> I don't understand crypto (didn't understand derivatives either). I have worried that my ignorance will cost me in investing — that people smarter than me are

> I don't understand crypto (didn't understand derivatives either). I have worried that my ignorance will cost me in investing — that people smarter than me are going to make bank while I'm derp-derping with my index funds. There are two sides to crypto. There is the technology side (blockchains, cryptography, consensus) and there is the finance side, the financial products on the blockchain. If you're an engineer you'll easily understand the technology side but there's no way around spending a significant amount of time learning about (traditional) finance to understand how exchanges, derivatives, market making, monetary policy, loans, leverage, and so on work. All of the same ideas apply to crypto. This "absurd set of rules" mostly applies to the technology side, not the finance side. If you strip out all the marketing, the financial products you find on the blockchain are no different from the products you find in traditional financial institutions, with maybe a few exceptions like AMMs or stablecoins. My experience has been that the people who understand crypto and who are successful are NOT the people who understand technology, but mostly the people who come from a finance background and can pattern-match their experience to crypto.