Tag: wences casares

My Personal Bible – some recent additions (Wences’s bitcoin PDF, Rafa Nadal’s memoir)

Here’s an updated version of my personal bible which is a collection of excerpts and highlights and quotes from my favorite writings.

Recently I added two sources, one is Wences Casares’s bitcoin PDF (original post), some snippets:

If Bitcoin succeeds it may be a global non-political standard of value and settlement. The world already has a global non-political standard of length in the meter, and a global non-political standard of weight in the kilo. Could you imagine a world in which we changed the length of the meter or the weight of the kilo regularly according to political considerations? Yet that is what we are doing with our standard of value.

To illustrate the power of these qualities, consider that today the only standard of value and settlement that the United States of America can be certain that The People’s Republic of China (PRC) will not discriminate access to, censor transactions from or dilute the value of is the Bitcoin Blockchain.

I’m not half done with Rafa Nadal’s 2011 memoir (Amazon link) which is AMAZING, felt compelled to begin adding it to my bible already. Some snippets:

To illustrate the power of these qualities, consider that today the only standard of value and settlement that the United States of America can be certain that The People’s Republic of China (PRC) will not discriminate access to, censor transactions from or dilute the value of is the Bitcoin Blockchain.

Nadal’s mother, Ana María Parera, does not disagree. “He’s on top in the tennis world but, deep down, he is a super-sensitive human being full of fears and insecurities that people who don’t know him would scarcely imagine,” she says. “He doesn’t like the dark, for example, and he prefers to sleep with the light, or the TV, on. He is not comfortable with thunder and lightning either. When he was a child he’d hide under a cushion when that happened and, even now, when there’s a storm and you need to go outside to fetch something, he won’t let you. And then there are his eating habits, his loathing of cheese and tomato, and of ham, the national dish of Spain. I’m not as mad about ham myself as most people seem to be, but cheese? It is a bit peculiar.”

After all he’s accomplished since then — can’t wait for an update.

Wences Casares’s must read document about bitcoin

Wences is widely considered the OG of bitcoin adoption and evangelism in Silicon Valley circles. He bought and began making bitcoin’s case in 2011. Here’s his Wikipedia.

He wrote a 15 page PDF that he shared privately with friends and potential investors. Milk Road kindly published it here.

There were a few passages that I felt compelled to share. Highly recommend reading the whole thing to understand why bitcoin matters, and a practical recommendation for how to invest.

—

HIGHLIGHTS

To illustrate the power of these qualities, consider that today the only standard of value and settlement that the United States of America can be certain that The People’s Republic of China (PRC) will not discriminate access to, censor transactions from or dilute the value of is the Bitcoin Blockchain.

The only innovation of the Blockchain is its sovereignty, the only sovereign Blockchain so far is the Bitcoin Blockchain and the fuel that keeps it sovereign is the Bitcoin currency.

If Bitcoin succeeds it may be a global non-political standard of value and settlement. The world already has a global non-political standard of length in the meter, and a global non-political standard of weight in the kilo. Could you imagine a world in which we changed the length of the meter or the weight of the kilo regularly according to political considerations? Yet that is what we are doing with our standard of value.

However, the history of protocols is very different. Once a protocol gets established it almost never changes. For example, we are using IP (Internet Protocol, or just “the Internet” colloquially) for almost all transport of data (until the late 90s cisco routers used to route dozens of protocols, today they only route IP). We are using only one web protocol and only one email protocol. The email protocol, for example, is quite simple and limited.