Recommended crypto reads – and a soon-to-be-published podcast

A friend and I are starting a crypto podcast because we’re middle aged crypto nerds who want to hear ourselves talk.

I’ll be posting the links here, and often. We’ve already recorded 4 episodes and will publish them soon, and will also invite guests in the future

There’ll be brief takes on the state of the market and recent crypto news, but the podcast focus will be crypto-related media (like blogs, tweets, and podcasts) that we recommend and why. There’s just an endless torrent of good content, and we want to get wet and then share the water drops (great metaphor right)

Here are some examples that I’ll probably mention in future episodes:

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Reality check on state of crypto today and what causes the bubbles / cycles:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1592177325906726912.html

Imagine a world where the most active investors in traditional finance are Nasdaq Ventures and the NYSE, and the financial information on those listed securities is opaque. That is our reality in the crypto sector. This is what we have created

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Approximately 9 minutes into this episode of All-In, Chamath gives the best explanation of what’s happening with the SBF / FTX fraud circus and mainstream media’s role in it:

https://pca.st/episode/5486ca04-b7c7-4ec8-a57e-65128ed0da7f?t=587.0

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Perhaps my favorite bitcoin analyst, David has rare perspective from decades in tradfi and a unique lens to look at bitcoin price action (namely, focusing on whales):

https://david06280728.substack.com/p/month-end-analysis-b95

That said, and as I intimated above, it is always darkest before dawn and investor sentiment is as dark now as at any point over my thirty years of investing. I suspect a lot of readers did not experience firsthand how frightening the dot-com bubble and GFC were, but I did, so I can assure you that the FUD then was no less compelling than the FUD right now

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Philosophical reflection on crypto market cycles and why we’re here

https://www.visary.io/next/

Free will perhaps exists on micro levels – individual and local – but on a broader scale, the human condition seems to be solidified in its ways and patterns. Markets are a great example where this constantly plays out – especially in the relatively nascent, less-regulated, more free-market crypto space where multiple cycles have occurred, all culminating and correcting in eerily similar ways.

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Thorough explanation of the short and long-term debt cycles as popularized by Ray Dalio (through a bitcoiner’s lens)

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/markets/the-conclusion-of-the-long-term-debt-cycle-and-the-rise-of-bitcoin

In a free-market capitalist economic system, the most important pricing mechanism is that of money. When there is a monopolist institution setting the price of money, the market is inherently not “free.” There is nothing free about reducing the price of money whenever there is an economic downturn, including the most recent injections of hundreds of billions and now trillions of dollars into financial markets whenever a major liquidation of malinvestment occurs.

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One of the more thorough newsletters covering crypto news with brief but thoughtful takes:

https://page1.substack.com/p/round-tripping-677

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Ending with the tooting of my own crypto horn:

https://kevinhabits.com/when-things-become-free/

https://kevinhabits.com/bitcoin-is-a-simple-asset-david-andolfatto/

Beautiful blog from Derek Sivers: “Cross the world the first time to fall in love”

Cross the world four times.

First, in your teens or 20s, to take it all in. See it all, do it all, and learn. Get involved. Stay up all night talking with strangers, everywhere. Kiss and fall and promise to them all. Make lots of mistakes.

Cross the world the first time to fall in love.

A beautiful concept, and something I personally experience each time I travel.

Now, in my late 30s, I put myself somewhere between Derek’s description of the second and third times. Perhaps closer to the third time, it just feels heavier.

And that fourth time — what a bittersweet sadness 🥹

Source: https://sive.rs/4

stable diffusion, “world travel derek sivers”

November recommended reads

Absolutely incredible long profile of MBS, Saudi Arabia’s de facto king. He’s like Kim Jong Un, but much richer, and actually driving significant change. Significant to whom, is the question

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/04/mohammed-bin-salman-saudi-arabia-palace-interview/622822

MBS rebuked me when I called this attitude “moderate Islam,” though his own government champions the concept on its websites. “That term would make terrorists and extremists happy.” It suggests that “we in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries are changing Islam into something new, which is not true,” he said. “We are going back to the core, back to pure Islam” as practiced by Muhammad and his four successors. “These teachings of the Prophet and the four caliphs—they were amazing. They were perfect.”

