B.I.G. Genesis Block: Crypto Resources
The Blockchain Investment Group is a private & public blockchain investments forum in Central & Eastern Europe. The group focus on any investment vehicles and topics that are available for investors such as but not limited to: Tokenised Funds, Equity and Real Estate; Crypto Assets based Loans; Mining; Security Tokens. Portfolio Management and Projects Deep Dives & Valuations; Token Mechanics & Consensus; Security & Taxes; Data Tools, and so on.
Found it beneficial for the groups and also other people to formalise some of the content we go through. Some are here to look for learning, new ideas, clarity of thought, deep insights, new tools & topics, discussion & arguments; while others are casual learners, observers or simply can’t make it at certain times. Well, here we go!
Blockchain Investment Group Agenda for Genesis Block:
- Terminology
- Who is Who
- Best Resources
- Deep Dive
Depending on the group knowledge, size, time and hunger these are covered in one or more sessions.
TERMINILOGY
The Blockchain Hub glossary is a pretty good starting point. More on Blockchain Hub, their vision and goals here.
Sometimes we touch also Alexander Lange’s “industry map” during the 1st or 2nd meetup for full industry coverage:
Alexander recently joined Index Ventures with full focus on blockchain, and he’s ex Early Bird VC & Google. Although the infographic is a bit outdated, it’s probably one of the best out there. Also asked him via Earn if we can use it as a logo for our group with no luck, maybe have to ping him on twitter.
If someone wants to dive a little bit deeper:
- a16z’s Crypto Canon, very deep & wide however some people find it occasionally gold in sea of information overload. A16z is one of the first and most active investors in the space. Just an example of their portfolio: Ripple, Earn, Coinbase, Polychain Capital, Crypto Kitties, or Harbor and Dfinity. They have whole “mafia” team around crypto.
- Nick Szabo’s blog Unenumerated is filled with pearls and basic philosophies as well. Nick is blockchain, cryptocurrency and smart contracts true pioneer. He’s been in industry for decades and also collaborated with Satoshi Nakamoto, whoever he, she, or they are or were.
WHO IS WHO
This is sometimes hard to separate into groups, as these people always collaborate in some way or the other. Will give it a shot:
Project founders, leaders, or doers
The list includes: Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum), Charlie Lee (Litecoin), Will Warren (0x), Jed (Stellar), Daniel Larimer (EOS), Joey Krug (Augur), Riccardo (Monero), Chen (Aelf), Ryan Shea & Muneeb Ali (Blockstack), Elizabeth Stark (Lightning Labs) and lots of others (50+ and growing). The list changes with time; with some additions & subtractions.
Crypto Hedge Funds (HF) founders, managers or Crypto VC / Crypto Capitalists (CVCs/CCs)
The list includes: Ari Paul (BlockTower), Arianna Simpson (Autonomous Partners) Chris Burniske (Placeholder), Woody (Capital Crypto), David Sacks (Craft), Eric Meltzer(INB), Kyle Samani, Tushar Jain, Vinny Lingham, Miles (Multicoin), Travis & Barry Silbert (DCG), Tuur Demeester (Adamant), Alexander Lange (Index), Anthony Pompliano & Jason (Full Tilt / Morgan Creek), Meltem Demirors (exDCG), Albert Wenger & Fred Wilson (USV), Sandra Ro (GBBC) Paul (Pantera), Linda Xie (Scalar) Jen Zhu(Radian), Sarah Hodges (Pillar), Hunter (Bitwise), Spencer Bogart & Jimmy Song (Blockchain Capital), Naval Ravikant, Elad Gil (Bitwise & Metastable) and currently some 80+ on the list, and growing.
The list includes: jalak jobanputra (FutureVC) Leigh (Coindesk), Catherine (Imperial College), Antonie (Coin Center & Zcash), Jordan (Bloq), soona amhaz (TokenDaily), Alena Satoshi Vranova (Satoshi Labs & Trezor), Aya (Ethereum Foundation), Carolyn Reckhow (Consensys), Christine (JPM), Jill Carlson, currently 80+.
For few more — see the twitter lists below — they include mix of everything. From project leaders and researchers through OGs and investors to writers or lawyers in blockchain space. All of it in one place.
RESOURCES
!Warning: there are no best resources, use whatever fits you best. Welcome suggestions.
Some can be found here in a few tweets; however it’s changing from time to time with additions and subtractions (as in real life):
Also, I have to admit — I had to leave telegram groups for some time as the cognitive load was just too much.. Maybe will revisit that one day.
Twitter Lists
Definitely Naval Ravikant’s and Kyle Samani’s. Sure, there are always more..
Projects
- Whitepapers
- Websites, Reddit, Team chat, Telegram, Medium.
Newsletters
Almost Daily
- Ryan Selkis (TwoBitIdiot)’s Daily Bit. Covering whole industry, and sometimes daily. Also the “compression algorithm” can save you ton of time thus you can catch up much faster. Ryan reads everything so you do not have to.
- Anthony Pompliano’s Off Chain, just started for some $10/month. So far it looks like a fork of Ryan Selkis one, however they may differ based on audience focus and internal motives. Pomp is a technology investor and also wants to tokenise everything, even if it moves or breathes ;-). And Ryan both loves writing and was frustrated with quality of content.
- Token Daily aspires to be the central hub for enthusiasts to explore new crypto projects, get updated on projects you’re invested in, discover the most loved products and ask industry experts questions. Run by soona amhaz and team.
Weekly
- Evan Van Ness’s Week in Ethereum News, dating back to beginning of 2016. Looking back, it’s just so much being going on in the industry, the speed is furious.
- Eric Meltzer’s Proof of Work, now running for almost 20 weeks. It is sort of like a weekly stand up meeting of chosen projects in crypto. From Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero through Blockstack, Decred, Livepeer to Messari, OpenBazaar and likes. Some 20+ and counting and the teams are reporting progress themselves.
- Stefano Bernardi’s & Yannick Roux’s Token Economy. Running for 50+ weeks and great one if you want to catch up on weekly basis on what’s going on in the industry as a whole.
Bi-weekly
- A new, interesting and tied to specific ecosystem — Relayer Report by Rahul Singireddy & Hendo Ventures. Bi-weekly updates on the 0x ecosystem. There are more of specific segment newsletters and more will emerge in future (e.g. prediction markets, gaming, porn, etc.).
Monthly
- Still waiting for a great one to show up. One day, #opportunity..
Podcasts
- Laura Shin’s Unchained & then Unconfirmed she also started months ago. The content is getting better every quarter and re-listening some of 1y+ old ones is great.
- Epicenter Podcast — the guys have been running this one for almost 4 years, also good for getting into space in front of TV or some baseline research on who’s who and projects. Run by Brian Fabian Crain & team.
- Ran Neu-Ner’s Crypto Trader, sometimes quite fun, like this one with Vinny, Tone, Roger, Ricardo, Pomp and Mcafee.
- Another one, not really in blockchain space is Patrick O'Shaughnessy’s Investor Field Guide with a small focused segment on crypto space called Hash Power.
- Example of others.
Books
This is probably the hardest part. Each book very is different for each individual. It depends if were already deep into tech, physics, and science, or economic theories or even philosophy. You really need to pick what’s best for you. The purpose is not to shout out list of 100+ books now.
- Sovereign Individual by James D. Davidson & William Rees-Mogg. One of best books ever, although written in 90s’. It’s a deep dive into economic and political transformation over centuries. Also how the power shifts from governments to corporations to (sovereign) individuals.
- Sapiens by Yuval N. Harari. To say that the claim is both — everything is a story: be it United States, Euro or Coca Cola and human history is full of violence when only winners who persisted are the ones to write history — is huge simplification.
- 5000 Years of Debt by David Graeber. The argument here is that before there we any money there was a debt first — credit & debit system — which later evolved into money. Thus the ledger was at the beginning of money and was important pre-condition.
- Cryptoassets by Chris Burniske & Jack Tatar. Both broader in sheer concepts and also narrow in focusing on crypto investment landscape: from valuation frameworks through portfolio management to historical context.
- The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous. The book can be easily called “In Search for Sound Money” with a subtitle — with a lack of or excess of it. It looks into history, reject Keynesian theories in favour of Austrian School of economic though and free markets.
- Internet of Money and Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas M. Antonopoulos. He is reasonably one of the top 10 people who did most for the Bitcoin awareness & community.
- The Starfish by Sean Pratt. More of an insights how “leaderless” decentralised organisation works differently or sometimes better than centralised. Examples go from Apaches fending off Spanish army through Wikipedia & Skype to Internet or Alcoholics Anonymous decentralised movements.
- Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper. Inside story into the early community and evangelists in the first years after Bitcoin invention. There is also a movie made based on this one, although book is much better.
- Blockchain Revolution by Don & Alex Tapscott. The most interesting part is maybe the though process of how blockchain can shape future; be it healthcare, or and insurance or even royalties.
The list can really continue from Taleb or Paul Vigna through Hayek or game theories ending up with Krishnamurti or Osho; but that was not the point. Start or continue anywhere you want. No Mars is not an option. Yet.
Data Tools
Some of the basics to start with however highly professional & accurate are:
- Coinmetrics — Open source crypto assets analytics.
- OnchainFX — Crypto assets rankings and analytics.
- Etherscan — Ethereum block explorer.
- Token Data — Data & analytics for most of ICOs and tokens.
- Some other data tools. Not curated.
Events (Video)
- Token Summit I,II, n..
- Consensus Invest — not sure why they do not make it easy and create a regular events playlists as you have to dig it out manually, especially for the 2017 one, which was best so far.
- There are many more, will be updated in future.
DEEP DIVE
Bitcoin
LATEST NEWS
Just two more things:
- #1st — the whole crypto world is having a bet if Anthony Pompliano will tokenise Kanye West. (You need to know this!) And
- #2nd — this is what the fight of though looks like between bitcoin vs alt-coin world in real life. Jimmy Song vs Tim Draper, and Kyle Samani who is speechless for the first time. Ever.
The content is work in progress and developing in time thus feel free to comment.
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