random thoughts

• "The best asset is your own self. You can become to an enormous degree the person you want to be." — Warren Buffet

• "Never lie. Never cheat. Never steal. Don't whine. Don't complain. Don't make excuses." — John Wooden

• “In your actions, don't procrastinate. In your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander. In your soul, don't be passive or aggressive. In your life, don't be all about business.” — Marcus Aurelius

• "What the pupil must learn, if he learns anything at all, is that the world will do most of the work for you, provided you cooperate with it by identifying how it really works and aligning with those realities. If we do not let the world teach us, it teaches us a lesson." — Joseph Tussman

• “Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation.” — Aristotle

• "As long as you live, keep learning how to live." — Seneca

• "By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the bitterest." — Confucius

• "Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it." — Henry Ford

• "Beliefs are hypotheses to be tested, not treasures to be guarded" — Philip Tetlock

• “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” — Richard Feynman

• "A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open." — Frank Zappa

• "Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune." — Jim Rohn

• "Think before you speak. Read before you think." — Fran Lebowitz

• "An antilibrary (a large library with many unread books) is a powerful reminder of your limitations -- the vast quantity of things you don't know, half-know, or will one day realize you're wrong about. By living with that reminder daily you can nudge yourself toward the kind of intellectual humility that improves decision-making and drives learning." — Jessica Stillman

• "Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them." — Lemony Snicket

• "Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers." — Voltaire

• "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” — Bertrand Russell

• "Some people are more certain of everything than I am of anything." — Robert Rubin, In an Uncertain World

• "Just keep in mind: the more we value things outside our control, the less control we have." — Epictetus 

• "Quer saber se uma discussão vale a pena? Pergunte: 'Há algo que eu possa mostrar que lhe faria mudar de ideia?' Se a resposta for não, a discussão não vai levar a nada. Aproveite e use o mesmo critério para aperfeiçoar as suas próprias ideias. Pergunte-se: 'O que me faria mudar de ideia? Se a resposta for nada, está na hora de aprimorar as suas ideias." — Ricardo Amorim

• "If your opinions on one subject can be predicted from your opinions on another, you may be in the grip of an ideology. When you truly think for yourself your conclusions will not be predictable." — Kevin Kelly

• "We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality." — Seneca

• “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.” — Serenity Prayer

• "Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it." — Charles Swindoll

• "Our life is what our thoughts make it." — Marcus Aurelius

• "All men suffer, but not all men pity themselves." — Marcus Aurelius

• “If it’s endurable, then endure it. Stop complaining.” — Marcus Aurelius

• "Change your thoughts and you change your world." — Norman Vincent Peale

• "No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have." — Seneca

• "Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want." — Naval Ravikant

• “Expectations are like a debt that must be repaid before you get any joy out of what you’re doing.” — Morgan Housel

• "If you only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are." — Montesquieu

• “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” — African Proverb

• “Happiness is only real when shared.” — Christopher McCandless

• "Happiness equation: Happiness=Reality-Expectation."

• “A man settles where he finds his peace. Not beauty, not money, not status, but peace.”

• “Anger is an acid that does more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” — Mark Twain

• "If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.” — Michelangelo Buonarroti

• “In my whole life I’ve never been good at something I wasn’t very interested in. It just doesn’t work. There’s no substitute for strong interest.” — Charlie Munger

• "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong" — Henry Louis Mencken

• "Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life." — Jerzy Gregorek

• “A life that doesn’t include hard-won accomplishment and triumph over obstacles may not be a satisfying one. There is something deeply fulfilling — even thrilling — in doing almost anything difficult extremely well. There is a joy and pride that come from pushing yourself to another level or across a new frontier. A life devoted only to the present — to feeling good in the now — is unlikely to deliver real fulfillment. The present moment by itself it too small, too hollow. We all need a future. Something beyond and greater than our own present gratification, at which to aim or feel we’ve contributed.” — Amy Chua & Jed Rubenfeld, in The Tripple Package

• "It's easier to get a smart person to do something hard than to get them to do something easy that doesn't matter." — Shane Parrish

• "Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right." — Henry Ford

• "De forma geral, o sucesso é baseado em três fatores: inteligência, networking e sorte. Qualquer um desses, de forma isolada, não é suficiente. Com dois, as chances crescem exponencialmente. Com três, torna-se quase inevitável."

