IDFEInstitute of Digital Forensic Examiners
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IDFE-DF · Free

Digital Assets Foundations

8h · 7 modules · 34 lessons

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Course contents

01 Digital Assets 101

  1. 1.1 What digital assets are (and are not)
  2. 1.2 From Bitcoin to tokenization: a short history
  3. 1.3 Who’s who in the ecosystem: miners, validators, exchanges and issuers
  4. 1.4 Key terms you will use throughout this course
  5. 1.5 Finality basics

02 How blockchains reach consensus

  1. 2.1 The double-spend problem and distributed ledgers
  2. 2.2 Blocks, hashes and the chain
  3. 2.3 Proof of work
  4. 2.4 Proof of stake
  5. 2.5 Finality, forks and reorganizations

03 Keys, signatures and addresses

  1. 3.1 Hash functions in practice
  2. 3.2 Public-key cryptography in plain terms
  3. 3.3 Digital signatures and transaction authorization
  4. 3.4 From public key to address: formats across networks
  5. 3.5 Reading a transaction on a block explorer

04 Wallets, seed phrases and custody models

  1. 4.1 What a wallet actually stores
  2. 4.2 Seed phrases, BIP-39 and passphrases
  3. 4.3 Hot, cold and hardware wallets
  4. 4.4 Custodial vs self-custody
  5. 4.5 Multisig, MPC and institutional custody

05 Tokens, stablecoins and smart contracts

  1. 5.1 Coins vs tokens
  2. 5.2 Smart contracts and their limits
  3. 5.3 Token standards: fungible and non-fungible
  4. 5.4 Stablecoins and how they hold the peg
  5. 5.5 Tokenized real-world assets

06 DeFi, exchanges and market structure

  1. 6.1 Centralized exchanges and brokers
  2. 6.2 Decentralized exchanges and automated market makers
  3. 6.3 Lending, borrowing and liquidations
  4. 6.4 Bridges, oracles and where DeFi breaks

07 Risk, regulation and professional ethics

  1. 7.1 Common scams and fraud patterns
  2. 7.2 AML/CFT and the Travel Rule
  3. 7.3 Sanctions and international regulatory frameworks
  4. 7.4 Operational and market risks
  5. 7.5 Professional ethics and conflicts of interest