Free trading guide
By Spencer Li, CFTe · Last updated 17 October 2026
Most people meet crypto the same way. A friend made money on a coin you had never heard of, the price chart looks like a ski jump, and you start to wonder whether you are missing out.
So let me answer the question you are really asking first. Cryptocurrency can earn a place in a portfolio, as a small, high-risk slice that you can afford to see fall 80%, and it has fallen that far more than once. Treat it as a speculative position, rather than a savings product or a replacement for the rest of your investments. This guide explains how blockchains and coins actually work, the risks that are not theoretical, where we might be in the long cycle, and how to buy and store crypto safely in Singapore.
Chapter 1 of 8
A blockchain is a shared record of transactions. Instead of one bank keeping the ledger, thousands of computers each hold a copy, and they agree on every new entry before it is added. Entries are grouped into blocks, and each block is chained to the one before it, which makes old records very hard to change.
A cryptocurrency is a digital token that lives on a blockchain. Bitcoin was the first, launched in 2009 with a fixed supply of 21 million coins. Nobody owns the network, and anyone can send a coin to anyone else without asking a bank.
So you might be thinking, if it is just a ledger, why is it worth anything? Well, the same reason any scarce thing is. Enough people believe it is useful, and the supply cannot be printed at will. Do note that this belief can change quickly, which is exactly why the price moves the way it does.
Further reading
Chapter 2 of 8
If nobody is in charge, someone still has to decide which transactions are real. Blockchains solve this with a consensus mechanism, and there are two main kinds.
Proof of work. Computers called miners compete to solve a hard maths puzzle. The winner adds the next block and earns new coins as a reward. Cheating would mean out-computing the whole network, which costs a fortune in hardware and electricity. Bitcoin works this way.
Proof of stake. Instead of burning electricity, validators lock up, or "stake", their own coins as a deposit. The network picks validators to add blocks, and anyone caught cheating loses part of their deposit. Ethereum switched to this in 2022.
Staking is where the "passive income" pitch comes from, since validators earn a reward for locking up their coins. In Singapore, MAS said in July 2023 that it would restrict crypto platforms from facilitating staking and lending for retail customers. So if a platform offers you a high staking yield, ask where that yield actually comes from.
Further reading
Chapter 3 of 8
Two words come up in crypto news that sound scarier than they are, and one of them can genuinely cost you money.
A 51% attack happens when one group controls more than half of a network's mining power or staked coins. With that control, they can reverse their own recent transactions and spend the same coins twice. It is very expensive on a large network like Bitcoin. On small coins with little mining power it has happened several times, which is one more reason small coins carry more risk than their charts suggest.
A fork is a change to a blockchain's rules. A soft fork stays compatible with the old rules, like a software update that old phones can still run. A hard fork breaks compatibility, and if part of the community refuses to upgrade, the chain splits in two. Bitcoin Cash was born from a hard fork of Bitcoin in 2017. If you hold coins on an exchange during a fork, the exchange decides whether you receive the new coin, so read their notice when one is coming.
Further reading
Chapter 4 of 8
There are thousands of coins, and most of them will not exist in 10 years. In a January 2018 post I sorted them into three types, and the sort still works:
Two more groups have grown since then. Stablecoins like USDT and USDC are pegged to the US dollar, and traders use them as the cash they hold between trades. And meme coins like Dogecoin and PEPE have no product at all, only a community and a joke, which makes them the closest thing in crypto to a lottery ticket.
Once you can place a coin in one of those five boxes, you can judge it quickly. A new coin that calls itself "the next Ethereum" is a platform coin, competing with dozens of others for the same developers.
Further reading
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Chapter 5 of 8
In January 2018, I wrote about crypto and the Kondratiev wave, the idea that the world economy moves in long cycles of 40 to 60 years, each driven by a new technology. My view then was that blockchain, along with AI and a few other technologies, was in the early, fast-growth stage of a new long cycle. I also wrote that every innovation phase has a "shake out", where the weak products die and the market crashes or deflates, and that crypto's shake out had not happened yet.
It happened that year. Bitcoin fell roughly 80% through 2018, and most of the coins launched in the 2017 boom never came back. Then it happened again in 2022, when the Terra stablecoin collapsed in May and the FTX exchange failed in November.
Two lessons from that 2018 post have held up. The survivors after a shake out tend to be the products with the widest adoption, not always the best technology. And the coins most likely to die first are the application coins, because a boom produces far too many of them.
Further reading
Chapter 6 of 8
It depends on how much of your money is in it, and that is a question you can answer with arithmetic.
Imagine you have SGD 50,000 invested. Put 5% of it, SGD 2,500, into crypto. If crypto falls 80%, as it has done more than once, you lose SGD 2,000. That is 4% of your portfolio. It hurts, and you recover.
Now put 50% in, SGD 25,000. The same 80% fall costs SGD 20,000.
40% of your portfolio, gone in one bad cycle.
The coin did the same thing in both cases. The only difference was the size of the bet. So the next time a friend shows you a coin that went up 10 times, the useful question is how much of their money was in it, and what happens to them if it goes back down. This is why we treat crypto as a high-risk, high-reward slice, sized so that the worst realistic fall stays survivable, and never as the bulk of a portfolio.
There are other ways to get exposure, too. In 2017 I listed five ways to make money from bitcoin: buying it, trading derivatives on it, lending it out, mining it and arbitrage between exchanges. Buying and trading are still the realistic options for most people. Lending is now restricted on Singapore platforms, mining needs industrial hardware, and the arbitrage gaps have mostly closed. Since 2024 there is also a sixth option, spot bitcoin ETFs listed in the US, which let you hold bitcoin exposure through an ordinary brokerage account.
Further reading
Chapter 7 of 8
DeFi, or decentralised finance, rebuilds banking services such as lending, borrowing and trading as programs on a blockchain, with no bank in the middle. These programs are called smart contracts, and most run on Ethereum. The appeal is access and speed. The risk is that a bug in the code, or a project that simply disappears, leaves nobody to call.
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are unique tokens that prove ownership of a digital item, such as a piece of art. In 2021 some sold for millions. The market fell hard after that boom, which is a good reminder that a token proves you own something, and it says nothing about what anyone will pay for it.
Further reading
Chapter 8 of 8
MAS has set rules that change what a platform may offer you. They took effect in phases from mid-2024, and they say a platform should:
MAS also requires platforms to hold customer assets in a statutory trust.
Then decide where to store your coins. Leaving them on the exchange is convenient, and you depend entirely on the exchange. Moving them to your own wallet gives you full control, and the full responsibility too. Lose your recovery phrase, and nobody can get your coins back. There is an old saying in crypto, "not your keys, not your coins", and FTX customers learned what it means.
Further reading
Quick answers
Only an amount you can afford to see fall 80% without changing your life. For most people that means a small slice of their total investments, never the bulk.
A coin runs on its own blockchain, like bitcoin or ether. A token is built on top of another blockchain, usually Ethereum, and does not have its own network.
Yes. Bitcoin and the major coins respond to the same chart patterns and price action as other markets, with bigger swings. The same rule applies everywhere: size each trade so that a run of losses stays small.
About the author
Spencer Li is The 15-Minute Trader and the founder of Synapse Trading. He is a Certified Financial Technician (CFTe) with 15+ years of trading, run from 70+ countries. He holds a B.Acc and B.BM from SMU. Every trade he takes is public, dated, losses left in. He teaches rules-based swing trading in 15 minutes a day, one system for any market.
Education, not financial advice. Synapse Trading is not licensed by MAS to advise on investment products. Trading carries risk of loss; past performance is not indicative of future results.
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