There's a large share of capable engineers who are still wide-eyed over startup equity. Folks I know personally and greatly respect. Startups have had no trouble duping engineers into lower compensation while delivering serviceable results, and will continue to have no problem.
Random googling never gives me confidence I'm getting the right information when it comes to money, nutrition, and health.
Sign up for Matt Levine's newsletter. He's perhaps starting to be a little overexposed on HN, but he's informative and humorous, and his newsletter is a good way to get a little exposure to finance every day.
It's not not startup-equity specific, but check out Bogleheads for generic investing advice.
TLDR Stock Options: https://equity.ltse.com/calculators/tldr-stock-options
the funny thing is that the vast majority of people don't understand how money comes into being, how banks work, etc. And yet, they still just accept cash and use it.
So may be it isn't irrational to have accepted bitcoins in a job as payment, without understanding it. The reason most people don't accept bitcoin (or crypto in general) is that they feel the value is too volatile and might change too much for them to make good financial plans with it.