Clear the expensive debt first
Most guides to holding crypto start with the wallet. This course starts with your credit card.
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) says on its investing pages that “Before you begin to invest it’s sensible to pay off any debts,” and it names credit card debt and payday loans as the ones to clear before investing.
The reason is arithmetic. A card charges interest on the balance every month, whatever the market does, and nothing in crypto pays a fixed rate that is certain to beat it.
Some crypto apps take cards. Buying that way means borrowing at card rates to buy something that has fallen by half within a year more than once; lesson 2 has the dates.
Keep a cash buffer you won’t touch
Things break at the worst moment: a furnace, a car, a job. If your only spare money is in crypto, you’ll be forced to sell it, and it may be the month it has just fallen.
The FCA again: “Many experts recommend having an emergency fund that can cover your outgoings for between 3 and 6 months,” and “it makes sense to build a rainy-day fund before you begin to invest.”
Keep that fund in an ordinary bank account, where a deposit guarantee scheme covers it up to a limit set by law. Nothing covers crypto that way.
Money with a date on it stays out too: a down payment on a house, tuition, next year’s tax bill. The FCA describes investing as something whose “main benefits” are “likely to show over the medium-to-long term.”
Crypto has fallen by three quarters in less than a year, and a down payment due next spring can’t wait that out.
Set the sum you could lose outright
The first of the FCA’s five questions to ask before you invest ends with “Can I afford to lose my money?” The Central Bank of Ireland asks the same thing: “Before you buy crypto, you need to consider if you can afford to lose all of the money you spend.”
Take both at their word. Plan for the whole sum going to zero, because for plenty of tokens that is what happened.
Pick a figure and imagine it gone tomorrow.
Would the rent go unpaid? Would your plans for the next five years change? Would you lie awake?
If any answer is yes, make the figure smaller until every answer is no.
Nobody can set that figure for you, and we won’t try. Anyone who quotes you a share of your savings to put into crypto knows nothing about your rent, your job or your nerves.
This course teaches you how to think it through; the number is yours.
Write down why you’re buying
Decisions made at three in the morning with a price moving fast are bad ones. A written reason, made while you’re calm, is what you check against later.
Your reason sets your time horizon, and the horizon sets what you can sit through. Money for a down payment next year can’t ride out a fall that halves it.
A long horizon gives you time to wait, though time alone guarantees no recovery; lesson 5 shows how to tell a falling market from a failed project.
Know who is looking for you
People building a portfolio are the target of the costliest kind of crypto fraud the FBI records. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center took 61,559 complaints of crypto investment fraud in 2025, with reported losses of $7.228 billion, out of $11.366 billion reported across crypto crime of every kind.
These frauds aim at exactly the reader of this course:
The platform with an “account manager,” where a screen shows your gains growing until you try to withdraw, and then a fee has to be paid first. The gains were never real.
The pump group. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) says “Some of these pump-and-dump groups and chat rooms contain thousands of members,” and adds: “Commonly, it is the people pulling the strings who get out first making the most in the scheme, and leaving everyone else scrambling to sell before losing their investment.”
The friendly stranger met online who happens to know a way to make your savings grow. That’s romance fraud with an investment attached.
Paid promotion belongs on that list too. The Central Bank of Ireland warns you to “Be alert to the risks of misleading advertisements, including via social media and influencers.” An influencer telling you what to buy may be paid to say it, and may not tell you so.
The course Scams and How to Stay Safe covers the fake platforms and romance fraud in detail, including what to do in the first hour if you’ve been caught.
Last checked: 6 November 2026