A monster resource list for the intrepid crypto learner

If you only have 20 minutes:

• A letter to Jamie Dimon (Adam Ludwin, CEO of Interstellar ex. Chain)

Easing into it:

• Banking on Bitcoin

• Bitcoin explained through emojis

Foundations:

• The bitcoin whitepaper, audio (Satoshi Nakamoto)

• A cypherpunk's manifesto

• Bitcoin's academic pedigree (Arvind Narayanan)

• Shelling out: the origins of money (Nick Szabo)

Why crypto?:

• Bitcoin and the separation of money and state (Eric Voorhees)

• Why decentralization matters (Chris Dixon)

• Crypto tokens: A breakthrough in open network design (Chris Dixon)

• Thoughts on tokens (Balaji Srinivasan)

• Crypto tokens and the coming age of protocols (Albert Wenger)

• Why bitcoin matters? (Marc Andressen)

The Basics:

• Blockchain 101 (Coincenter): https://coincenter.org/learn

• WTF is a blockchain?: https://hackernoon.com/wtf-is-the-blockchain-1da89ba19348

• Hashpower, a three-part podcast by Patrick O'Shughnessey: http://investorfieldguide.com/hashpower/

• Blockchain tokens and the dawn of the Decentralized Business Model (Fred Ehrsam): https://blog.coinbase.com/app-coins-and-the-dawn-of-the-decentralized-business-model-8b8c951e734f

• What do we mean by “blockchains are trustless”? (Preeti Kasireddy): https://medium.com/@preethikasireddy/eli5-what-do-we-mean-by-blockchains-are-trustless-aa420635d5f6

• Tim Ferris podcast Nick Szabo and Naval Ravikant: https://tim.blog/2017/06/04/nick-szabo/

• Ethereum in 25 minutes (Vitalik Buterin) - note, skip to 2min in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66SaEDzlmP4&feature=youtu.be

• An intro to crypto: building blocks (Linda Xie): https://a16z.com/2018/05/04/intro-to-crypto/

• Blockchain: the revolution we're not ready for (Haseeb Qureshi): https://haseebq.com/blockchain-the-revolution-were-not-ready-for/

ICOs/Token Sales:

• Funding the evolution of blockchains (Fred Ehrsam): https://medium.com/@FEhrsam/funding-the-evolution-of-blockchains-87d160988481

• Analyzing token sale models (Vitalik Buterin): https://vitalik.ca/general/2017/06/09/sales.html

• Blockchain project ecosystem: https://medium.com/@josh_nussbaum/blockchain-project-ecosystem-8940ababaf27

Use cases:

• We already know blockchain's killer apps (Haseeb Qureshi): https://haseebq.com/we-already-know-blockchains-killer-apps/

Valuation

• Frameworks:

  • Mosaic: https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/lanreige/Cryptoasset+Valuation+Techniques.pdf

  • John Pfeffer: https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/john-pfeffer/An+Investor%27s+Take+on+Cryptoassets+v6.pdf

  • Chris Burniske: https://medium.com/@cburniske/cryptoasset-valuations-ac83479ffca7

  • Alex Evans: https://medium.com/blockchannel/on-value-velocity-and-monetary-theory-a-new-approach-to-cryptoasset-valuations-32c9b22e3b6f

Fund Investment Theses:

• Placeholder: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmZL4eT1gxnE168Pmw3KyejW6fUfMNzMgeKMgcWJUfYGRj/Placeholder%20Thesis%20Summary.pdf

• Iterative: https://iterative.capital/thesis/

Fat Protocols Dialogue:

• Fat Protocols (Joel Monegro): http://www.usv.com/blog/fat-protocols

• CoinFund retort ^ Fat protocols are not an investment thesis (Jake Bruhkman): https://blog.coinfund.io/fat-protocols-are-not-an-investment-thesis-17c8837c2734

• Thin protocols (Teemu Paivenen): https://blog.zeppelin.solutions/thin-protocols-cc872258379f

• Putting an end to thoughtless heuristics (Aleksander Bulkin): https://blog.coinfund.io/invest-in-protocols-or-applications-putting-an-end-to-thoughtless-heuristics-8cb477575db1

• Fat protocols aren't new (John Backus): https://medium.com/@jbackus/fat-protocols-arent-new-42d2c538db41

• Fat protocols vs fat dapps vs fat wallets (Jeremey Liew): https://medium.com/lightspeed-venture-partners/fat-protocols-vs-fat-dapps-vs-fat-wallets-4d33ead29130

Topic Drill Down

• Bitcoin

  • Visions of bitcoin (Nic Carter, hasufly): https://medium.com/@nic__carter/visions-of-bitcoin-4b7b7cbcd24c

  • The bullish case for bitcoin, March 2018: https://medium.com/@vijayboyapati/the-bullish-case-for-bitcoin-6ecc8bdecc1

  • Bitcoin: we don't expect new highs in 2018 (Tuur Demeester): https://medium.com/@tuurdemeester/bitcoin-we-dont-expect-new-highs-in-2018-97e6a7a385f7

  • The great bitcoin scaling debate: a timeline: https://hackernoon.com/the-great-bitcoin-scaling-debate-a-timeline-6108081dbada

  • Extensive bitcoin resource list (Jameson Lopp): https://lopp.net/bitcoin.html

• Ethereum:

  • Ethereum whitepaper: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper

  • What is ethereum?: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/What-is-Ethereum

  • A prehistory of the ethereum protocol (Vitalik Buterin): https://vitalik.ca/general/2017/09/14/prehistory.html

  • The bull case For ethereum with Spencer Noon, Cyrus Unesi and Tony Sheng: https://www.spreaker.com/user/10197011/spencer-cyrus-tony

• Privacy Coins:

  • Zcash vs. monero: blockchain’s fundamental need for privacy: https://medium.com/theblock1/privacy-blockchains-fundamental-need-acf0a1c52cb4

  • A monero introduction for beginners: https://steemit.com/monero/@sgp/7yjqso-a-monero-introduction-for-beginners

  • What are zk-SNARKs? (Jay Graber): https://z.cash/technology/zksnarks.html

  • Privacy on the blockchain (Vitalik Buterin): https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/01/15/privacy-on-the-blockchain/

• Smart Contract Protocols:

  • The evolution of smart contracts: https://hackernoon.com/are-smart-contracts-the-future-1d9028f49743

  • The difference between app coins and protocol tokens (Will Warren): https://blog.0xproject.com/the-difference-between-app-coins-and-protocol-tokens-7281a428348c

  • A red ocean for smart contract protocols (Tony Sheng): https://www.tonysheng.com/red-ocean

  • A deep look into cosmos (Julian Koh): https://medium.com/@juliankoh/a-deep-look-into-cosmos-the-internet-of-blockchains-af3aa1a97a5b

• Stablecoins:

  • The search for a stable cryptocurrency (Vitalik Buterin): https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/11/search-stable-cryptocurrency/

  • Stablecoins: designing a price-stable cryptocurrency (Haseeb Qureshi): https://haseebq.com/stablecoins-designing-a-price-stable-cryptocurrency/

  • An overview of stablecoins (Myles Snider): https://multicoin.capital/2018/01/17/an-overview-of-stablecoins/

  • Maker for dummies: A plain english explanation of the dai stablecoin (Gregory DiPrisco): https://medium.com/cryptolinks/maker-for-dummies-a-plain-english-explanation-of-the-dai-stablecoin-e4481d79b90

  • Stablecoin resource list (Myles Snider): https://stablecoinindex.com/stablecoin-resources/

• Security Tokens

  • The security token thesis (Stephen McKeon): https://hackernoon.com/the-security-token-thesis-4c5904761063

Concepts

Interdisciplinary nature of cryto:

Why it’s hard to “get” bitcoin: the blockchain spectrum: https://blog.unchained-capital.com/blockchain-spectrum-806847e1c575

Cryptoeconomics:

• Economics back into Cryptoeconomics: https://medium.com/econaut/economics-back-into-cryptoeconomics-20471f5ceeea
• Making sense of cryptoeconomics (Josh Stark): https://medium.com/l4-media/making-sense-of-cryptoeconomics-5edea77e4e8d
• The Blockchain Economy: A beginner’s guide to institutional cryptoeconomics: https://medium.com/cryptoeconomics-australia/the-blockchain-economy-a-beginners-guide-to-institutional-cryptoeconomics-64bf2f2beec4
• Cryptoeconomics is hard (Aleksander Bulkin): https://blog.coinfund.io/cryptoeconomics-is-hard-ad401b2428b9

Decentralization:

• The meaning of decentralization (Vitalik Buterin): https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-decentralization-a0c92b76a274

• The decentralization promise (Aleksander Bulkin): https://blog.coinfund.io/the-decentralization-promise-5b8fbc496c66

• Quantifying decentralization (Balaji Srinivasan): https://news.earn.com/quantifying-decentralization-e39db233c28e

• Decentralization in bitcoin and ethereum: http://hackingdistributed.com/2018/01/15/decentralization-bitcoin-ethereum/

Crypto Primitives:

• The emergence of cryptoeconomic primitives (Jacob Horne): https://blog.coinbase.com/the-emergence-of-cryptoeconomic-primitives-14ef3300cc10

• TCRs

  • Introducing curation markets (Simon de la Rouviere): https://medium.com/@simondlr/introducing-curation-markets-trade-popularity-of-memes-information-with-code-70bf6fed9881
  • Tweetstorm from Fred Ehrsam: https://twitter.com/FEhrsam/status/958388803655184386
  • Curate this: token curated registries that don’t work (Aleksander Bulkin): https://blog.coinfund.io/curate-this-token-curated-registries-that-dont-work-d76370b77150

• Cryptocollectibles

  • Digital collectibles and the weird future of “digibles” (Josh Stark): https://hackernoon.com/digital-collectibles-and-the-weird-future-of-digibles-f75f4bf0f9aa

Consensus Mechanisms

A distributed systems primer for non-experts

The Markets

High level:

• Comparison to dotcom bubble: https://money.cnn.com/2000/11/09/technology/overview/
• Technological revolutions and techno-economic paradigms (Carlota Perez), note, this is the shortened paper version: http://e-tcs.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/PEREZ-Carlota-Technological-revolutions-and-techno-economic-paradigms1.pdf

Development

• The authoritative guide to blockchain development (Haseeb Qureshi): https://haseebq.com/the-authoritative-guide-to-blockchain-development/

Newsletters

• Token Economy: http://weekly.tokeneconomy.co/

• Proof of Work: https://proofofwork.substack.com/subscribe

• ARK Disrupt: https://ark-invest.com/disruptive-innovation-research

• Marty's Bent: https://twitter.us16.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=67eb93253df610fc7b047c270&id=1cdbed15b1

• Relayer Report: https://0xprotocol.substack.com/welcome

  • A biweekly update on the 0x ecosystem

• Satis Group Crypto Week in Review: https://satisgroup.io/

• MIT Chain Letter: https://www.technologyreview.com/newsletters/chain-letter/

Charts

• NVT Signal: http://charts.woobull.com/bitcoin-nvt-signal/

Blogs

• Elaine's Idle Mind - Elaine Ou: https://elaineou.com/

• Unenumerated - Nick Szabo: http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/

• The Back of the Envelope - Preston Byrne: https://prestonbyrne.com/blog/

• Learning Slowly - John Gleeson: https://www.learningslowly.co/

• Vitalik Buterin: https://vitalik.ca/

• Tony Sheng: https://www.tonysheng.com/

Podcasts

• a16z: https://soundcloud.com/a16z

Data Resources

Ecosystem:

• Epicenter: https://epicenter.tv/episodes/
• Beginner guides to cryptoassets: https://medium.com/@linda.xie/beginners-guide-series-on-cryptoassets-d897535d887

ICOs/Token Sales:

• https://www.smithandcrown.com/sale/

ICOs/Token Treasuries:

• Santiment: https://app.santiment.net/ethereum-spent

• Project transparency (Santiment): https://projecttransparency.org/

• Diar: https://diar.co/ico-treasury-balances/

• Dapp capitulation (needs work): http://www.dappcapitulation.com/

Exchanges:

• Blockchain Transparency

General:

• Onchainfx: https://onchainfx.com/

• Coinmetrics: https://coinmetrics.io/

• Sifr data: https://www.sifrdata.com/

• Are we decentralized yet?: https://arewedecentralizedyet.com/

• Messari: https://messari.io/

Reading List

• Digital Gold - Nathaniel Popper

• Cryptoassets - Chris Burniske and Jack Tatar

• The Sovereign Individual - James Dale Davidson

• Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas Hofstadter

Academic foundations:

• The Ethics of Money Production, Jorg Guido Hulsmann: https://mises.org/sites/default/files/The%20Ethics%20of%20Money%20Production_2.pdf

• The Byzantine General's Problem (Lamport, Shostak, Pease 1982): https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~luca/cs174/byzantine.pdf (add more digestable version)

• The Idea of Smart Contracts (Nick Szabo, 1997): http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/rob/Courses/InformationInSpeech/CDROM/Literature/LOTwinterschool2006/szabo.best.vwh.net/idea.html