Speaker A
Welcome everybody to Trading Digital and Financial Assets, or as you can read on the mic, TDFA for short. My name is Ricardo, and in this video, I'll be taking you through what is in store for you guys in the coming 10 weeks. I'll talk a
Introduction to the TDFA course by Ricardo, covering course structure, team, and expectations over 10 weeks.
Key Takeaways
- TDFA is a comprehensive 10-week course on digital and financial asset trading with updated content.
- Strong team support and interactive elements like Discord and working hours enhance learning.
- The course blends technical knowledge with mental strategies such as meditation for better trading.
- Students are evaluated through tests, portfolio work, and a trading competition.
- Independent thinking and research are encouraged to develop personal trading frameworks.
What the video covers
- Ricardo introduces the Trading Digital and Financial Assets (TDFA) course and outlines the 10-week program.
- The course was restructured recently with updated curriculum based on the 2020 edition.
- Ricardo introduces the core team including coordinator Malva, lecturer Hunts, and assistants Chris and Boss.
- He shares his background in markets, entrepreneurship, and blockchain since 2016.
- The course includes lectures, Discord communication, working hours, and guest lectures.
- Focus on market dynamics, trading skills, and blockchain technology.
- Meditation and mental discipline are discussed as tools to improve trading decisions.
- Students will engage in weekly tests, portfolio grading, and a trading competition.
- The program emphasizes creating a personal decision-making framework and doing independent research.
- Support is provided through team interaction and various communication channels.
Chapters
- 00:00Course Introduction and Overview
- 01:35Course Restructuring and Curriculum Updates
- 03:14Team Introduction and Support System
- 04:48Ricardo's Background and Market Experience
- 06:27Blockchain Involvement and Course Focus
- 08:01Course Goals and Student Expectations
- 09:32Learning Tools and Communication Channels
- 11:51Assessments, Competitions, and Grading
- 13:11Final Thoughts and Course Commitment
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
little bit about who I am and who I am to take you through these 10 weeks, who I am to speak to you, right? Um, so you'll get to know a little bit about me, about the team, the people that
Speaker A
make this possible, and I guess what is important, what you can expect from us, but also what we expect from you guys. I'll be doing this from my home, so I've got an improvised studio over here. The previous edition of TDFA, which we
Speaker A
developed in 2020, we had a full dedicated studio, but right now I decided to go a little bit more raw, and so I'm going to do these videos uncut. So whatever is going to happen in the video, uh, you know, I may re-record it or I may
Speaker A
not. So if I have two cats outside decide to fight each other, then, you know, we'll just have to hear them in the background settle their business. Um, so yeah, I've got some slides prepared, you know, as any lecturer will have. We do
Speaker A
have to get through some slides, and this is basically the setup that we're going to be doing. So you're going to look at me from the main camera, and I will take you through either PowerPoint slides or I will take you through some stuff in
Speaker A
the browser to hopefully, you know, get across as much as I can and as good as I can, as I can do that. So TDFA, um, as I said, in 2020, we did the first version, and we actually decided to
Speaker A
restructure the entire course, uh, like half a year ago. So everything that you encounter, the topics are very similar to the first edition, but we've really upgraded the, uh, curriculum, we think. So hopefully, um, you know, it's all up to date as far
Speaker A
as we can do that, and it's really full of really cool, awesome content, of course. We are biased, but we really did our best to create something, something very cool for you guys. So who is we? Well, this is
Speaker A
the team that, you know, does it all. On the right side of my picture, uh, is somebody who holds everything together. He's like the glue or the oil of the entire operation, and I would not be sitting here still, you know, breathing, I
Speaker A
think, if, uh, if it were not for Malva, and you will see plenty of him. He's the coordinator of both the blockchain program and the trading program. Next to Malva is Hunts, alumni of either the first or the second
Speaker A
blockchain minor edition. I'll talk a little bit about that in a second. Uh, he went on to finish his master's degree in fintech in Glasgow and then ended up working for a well-known VC, venture capital firm, Sino
Speaker A
Global Capital. Tons of experience, a lot of fun. I have a lot of stories about Hunts. Maybe we'll get to that at some point, but he is doing the lectures right beside me, so you will see Hunter and
Speaker A
myself doing all the lectures. Chris and Boss are both alumni. They passed this program with flying colors, I might say, and they've been a tremendous help in assisting us again in making this into a smooth operation, as smooth
Speaker A
as it can be. You will be seeing them in Discord, which is our communications channel. Also, I will talk about that, and you will see them if you have any questions or if you want to. We organize working hours, for example, where you can
Speaker A
work together with, I think, under supervision of Boss mostly, maybe also sometimes Chris, but they are assisting us in, uh, you know, keeping this program, uh, up and running. So you, you will have plenty of opportunity to speak to them in person.
