Skip to main content

21 Lessons: What I've Learned By Falling Down the Bitcoin Rabbit Hole by Gigi

Not recommended for brand new beginners to Bitcoin; you'll want some foundation in order to really get value from this book. I'd first recommend completing a brief and easy reading list of 1) Saifedean Ammous' The Bitcoin Standard, 2) Ben Mezrich's Bitcoin Billionaires, and 3) Nathaniel Popper's Digital Gold

Then, I recommend listening to at least a few long-form podcasts on Bitcoin (for example Robert Breedlove on Lex Fridman's podcast, or a few episodes of Robert Breedlove's extensive podcast series with Michael Saylor). After that, then tackle this book.

And if you don't have the attention span to dedicate the necessary time to do these things, Bitcoin probably isn't for you. Yet. 

This book is a generous gift from quite an original thinker, and I strongly encourage spending as much time as you can eavesdropping on Gigi on literally any podcast where you can find him (he's done a lot; start by searching "Gigi Bitcoin" on Youtube). 

Bitcoin is a fascinating domain on many levels, and it is dangerous to approach it with anything other than true epistemic humility. In fact, know-it-all type people seem doomed to not understand it, and condescension towards Bitcoin tends to be an excellent indicator of midwittery (I'm speaking from experience here as a person who didn't "get" Bitcoin at first either, thanks to my own damn midwittery). 

Notes:
The book has three sections: philosophical teachings of Bitcoin, economic teachings of Bitcoin and technological teachings of Bitcoin. Each mini-chapter contains the author's musings and insights about Bitcoin across a wide ranges of domains, ending in a one-sentence "learning" like the moral at the end of an Aesop's fable. 

Part 1: Philosophy
1) Bitcoin taught me that it won't change. I will.
2) In a time of abundance, Bitcoin taught me what real scarcity is.
3) Bitcoin taught me that locality is a tricky business.
4) Bitcoin taught me that decentralization contradicts identity.
5) Bitcoin taught me that narratives are important. (On the "immaculate conception" of Bitcoin and Satoshi Nakamoto's disappearance)
6) Bitcoin taught me that in a free society, free speech and free software are unstoppable.
7) Bitcoin taught me that I know very little about almost anything. It taught me that this rabbit hole is bottomless.

Part 2: Economics
8) Bitcoin taught me to look behind the curtain and face my financial ignorance.
9) Bitcoin taught me about the hidden tax of inflation and the catastrophe of hyperinflation. (Me too, which sent me to reading When Money Dies by Adam Fergusson)
10) Bitcoin taught me that value is subjective but not arbitrary.
11) Bitcoin taught me what money is.
12) Bitcoin taught me about the history of money and the greatest sleight of hand in the history of economics: fiat currency.
13) Bitcoin taught me the fractional reserve banking is pure insanity.
14) Bitcoin taught me that sound money is essential.

Part 3: Technology
"No amount of coercive force will ever solve a math problem."
15) Bitcoin taught me that there is strength in numbers.
16) Bitcoin taught me not to trust, but to verify.
17) Bitcoin taught me that telling the time is tricky, especially if you are decentralized.
18) Bitcoin taught me that moving slowly is one of its features, not a bug.
19) Bitcoin taught me that privacy is not dead.
20) Bitcoin taught me that cypherpunks write code. (See Steven Levy's excellent book Crypto
21) Bitcoin taught me that understanding the past is essential to understanding its future. A future which is just beginning... (Bitcoin as an enabling technology, like the internet or like electricity)

"I don't believe we shall ever have good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can't take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can't stop." --Friedrich Hayek

To Read:
Daniel Dennett: Where Am I? (PDF file online) [A great short science fiction story that really messes with your head about where "you" literally are.]
Ron Paul: End the Fed
Bruce Schneier: Applied Cryptography
Giannina Braschi: Empire of Dreams (poetry)
Andreas M. Antonopolous: Mastering Bitcoin: Programming the Open Blockchain
Ludwig von Mises: Human Action 

Media: 
One the Brink Podcast (with Nic Carter and Matt Walsh: see especially their weekly news roundups, which are excellent for keeping up with Bitcoin/cryptocurrency industry and regulatory news)

More Posts

Empire, Incorporated by Philip J. Stern

Bluntly: this book is worth your attention if two things are true: 1) you're interested in the history of the early joint stock companies and their role in colonial history, and 2) you're willing to put up with a long, cluttered and disorganized book. Empire, Incorporated doesn't know what it really wants to be, and as a result author Philip Stern finds himself scattered everywhere, throwing at the wall anything and everything to do with mercantile-era joint stock companies. The book simply crawls with minutia to the point where even its own author at times gets his own lines crossed and loses his own thread. [A quick  affiliate link to Amazon  for those readers who would like to support my work here: if you purchase your Amazon products via any affiliate link from this site, or from my sister site  Casual Kitchen , I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you!] I'll critique the work more in another paragraph, but let's first ...

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch [spoilers]

A first-rate central concept inside a second-rate plot wrapper. After reading two Blake Crouch novels , Crouch's gift for concept is obvious, but writing believable and well-resolved narrative arcs is an area for improvement. We'll start with this novel's concept layer, the multiverse: the idea that there are an infinite number of possible universes, and with every choice we make, every fork in our road, a new separate universe will exist for any and all of these possible choices. Dark Matter is a story about a physicist, Jason Dessen, who figures out a way to place a human being into "superposition," enabling him to move from quantum universe to quantum universe, and even to choose which quantum universe to inhabit. [A quick  affiliate link to Amazon  for those readers who would like to support my work here: if you purchase your Amazon products via any affiliate link from this site, or from my sister site  Casual Kitchen , I will receive a small affiliate commis...

The Dhandho Investor by Mohnish Pabrai

Worth reading, and rereading, and re-rereading. An elegant book that teaches fundamental principles of value investing, and much more. The Dhandho Investor  also has the highly unusual quality of being useful at a wide range of reader sophistication levels: you can gain tremendously from this book as a beginner or as a deeply experienced investor. I'll single out Chapters 5 and 6 for particular mention: Chapter 5 describes author Mohnish Pabrai's investing framework, with nine interlocking and synchronistic rules. Chapter 6 describes in very simple language all of the gigantic structural advantages of investing in the stock market, as it offers low frictional costs, a tremendous selection of possible businesses, and, most importantly, periodic incredible opportunities. These two chapters explain why you will take a pass on almost all investments--but then, once in a while, make large bets on specific situations that meet your requirements. [A quick  affiliate link to Amazon ...