Top 10 Re-Readings To Get You Fired Up for the Decade Ahead

From our Crypto Theses for 2020 - download the full report here.

1 Defiance Podcast: Andreas Antonopoulos <> Peter McCormack Even though we’ve bounced off the bear market lows of late 2018, this year has felt like a slog at times. So I recommend this chat with Andreas Antonopoulos on the Defiance podcast, as he continues to be the clearest and most inspiring teacher in crypto.“Money is the language by which society not only coordinates but also expresses value.”

2 Nic Carter: A Most Peaceful RevolutionA rallying cry for the battles ahead as bitcoin crosses the chasm to mainstream relevance, and we grapple with some hard questions as an industry, including “are we all activists?”

3 CZ: ICO’s Not Just Good to Have, But NecessaryIf you want to have the bull case for ICOs, then here it is. There’s tremendous clarity of thought here, and I’d argue CZ was one of the few entrepreneurs who had a clear vision for how a token for his company would accrue value. Binance may be to tokens what Amazon was to e-commerce. CZ found his “online book store” wedge in offering a token that eliminated trading fees for early users, and built from there.

4 Naval: “Blockchains will replace networks with markets.”“The 20th century created a new kind of network - market networks. Open AND meritocratic….Blockchains are a new invention that allows meritorious participants in an open network to govern without a ruler and without money.” Just go read the full thread.

5 a16z: Crypto CannonThis is the deepest curated collection of insights I’ve come across. It’s information overload, perhaps, but if you were going to start a crypto curriculum, you’d likely want to build off of this skeleton.

6 r/bitcoin: “I’m a time traveler from the future, here to beg you to stop.”God, this keeps getting better and scarier every year that goes by. We’re laughing about the dystopian future we’re approaching so that we don’t cry.

7 Charlie Munger’s Mental Models for “Human Misjudgment”I wrote up a dozen or so of the best “Mungerisms” from this interview in my original 95 theses. They are gold, and it’s worth reading the insights from one of the best investors of all time, as you think about tackling the wild world of crypto.

8 Paul Graham: LessonsThere may be a recency bias here, but this struck a chord with a lot of people, me included this month. Graham writes about unlearning the lesson “get good grades in school” as a precursor to unlearning how to optimize for winning other silly and nonsensical games in the real world. This gets to the root cause of many of society’s structural problems.

9 Tim Urban: Your Life in Weeks & The Tail End Tim is in my pantheon of writers I admire most, along with Stephen King, and Matt Levine. (It’s good to have eclectic tastes.) These posts are on my annual holiday reading list as I mentally prepare for the year ahead. Life is short. Work on meaningful things with good people you like spending time with. Or get a new job.

10 Satoshi Nakamoto: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System Show some respect, dammit. I re-read this regularly when I need a reminder that I can - if I try to - write about this highly complex industry in clear and non-jargony language. And I always pick up something new, like the fact that the “blockchain” was really just referenced as a “timestamp server”, which is fascinating in and of itself.

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