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COURSES

Markets and price

How the price is set, why it is volatile, what the four-year cycle is and is not, ETFs versus real bitcoin, derivatives and leverage, treasury companies, and how to read the data without fooling yourself.

Markets and price course cover
STAGE 4 · GO DEEPLEVEL · Intermediate8 LESSONSABOUT 44 MINMONEY & ECONOMICS

Price is the thing everyone looks at and few understand. This course explains the market structure around bitcoin, the models people use, and where those models break. It is deliberately not a trading course; its goal is that you understand what you are looking at on the Bitcoin Charts dashboard. Eight lessons, about 50 minutes.

BY THE END OF THIS COURSE YOU WILL BE ABLE TO
  • Explain how bitcoin's price forms across exchanges
  • Describe the halving cycle and the evidence for and against it
  • Compare real bitcoin, ETFs, futures and treasury stocks
  • Read a depth chart, a funding rate and a drawdown chart
  • Recognise the common ways people fool themselves with charts

Every lesson ends with a quiz or a challenge; the course is complete when each lesson is.

0 of 8 lessonsStart the course →

LESSONS

01How the price is setThere is no official bitcoin price. It is set by trades on hundreds of exchanges, kept aligned by arbitrage and summarised by indexes.▶ 1✓ quiz5 MIN02Volatility and drawdownsBitcoin has fallen more than 75% four times. Anyone holding it should expect that again. Each fall so far has ended above the previous cycle's peak.✓ quiz⚡ challenge5 MIN03The four-year cyclePeaks have followed halvings by about a year, three times. That is a pattern worth knowing and a sample too small to bet on.✓ quiz6 MIN04ETFs, IOUs and real bitcoinETFs give price exposure inside the traditional system, with a custodian and a fee. Real bitcoin is the asset. Know which one you want and why.✓ quiz6 MIN05Treasury companies and corporate adoptionTreasury companies are public firms whose main asset is bitcoin, bought with stock and debt. Leveraged exposure for investors, with corporate risk attached.✓ quiz5 MIN06Derivatives, leverage and liquidationsFutures, perpetual swaps and options let traders bet with borrowed money. Liquidation cascades are why bitcoin moves 10% in an hour.✓ quiz6 MIN07Reading on-chain dataThe public ledger reveals holder behaviour: dormancy, exchange flows, realised price. It does not reveal fair value. Use it to understand, not to predict.✓ quiz6 MIN08How people fool themselves with chartsLog scale, overfit models, survivorship bias and morning-after narratives. Learn the traps so the dashboard informs you instead of flattering you.✓ quiz5 MIN