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A great newsletter on global affairs through the lens of finance and macroeconomics. Adam Tooze’s output is astounding.

https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-174-finance-and-the-polycrisis

The effect of US financial shocks on really large economies like China is relatively muted. So too for France and, surprisingly, the UK. But Germany feels American shocks heavily, as heavily, indeed, as Canada and almost as heavily as Mexico.

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Another great newsletter, this one on all things China, through local (Mandarin Chinese) news sources.

https://sinocism.com/p/protests-covid-xis-diplomacy-national

Since the start of the pandemic China has had several waves of massive outpourings of online anger, especially around the death of Dr. Li Wenliang, the Shanghai lockdown disaster and the Guizhou bus tragedy. But that virtual anger about Covid policies and censorship, among other things, did not cross into real world protests. Until the last few days, as people gathered publicly to express their anger and frustration in Shanghai, Beijing, Wuhan and other cities, and at many college campuses around the country.

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More on Mr. Beast and his incredible business success. Willy Wonka self-promo + Walt Disney ambition. He doesn’t capture, he IS the zeitgeist

https://www.shopify.com/blog/mrbeast-business-backstory

In the earlier days of his channel, Jimmy would spend all day on Skype analyzing videos with other aspiring YouTubers. They called their group Daily Masterminds. From 7 a.m. until 10 p.m., they would break down the anatomy of each other’s videos, study popular YouTubers, and brainstorm ideas. Jimmy credits these group calls with helping him perfect his craft and intricately understand his audience.

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Gambling gray markets + regulatory arbitrage + people desperate for economic opportunity

https://restofworld.org/2022/cambodias-scam-mills/

Linh Ne came to Bavet in 2021 at 17 years old, she said, accepting a typist job through Facebook. To cross the border, she pushed through forested areas and waded through a ditch filled with waist-high water; only on arrival did she realize she’d been recruited to a scam company that emulated the shopping platform Tiki. Her employers asked her to defraud Vietnamese shoppers, and she said that when she refused, they starved her. She was sold after two weeks to a second company conducting a romance scam, where her boss gave her a guide to manipulate clients.

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A weekly newsletter with an insider’s view of crypto news

https://page1.substack.com/p/round-tripping-677

The same relative level of energy and emotion that occurs in bull markets, has to then be inversely mirrored in bear markets for finality to occur…perhaps crypto is slowly becoming contrarian again…there will be aftershocks in the market and likely some final contagion…crypto did not need a bailout here, bad actors failed and will be punished…we have no doubt a recomposition will occur and narratives will shift again in time…’this too shall pass

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Semiconductors = the oil of the metaverse

https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/2020-most-traded-global-good-was-not-crude-oil-semiconductors

Since 2015, semiconductors have taken the top rank for the most traded good, representing 15% of total global goods trade

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I read this once every few months. I love articles that completely change your view on a topic you *thought* you understood. If you want to *actually* understand proof of work, this is a must read

https://grisha.org/blog/2018/01/23/explaining-proof-of-work

And there is the crux of it: The difficulty in finding a conforming hash acts as a clock. A universal clock, if you will, because there is only one such clock in the universe, and thus there is nothing to sync and anyone can “look” at it. It doesn’t matter that this clock is imprecise. What matters is that it is the same clock for everyone and that the state of the chain can be tied unambiguously to the ticks of this clock.

