7: A Crash Course in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Cryptocurrency

10/10/17 • 100 min

There’s not a big third-party in the middle taking thirty, fifty, or whatever percent of the cut on the way, it’s just directly from one individual to another individual.

In this episode of Made You Think we mixed it up by bringing in two guests: Taylor Pearson and Adil Majid, to ask them all of our burning questions about cryptocurrency. Neil came into the episode completely fresh and asked them everything he could think of, so if you’re new to bitcoin, ethereum, and cryptocurrency, or have a basic understanding but want to learn more, this is the crash course you’ve been looking for.

We cover a wide range of topics, including:

The history and the creation of cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrencies pros, cons, and uses
Various types and forms of cryptocurrencies
The major benefits of cryptocurrencies usage
Long and short-term price speculations
Reliable sources of cryptocurrency news and information

And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure check out Taylor and Adil online!

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to also listen to our launch episodes on Antifragile by Nassim Taleb to learn how to profit from chaos, and on The Sovereign Individual, to better prepare yourself for the cyber-economic future.

Mentioned in the show:

Spire [1:28]
Cypher Punks [13:37]
E-Gold [13:57]
Dropbox [17:22]
Filecoin [17:38]
Source Wifi [17:42]
Uber [19:21]
Nick Szabo’s Blog - Unenumerated [23:19]
Steem Crypto-Reddit [38:54]
Made You Think: The Sovereign Individual [48:35]
Coinbase [50:05]
JP Morgan [54:11]
JP Morgan trading Bitcoin after fraud claim [54:11]
The Silk Road marketplace [1:10:00]
Bitcoin forums [1:11:05]
Ethereum [1:15:30]
The DAO [1:18:45] (the DAO hack)
Alibaba [1:23:14]
Inneo [1:23:23]
Belaji’s article on quantifying decentralization [1:24:20]
Bitcoin Whitepaper [1:29:10]
Vitalik Buterin’s blog [1:30:56]
Social Scalability article [1:35:55]
Nick Szabo’s Tim Ferriss Podcast episode [1:36:43]
Cryptocurrency on Medium [1:37:03]

Books mentioned:

The Dictator’s Handbook [4:18]
The Master Switch [4:46]
Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital [57:37]
Digital Gold [1:08:11]
The Sovereign Individual [1:30:22] (Made You Think episode) (Nat’s Notes)

There’s not a big third-party in the middle taking thirty, fifty, or whatever percent of the cut on the way, it’s just directly from one individual to another individual.

We cover a wide range of topics, including:

The history and the creation of cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrencies pros, cons, and uses
Various types and forms of cryptocurrencies
The major benefits of cryptocurrencies usage
Long and short-term price speculations
Reliable sources of cryptocurrency news and information

And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure check out Taylor and Adil online!

Mentioned in the show:

Spire [1:28]
Cypher Punks [13:37]
E-Gold [13:57]
Dropbox [17:22]
Filecoin [17:38]
Source Wifi [17:42]
Uber [19:21]
Nick Szabo’s Blog - Unenumerated [23:19]
Steem Crypto-Reddit [38:54]
Made You Think: The Sovereign Individual [48:35]
Coinbase [50:05]
JP Morgan [54:11]
JP Morgan trading Bitcoin after fraud claim [54:11]
The Silk Road marketplace [1:10:00]
Bitcoin forums [1:11:05]
Ethereum [1:15:30]
The DAO [1:18:45] (the DAO hack)
Alibaba [1:23:14]
Inneo [1:23:23]
Belaji’s article on quantifying decentralization [1:24:20]
Bitcoin Whitepaper [1:29:10]
Vitalik Buterin’s blog [1:30:56]
Social Scalability article [1:35:55]
Nick Szabo’s Tim Ferriss Podcast episode [1:36:43]
Cryptocurrency on Medium [1:37:03]

Books mentioned:

The Dictator’s Handbook [4:18]
The Master Switch [4:46]
Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital [57:37]
Digital Gold [1:08:11]
The Sovereign Individual [1:30:22] (Made You Think episode) (Nat’s Notes)

Previous Episode

6: Stop Working so Much: In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”

In this episode of Made You Think, we read through “In Praise of Idleness” by Bertrand Russell and discussed some of its main ideas. This episode was fun since we were able to read the whole essay throughout the show, stopping and starting as topics caught our interest. Whether you’ve read Russell before, or this is your first introduction to him, this essay is full of ideas that will make you think about whether you need to spend more time goofing off and relaxing.

We covered a wide range of topics, including:

Reducing the guilty feeling of wanting to work all day
Balancing work, leisure, and spending
Cultivating creativity by increasing leisure time
Spending your leisure time more wisely
Increasing your productivity
Reading books to for pleasure, instead of just knowledge
Issues with overworking in today’s society

And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of In Praise of Idleness and to check out Nat’s notes on the book!

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to listen to our episode on The Sovereign Individual, to better prepare yourself for the cyber-economic future, and to listen to our episode on Antifragile, to learn how to turn chaos to your advantage!

Mentioned in the show:

YMCA [0:54]
Principia Mathematica [1:55]
Antifragile Made You Think episode [10:30]
Mastery Made You Think episode [10:30]
The Sovereign Individual Made You Think episode [11:22]
Parkinson’s Law [27:19]
Taylor Pearson’s time management article [27:44]
Patagonia [31:08]
It’s Okay to “Forget” What You Read [1:00:34]
Y Combinator [1:03:12]
Y Combinator universal income experiment [1:03:12]
Stoicism [1:14:08]
France’s lower hour work week [1:19:35]
Neil’s Newsletter [1:23:20] (Nat’s Newsletter)

Books mentioned:

In Praise of Idleness [0:00] (Nat’s Notes)
Antifragile [10:30] (Nat’s Notes)
Mastery [10:30] (Nat’s Notes)
The Sovereign Individual [11:22] (Nat’s Notes)
Sapiens [18:01] (Nat’s Notes)
Let My People Go Surfing [31:08]
The 4-Hour Workweek [38:04] (Nat’s Notes)

Next Episode

8: Get Off the Cocaine Pellet Dispenser: Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

For some people, yes, computers are necessary and valuable, but for a lot of other people, they are simply accelerating and enabling this useless information consumption.

In this episode, we cover how the Internet, social media, television, and technology is ruining our abilities to think, reason, entertain ourselves, and what to do about it. Amusing Ourselves to Death is one of both of our favorite books, and it was fun to see how much it related to the other topics we’ve been covering.

We covered a wide range of topics, including:

How various forms of information affect our perception
The prevalence of fake news now
People concerned about others more than themselves
Technology negatively affecting our attention spans
The psychological aspects of the media and commercials
Minimizing technological distractions
How technology has changed our conversations

Enjoy! If you want more on Amusing Ourselves to Death, be sure to check out Nat’s notes on the book and to pick up a copy yourself!

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to listen to our episode on The Sovereign Individual, to better prepare yourself for the cyber-economic future, and to our episode on In Praise of Idleness, to reduce the guilt to work so much and to improve your leisure time.

Mentioned in the show: