Bitcoin Is Time:

Author: Der Gigi

Gigi is the author of 21 Lessons, (one of my favorite Bitcoin books), a popular book about lessons learned from falling down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. He launched various projects in the space such as bitcoin-resources.com, nostr-resources.com bitcoin-quotes.com, “Einundzwanzig”, and others. Prior to taking the orange pill, he was a researcher and software engineer leading multiple development teams that worked on critical large-scale apps. He is passionate about security, privacy, and of course, Bitcoin.

The Bullish Case For Bitcoin:

Author – Vijay Boyapati

In 2018, Vijah wrote the article “The Bullish Case for Bitcoin“. It quickly became a go-to resource for introducing people to Bitcoin. It’s just as relevant today as it was back then. Here’s a summary for those interested in diving into this must-read piece:

🌐 Monetary Evolution: Boyapati illustrates how Bitcoin represents the next step in the evolution of money, transitioning from commodity money to representative money, to fiat money, and finally to decentralized digital money.

💎 Store of Value: With a fixed supply of 21 million coins, Bitcoin’s scarcity offers a strong store of value in the long term, making it a viable alternative to traditional assets like gold.

🛡️ Censorship Resistance: Bitcoin’s decentralized nature ensures that transactions cannot be censored, empowering individuals to transact without government interference.

👑 Sovereignty: Bitcoin allows users to have full control over their wealth, removing the need for reliance on centralized institutions like banks or governments.

🌍 Adoption & Network Effects: The article highlights the exponential growth in Bitcoin’s adoption, fueled by network effects that make it more valuable as more people use and accept it.

If you haven’t read “The Bullish Case for Bitcoin” yet, now’s the perfect time to explore this foundational piece. It offers a comprehensive understanding of Bitcoin’s potential and why it’s essential to keep an eye on this revolutionary technology.

Bitcoin is the Great Definancialization:

Author – Parker Lewis

What that future looks like exactly, no one knows, but Bitcoin will definancialize the economy, and it will no doubt be a renaissance.

“Financialization has turned retirement savers into perpetual risk-takers and the consequence is that financial investing has become a second full-time job for many, if not most. Financialization has been so errantly normalized that the lines between saving (not taking risk) and investing (taking risk) have become blurred to the extent that most people think of the two activities as being one in the same. Believing that financial engineering is a necessary path to a happy retirement might lack common sense, but it is conventional wisdom.”

Finding Signal in a Noisy World:

Author – Jeff Booth

Jeff Booth is an entrepreneur, tech leader, and author of Price of Tomorrow. He is a General Partner at Ego Death Capital, a new Bitcoin-only venture capital fund, and also a proud family man. 

Finding Signal in a Noisy world is an awesome “back to the fundamentals” piece from Jeff Booth. How on earth do you find the signal in a world just consumed with noise? And not only that, why has everything gotten so noisy? What has led to the polarization, distrust, group bias, & breakdown of institutions in our modern world, and is there any way to fix it? Booth does an excellent job in this article in making sense of our current world, with a little hope for our Bitcoin future. 

“That misinformation in the form of money wouldn’t just create polarization. Because money connects value between people and nations, it would drive a tremendous misallocation of capital and resources as individual actors in the system all made the system worse with their actions to make enough money to escape the system.” – Jeff Booth

Bitcoin Whitepaper:

Author: Satoshi Nakamoto

Satoshi Nakamoto’s original paper is still recommended reading for anyone studying how Bitcoin works. 

The Bitcoin whitepaper is the original thesis paper written under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto on October 31, 2008, that set the basic structure of the Bitcoin network. The paper is titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. While one may imagine a thesis paper being exceptionally long, this one was only nine pages.

This was Satoshi’s idea for an electronic currency that could make transactions with low costs while using no financial institutions or third parties. Instead of using a centralized server, it is structured to use many terminals connected over a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. It explains how the proof of work structure renders falsification of transaction information nearly impossible. 

Bitcoin’s Energy Usage Isn’t a Problem. Here’s Why.

Author – Lyn Alden

This is my primary long-form research piece that analyzes the Bitcoin network’s energy consumption from multiple angles, discussing its scaling and the unique way that it uses energy.

Misinformation threatens anyone seeking facts and accurate data and the complexity of Bitcoin energy consumption provides uninformed or biased actors ample opportunity to misinform.

For those short on time but long on curiosity to factually understand Bitcoin’s energy usage, this article will let you understand the irony that so-called environmentalists, and politicians today bash Bitcoin, while it does more to create the infrastructure we need to achieve 100% green energy production and storage one day than any other industry, is astounding.

The Bitcoin Reformation:

Author – Tuur Demeester

This piece analyzes the implications of bitcoin through a historical lens; specifically the Protestant Reformation in Europe of the 16th/17th centuries. Tuur Demeester compares the current state of the global monetary system, as an aging institution, to that of the Catholic church during the Reformation. Similarly to how technological developments challenged the church’s reach in centuries past, Bitcoin and related tech are challenging today’s institutions

Bitcoin Is Venice

Author – Allen Farrington

I genuinely love the work of Allen Farrington.

Bitcoin is Venice is one of the most important essays to understand the role of a free currency in trade and industry, the creation of wealth, the flourishing of cities, and the appetite for beauty, contemplation, and exploration that wealth affords.

The essay is part (Chapter six) of the book:

Bitcoin Is Venice: Essays on the Past and Future of Capitalism

Bitcoin is Venice got me interested in books on Italian city-states, and particularly interested in their economics.

For example: Genoa and the Genoese by Stephen A. Epstein, The Economy of Renaissance Florence by Goldthwaite, and Venice, A Maritime Republic by Lane.