallet, and making sure you don’t lose the password is annoyingly complicated even to this day, many exchanges just manage all that for you. But that also means that when they go under, your money could go with them. And it does so more often than not actually.

There is a saying in crypto: “Not your keys, not your money”. So while creating wallets and protecting your keys is annoying, you probably guessed it: it’s the only way to keep your funds safe from bankruptcies, crooked players, and hackers. That's why we’ll walk you through it in the episodes this week, step by step, so you don’t become that gal or guy who lost their fortunes when the market peaks the next time.

Maybe some day there will be a better way. Until then, don’t worry. It’s actually not that complicated. See you tomorrow to get things started!

This podcast is produced by Cryptohunt.it the easiest place to learn crypto. Copywriting is done by Arndt Voges, Social Media is done by Brett Holleman, Design is done by Carmen Rincon and my name is Christian Byza, Co-Founder of Cryptohunt and I am your host of this daily show.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.