Recent interesting quotes: “Trust your instincts. Don’t think, just do.” – Tom Cruise in Top Gun

If we want everything to remain as it is, everything must change. – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Trust your instincts. Don’t think, just do. – Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick

A true believer, that one. There are few things so dangerous in a man as lack of doubt – from God of War

Today Jack (Nicklaus) plays such sensational golf with such apparent ease that many people who watch him probably gain the impression that his skills are heaven-sent rather than self-developed. That isn’t true. No one ever worked harder at golf than Nicklaus during his teens and early twenties. At the age of ten, in his first year of golf, Jack must have averaged three hundred practice shots and at least eighteen holes of play daily. In later years, he would often hit double that number of practice shots and play thirty-six — even fifty-four — holes of golf a day during the summer. I have seen him practice for hours in rain, violent winds, snow, intense heat — nothing would keep him away from golf. Even a slight case of polio failed to prevent him from turning up for a golf match.

Excellence is the capacity to take pain – Four Seasons founder

I think I could potentially train harder, because you wanna be as close as possible to being injured, without actually being injured. And I haven’t pushed it as far as being injured yet, so, maybe I haven’t pushed it enough. – Magnus Mitdbo

The reality is that everyone is a basket case on the inside. Some people just hide it better. Find me a normal person and I’ll show you someone you don’t know that well. – Scott Adams

One lesson I’ve learned is that if the job I do were easy, I wouldn’t derive so much satisfaction from it. The thrill of winning is in direct proportion to the effort I put in before. I also know, from long experience, that if you make an effort in training when you don’t especially feel like making it, the payoff is that you will win games when you are not feeling your best. That is how you win championships, that is what separates the great player from the merely good player. The difference lies in how well you’ve prepared. – Nadal

From the seed-bed
The Dharma raises flowers.
Yet there is no seed
Nor are there flowers.

Ser Otto Hightower : And yet I’ve never seen that side of you, my daughter. I even doubted its existence.
Queen Alicent Hightower : It was an ugly thing. I regret it.
Ser Otto Hightower : We play an ugly game. And now, for the first time, I see that you have the determination to win it.

Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself.

As you start to walk on the way, the way appears. – Rumi

The financial casino isn’t over; The financial casino will only grow

The explosion of risk assets during covid was but an amuse bouche for what is going to happen this decade and probably beyond.

GME and Dogecoin and Rolexes and Air Jordans were just a precursor for a world where just about every imaginable asset (of *some* value and duration) has a real-time price and is traded on a global digital marketplace. This will include trading of people (their income streams, anyway), memes, all forms of property, prediction markets, and much more.

The financial casino isn’t over. It’s still in the early innings. Everyone is becoming an investor, and they have no choice.

Some trends driving this:

1. Given the enormous debt and lack of real (productivity driven) growth constraining the world’s richest nations (especially the US), currency debasement is the only practicable long-term political choice; thus, the money printers will continue to brr brr, and probably at an accelerating rate. Liquidity won’t be the problem; capturing and retaining real value will be

2. Software is steadily creating digital representations of all physical assets; once digitalized, these assets are easily financialized, securitized, traded, whatever. Trust isn’t the issue here, since physical assets ultimately derive legitimacy from the meat world of local governments and law enforcement

3. Blockchain (encompassing NFTs and tokens) is creating trustworthy representations of all digital assets. And as is pretty clear from what’s happening in cryptos thus far, the financialization of these assets will blow peoples’ minds. These digital assets will explode in quantity and aggregate value as the world increasingly moves its economic, political, and social activity onto the digital layer (ie the metaverse)

So we’ve established that there will be a lot more capital in the system (1). There will be a lot more assets (2 and 3). The arena will become increasingly global (despite all this recent talk of de-globalization which largely benefits conservative politicians and onshore industries, aggregate human self-interest will win out eventually and that is towards a better, faster, and cheaper global marketplace). And all of this will be enabled and accelerated by software and digitization.

Yes I sound like an off rocker tech permabull. I’ve also placed my bets accordingly.

There’s a lot more to write about here, mostly downstream effects of (1), such as widening income inequality and sustained real inflation (due to financial repression) growing the number of have-nots, and forcing those have-nots to make ever riskier financial choices.

I’ve been on cold medicine for the past few days and my head is foggy so there may be more nonsense here than usual, and as before, these thoughts are worth what you’re paying for them

cheers I love you