Speaker A
So I will leave a further introduction for themselves, uh, to themselves. A little bit about me, uh, I would describe myself as somewhere between, you know, entrepreneurship and a creative, uh, at heart. I've been a researcher in the past.
Speaker A
I did that for two years, if I remember correctly, uh, at The Hague University, and I've been lecturing since, uh, 2019.
Speaker A
Um, ever since I've, I've been a teenager or I was a teenager, my dad kind of got me interested in the stock markets, in markets in general, um, and that just hasn't really let me go. And in my time of entrepreneurship in
Speaker A
somewhere, I've spent a lot of time, uh, working in the flower industry actually in my 20s, and that also revolves around a market. Uh, my function, or at least I, I did several stuff like we can talk about
Speaker A
this maybe in person, but one of the things I did was I specialized myself in the purchasing of mainly flowers. And if you know how that works, the Dutch flower industry works with a Dutch auction system. So every morning at six o'clock,
Speaker A
there's a tremendous amount of products that are being auctioned with no predetermined price. So every morning at six o'clock, every product would be auctioned, and then there will be buyers like me, for example, who would try to figure out, okay, what is a good price, uh,
Speaker A
to pay for this certain product. And I would be literally hundreds of thousands of products or perhaps thousands of products every day, hundreds of thousands every week, and really, uh, quite an insane amount on a yearly basis. It's a huge
Speaker A
industry, and I've learned a tremendous amount about how markets work, and I only figured it out later that it really helped me to become a good, uh, and I can say that it's not bragging, it's just, you know, after a while, you can become good
Speaker A
at anything that you put your mind to. I've become really good at trading, and I've noticed that that really helped shape me as well. So to understand market dynamics, and that's what we're obviously going to look at quite, quite plenty.
Speaker A
I did have to say goodbye to my business, uh, with, yeah, some sadness, but it got replaced by an interest in, uh, in blockchain, in the entire blockchain industry ever since March 2016, and I decided to step away from business and
Speaker A
focus completely on that space because I saw that the potential for it was just absolutely humongous. So everybody knows about crypto right now or everybody heard about cryptocurrencies, etc., but back then it was just hardly known, and I
Speaker A
was, I would say, one of the first people in the, in the country and perhaps, you know, globally to, um, to really sort of dedicate his attention to that. So in a way, right place, right time, um, founded in 2016, but it didn't make
Speaker A
the real investment step until like March 2017, but I can talk about that story in a different, at a different time. Um, but anyway, I have been involved in that space since 2016, and it still
Speaker A
hasn't let me go. It's really fascinating from a technological perspective, but also from a market dynamic perspective. So we'll be talking about that plenty, uh, as well. Besides all of this, my passion project, uh, I've named it, uh, Wu is the
Speaker A
Way. Uh, I've got a Twitter account or X account, we call it now, it's not Twitter, it's X, um, and I'm writing about something else I'm very passionate about, which is meditation and basically the discovery of how the mind works, how that operates,
Speaker A
and again, there was like, uh, like a connection between how the mind works and actually becoming a better trader. So meditation is something that really helped me to calm myself, uh, in, you know, uh, in the whole trading game. It has led
Speaker A
to way better decision making, etc., but we'll talk about this in week five, uh, if I remember correctly. Again, the program is completely new, so this used to be week six, I think. Right now it's week five, but, you know, bear with me.
Speaker A
We'll get there. So I have a Twitter account on which I just make notes basically to myself, but I also decided to write about my experiences on Substack, and they are sort of like writings disguised as letters to my son,
Speaker A
who is now five months old, who you may or may not hear him in the background at some point. We're also going to just let that happen, so please bear with me. Anyway, enough about me, um, what are we trying to achieve with
Speaker A
TDFA? Um, over the years, I've encountered a lot of people who, and especially in the whole crypto game, this became apparent, that people were, they really wanted to sort of like capitalize on, you know, what they heard about it, like people had
Speaker A
friends who were making a lot of money, and they would just, you know, I
Speaker A
there or the the literacy if you if you want to call it that on markets and investing and trading Etc risk management which is a of absolute importance when it comes to this game uh was basically not there and the so I was
Speaker A
actually first I was invited uh so a little bit back about the university with my blockchain knowledge of like a year of research I was invited to the university to first come and speak so I did some lectures for uh like a group of
Speaker A
teachers and then for like we did a huge seminar in an auditorium for like uh anybody who was interested um and uh then basically like a buddy of mine or body slash colleague Jordy Johnson you will probably see him as
Speaker A
well he said like we need to create a program um that you know also teaches people a little bit about like what it's like to actually invest or what it's like to actually trade so that people have you
Speaker A
know something to hold on to and not just throw their money uh into whatever asset they you know they heard about so that's one of the that's one of the goals and that's kind of how this program was created as well okay we have
Speaker A
the blockchain miner we see a lot of students come in there who are basically there to make money we basically you know we're better off if we also create a separate program in which we you know maybe dispel some myths and Illusions as
Speaker A
you can see in the second bullet uh when it comes to that because investing and trading is not easy and um it's a lot of fun but it's like anything if you want to get good at it it takes you know takes some time to get
Speaker A
there and that's what we want to do in this program we want to give you the skills and the tools to ultimately help you manage your finances better to make better investment decisions to find out why you should even be thinking about
Speaker A
investing Etc we take it from scratch and we dive uh deeper and deeper um so that's sort of like uh the the official thing that we're trying to achieve but we've learned from three years of tdfa already um this is the 12th time that we're
Speaker A
doing tdfa actually um if I were to put it in bullets now is like the highest thing that I think we as lecturers and as program creators can achieve is that you start to think like an investor or Trader yourself if we can
Speaker A
help you achieve that then that's a far better goal than you know giving you some tools like okay buy here or buy this asset or don't buy this asset buy the s p or don't buy the s p what the s
Speaker A
p is we'll also talk about well again we'll start from scratch um but what we want to achieve at the end of this program is that you have a framework of thinking uh when it comes to financial markets invest whether it
Speaker A
be stock markets crypto Commodities whatever you want to trade or buy that you have a framework of thought for yourself in which you become a better decision maker right which thanks to that that you become a better decision
Speaker A
maker and that you are starting to learn to think for yourself because ultimately you are the one that needs to pull the trigger and I've just learned this from experience like when I would follow other people's advice or like a thesis
Speaker A
or an idea and I would not have the conviction in that idea myself so I would be sort of like okay my money is invested in there but I kind of don't know what it does it causes sleepless
Speaker A
nights it causes a lot of stress Etc all unnecessary we're going to take it from scratch and we're going to really teach you how to think like an investor look for opportunities make calculated decisions have a solid risk management
Speaker A
plan Etc now most of all you know help you think for yourself so that you can have your own idea about markets or about assets Etc okay disclaimer you can uh maybe pause the video for yourself I'm not going to
Speaker A
read through each of these bullets but and I will have a disclaimer later on as well but I think the main one that we need to get across is that nothing we say is ever Financial advice so I like
Speaker A
to see myself when I'm in this seat or when I'm talking online or whatever as a market commentator yes I do have some experience I might have an opinion or two um but it is never Financial advice and
Speaker A
what we're going to do is just show you around in the world of financial markets and make you you know make your own decisions and create your own framework of of thinking I've said that already um always do your own research and like
Speaker A
the the second to final bullet uh not your thesis not your conviction I will come back to that because that is just one of the most Paramount lessons that I've learned in my uh in my journey last but last not least you really really
Speaker A
need to dedicate your time and attention to this course it is is not going to be easy it's not going to be a walk in the park and don't let that dishearten or discourage you it just means that you
Speaker A
need to really take this seriously so don't start your assignments uh you know on Thursday or Friday when the deadline is on Sunday if you do that you're not going to make it uh ngmi as I beautifully say on the Internet
Speaker A
seriously you need to put in the work and if you do if even if you don't even go into the direction of investing or trading the rewards are going to be really really huge let me just take that for me you're
Speaker A
going to have to trust me uh and you'll get to know me you know over the course of 10 weeks but you're gonna have to trust me in that that really also on a personal level for example there's going
Speaker A
to be plenty of stuff that you're going to learn that will help you in your journey of personal development so really put yourself to this program focus on it work hard and you will see um that the reward is really going to be
Speaker A
huge uh I can after three years of doing this uh the people that actually put that dedication into the program they always came back with us to us with that feedback so I've gained some confidence in what this
Speaker A
program uh does um core structure so we have five types of content uh tdfa video so that's what you're looking at right now so this is just a course overview and introduction but the next one is going to actually
Speaker A
talk about uh you know the sources that we are going to be using and we're going to be reading viewing Etc um so the external sources that's basically the structure the foundation of of this course so we have selected
Speaker A
YouTube videos we've selected articles we've selected podcasts Etc why did we do this and why didn't we create all these videos ourselves well because there are plenty of people out there who did it who've done tremendous job at making a video on a certain topic
Speaker A
and rather than spending time recreating that or also doing that we just think well I'm of the personal opinion that that is just a waste of my time I'd much rather give you the perspective on why a video or why a certain article or topic
Speaker A
is important and how you should look at it and how you can incorporate this in your uh in your thinking right so we have the videos online uh and on the on the Courier's platform more about that later and beneath the
Speaker A
videos we'll have the sources then of course we have the lectures you have two lectures a week if we can we will try to do some extra lectures uh if there is you know a desire to to have them from
Speaker A
you guys we have guest lectures we call we're going to you know put that in a podcast format and we have Twitter which we use extensively to um you know to share interesting stuff like create a Twitter account I can
Speaker A
already give you that or an X account we should say now because the amount that you're going to learn there from the from the smart people that are on that platform uh is going to be huge really I
Speaker A
would definitely recommend having a Twitter account I would say as an investor or Trader you kind of cannot go around that it's really full of people who are like like way smarter than I am way more experienced as well
Speaker A
um anyway more on that as well so we have our own Twitter page uh or or a profile you can follow us at tdfa course we'll also be sharing more and more of our ideas uh on X which I still need to
Speaker A
get used to the fact that it's called X um before we continue let me just you see this is how it goes now I need to I've lost my train of thought for a second but I'm not going to cut it we're
Speaker A
just going to continue uh communication Discord you've received an email I think um I hope uh in which all this information is also visible make sure that you are in the Discord because this is our is going to be our means for
Speaker A
communication if you haven't heard of it before it's basically WhatsApp on steroids with channels uh dedicated channels to certain topics uh we have our ask a teacher tool in there as well so if you have any questions during the
Speaker A
program you can use that tool and either boss or Chris or myself or Nova somebody will be with you very very quickly that's uh what we try to do this as quick as possible so no more waiting for
Speaker A
uh emails for days or even weeks uh we really you know have a hub over there in which we all are present and we can communicate quite smoothly there important announcements you'll find there you'll find links you'll find
Speaker A
files and you can just earn something in the Discord called XP and with that XP you can earn Titan tokens and nfts now if that is too technical if you have no idea what that is uh you will learn
Speaker A
about that soon enough it should also be in documentation and otherwise you can ask about this in the Discord that's how it works that's the beauty of it um yeah so Chapter One financial markets chapter 2 investing we have two weeks of
Speaker A
financial market analysis both the fundamental side and the technical side I see a typo there you see it and Analysis fundamental analysis we do uh in week three anyway um and we will be uh okay before I give
Speaker A
you that overview week five risk management and trading psychology so that's where we are risk week number five then we're going to have a very practical week like what does it look like to actually buy something sell something what platforms do we use Etc
Speaker A
and week seven eight and nine are probably my favorite of the program um that's will that will be the bitfargo trading competition more about that in a second bear with me guys we're almost there I promise um and your deliverables not unimportant
Speaker A
we have a weekly portfolio that you will be graded on in the form of either pass or no pass we have a weekly test every Friday and we have five of them you need to pass four out of five minimum
Speaker A
um in week seven we have video assignments so you're going to be required to actually make your own video more on that you can find in the documentation as well again or ask in Discord if it's still unclear and the
Speaker A
final assignment is going to be the trading journal that's going to be graded as well and that ties to the tdfa trading competition so we've partnered in the past we partnered with FTX if FDX was a or a kind of still is a cryptocurrency
Speaker A
exchange but they had malpractice uh we had funds on there we had like 4 000 Euros unfortunately we're still trying to you know get those back and that's a that's a story for another time but we initially partnered with FTX which we
Speaker A
were super proud of at the time um and now we've actually uh bitvavo stood up and they took over that role and we're partnered with uh or at least collaborating with bitfavo to host our trading competition so what we're going
Speaker A
to do going back to the weeks we start with a wide overview and we zoom in more and more and become a market participant right in which at the beginning you're going to learn terminology about how markets work and then you're going to
Speaker A
learn about investing and more and more you're going to be shaped into the direction of a solid decision maker and we're going to do that in the form of we call it competition but it's mostly fun as long as you learn and you have fun
Speaker A
during that competition and you actually show us what you've learned during the program in the form of that trading journal then you're good to go it doesn't mean that you need to win the competition but it's a nice element
Speaker A
um something that we are very very proud of is that the first edition of the trading competition uh was actually won by Martin who joined the program with absolutely zero zero prior experience when it comes to financial markets
Speaker A
trading investing Etc but what Martin head was a determined uh mindset he was very critical on the program he like really digested uh and devoured all the sources that we provided to him and also the tools that we talked about the stuff
Speaker A
that we talked about in lectures and he went on to win the very first training competition and the same happened with Andre in 2023. so that means that something in our program actually works that you can get in in a
Speaker A
very short period of time you can at least get to a point where you make uh decisions that make sense right let's let's just calm us calm ourselves down but at least you have something to work with and you can make decisions based on
Speaker A
some knowledge skills and experience that you have right rather than just throwing your money into a market and hoping for the best um yeah so what's in store if I may say so myself we've selected really awesome content really good sources so lots of
Speaker A
interesting conversations you will meet all the famous investors Warren Buffett Kathy Woods uh drucken Miller like all of them we we've carefully selected it in such a way that you get to know a lot of people in the sources as well so
Speaker A
sometimes it may just be a conversation between two people that you've never heard of but then you realize hey these two people are actually some of the smartest people that I've ever seen and I can learn a ton from this conversation
Speaker A
right so that's sort of like the way that we've constructed it uh feel free to make memes by the way top top left and bottom right corner um feel free to make jokes of us like we work hard we are uh playfully serious
Speaker A
but also we're seriously playful we don't mind a joke every now and then um but yeah we we do uh like to work hard anyway so we try to get awesome guest lectures and podcasts uh as well we do have a lineup already more about
Speaker A
that later the trading competition you'll have a lot of fun the amount of learning is going to be tremendous that's what we've heard from students in the past you're going to be able to network so we will organize drinks whenever we can where
Speaker A
you can make friends and last year we did a field trip to bid Volvo for 10 students if I remember correctly actually uh so that's also really really quite cool and as I said we like to work hard and we really really want to make
Speaker A
sure that you guys have a good time first of all I would say that you actually have a program in the next coming weeks that you enjoy um and we just really want you to succeed at it we want at the end of the
Speaker A
road that youth say like hey you know what this was awesome it was heavy as hell but I've learned so much and I've really grown in this 10 weeks if if we can achieve that then we are a very
Speaker A
happy and that's what we're dedicated to we really want to dedicate ourselves to um to your success I think I've covered most of what I needed to cover um as I as I said uncut raw uh we're just going to leave it uh like that and
Speaker A
um yeah so to close this video off uh before we go to the next one uh make sure that you take this program serious that you work hard that you dedicate yourself to it because otherwise you're going to uh you know fall behind uh
Speaker A
already after like two or three weeks and then it's just not going to be a lot of fun so but but just take from me that if you do that the reward at the end will be there right uh everything worth
Speaker A
having uh you know you know is worthy of of hard work there's it goes different than saying but anyway this um you know what I mean right um so yeah that's what we uh you know what we expect from you guys uh and we're going
Speaker A
to you know bust our behinds to uh to make this program as good as possible for you guys and yeah I think that's all I think we can cut it here um the next video I will talk a little
Speaker A
bit more about the course structure if that's still unclear but then we actually start with week one and we'll start to talk about financial markets uh and we'll talk about the sources for example that are selected for you
Speaker A
um and yeah I mean can't wait to see you there I'm super psyched thank you for choosing this program really uh it's like a tremendous honor to have like such large amounts of students every year uh and it's just it's just an
Speaker A
amazing thing so thank you so much and we'll see each other in the next video
Topics:TDFATrading Digital and Financial Assetscryptocurrency tradingblockchain educationfinancial marketstrading coursemarket dynamicsmeditation and tradingonline courseinvestment education
![[YTP] Jordan Peterson: Rat King — Transcript](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0qUoznGIe1M/maxresdefault.jpg)
![Nick & Charlie ‣ their story [+heartstopper forever] — Transcript](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/p4TiW1TZM3w/maxresdefault.jpg)