• “The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.” — Thomas Sowell

• "Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule." — Nietzsche

• "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." — Seneca

• “Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.” — Mark Twain

• "'For every substance, small doses stimulate, moderate doses inhibit, large doses kill.' It’s not a law, but it applies to so many things: Debt, ambition, networking, exercise, caution, and analysis. A lot of problems come from doing the right thing in the wrong dosage." — Morgan Housel

• “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it ... he who doesn't ... pays it.” — Albert Einstein

• "Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome." — Charlie Munger

• "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." — Warren Buffet

• "It's better to be roughly right than precisely wrong." — Warren Buffet

• "In economics things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster then you thought they could." — Rudiger Dornbusch

• "So many investors say, "higher risk means higher reward", but that’s not how it works at all. Most of the time, taking more risk means you are most likely to earn lower returns, with a smaller chance that you will earn fantastic returns to compensate." — Morgan Housel

• "Stories without numbers are fairy tales; and numbers without stories to back them up are just exercises in financial modelling" — Damodaran

• "All investing is behavioral, psychological, social, etc. So a lot of big investing mistakes are not because investors don’t understand finance — it’s because finance is all they understand." — Morgan Housel

• "If you don’t know who you are, the market is an expensive place to find out." — Adam Smith

>  Finance / Investments

• The Intelligent Investor (Benjamin Graham)

• Poor Charlie's Almanack (Peter D. Kaufman)

• Margin of Safety (Seth Klarman)

• Fooled by Randomness (Nassin Taleb)

• More Than You Know (Michael Mauboussin)

• Expectations Investing (Michael Mauboussin & Alfred Rappaport)

• The Most Important Thing (Howard Marks)

• Fortune's Formula (William Poundstone)

• The Psychology of Money (Morgan Housel)

• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness (Eric Jorgenson)

• Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (Philip Tetlock & Dan Gardner)

• The Success Equation (Michael Mauboussin)

• Competition Demystified (Bruce Greenwald)

• The Halo Effect (Phil Rosenzweig)

• The Outsiders (William Thorndike)

• When Genius Failed (Roger Lowenstein)

• Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits (Philip Fisher)

• Principles: Life and Work (Ray Dalio)

• How to Lie With Statistics (Darrel Huff)

>  Business

• Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (Phil Knight)

• Sam Walton: Made in America (Sam Walton)

• Creativity, Inc. (Ed Catmull)

• The Everything Store (Brad Stone)

• How Google Works (Eric Schmidt & Jonathan Rosenberg)

• No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention (Reed Hastings & Erin Meyer)

• Conscious Capitalism (John Mackey & Raj Sisodia)

• Chip War (Chris Miller)

• Red Notice (Bill Browder)

• Elon Musk (Ashlee Vance) 

• The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons in Creative Leadership from the CEO of Walt Disney Company (Robert Iger)

• Tudo ou Nada: Eike Batista e a verdadeira história do Grupo X (Malu Gaspar)

>  Psychology / Behavioral Economics

• Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman)

• Nudge (Richard Thaler e Cass R. Sunstein)

• Predictably Irrational (Dan Ariely)

• Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts (Annie Duke)

• Stumbling on Happiness (Daniel Gilbert)

• O Andar do Bêbado (Leonard Mlodinow)

• Subliminar - Como o inconsciente influencia nossas vidas (Leonard Mlodinow)

• How to Win Friends & Influence People (Dale Carnegie)

• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Robert Cialdini) 

• O Poder do Hábito (Charles Duhigg)

>  General

• Sapiens - A Brief History of Humankind (Yuval Noah Harari)

• Homo Deus - A Brief History of Tomorrow (Yuval Noah Harari)

• Why Nations Fail (Daron Acemoğlu & James Robinson)

• The Lessons of History (Will & Ariel Durant)

• Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think (Hans Rosling)

• Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? (Michael J. Sandel)

• Man's Search for Meaning (Viktor E. Frankl)

• Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (Atul Gawande)

• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (Susan Cain)

• Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity (Peter Attia)

• Why We Sleep (Matthew Walker)

• Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (David Epstein)

• Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World (Tim Marshall)

• Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage (Alfred Lansing)

• Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society (Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl)

• Out of Control: The New Biology Of Machines, Social Systems, And The Economic World (Kevin Kelly)

• Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love (Sue Johnson)

• The Upright Thinkers (Leonard Mlodinow)

• 1984 (George Orwell) 

• Admirável Mundo Novo (Aldous Huxley)

• The Power of Now (Eckhart Tolle)

• An Investing Principles Checklist (Charlie Munger)

• The Psychology of Human Misjudment (Charlie Munger)

• The Best of Charlie Munger

• The Buffett Formula: Going to Bed Smarter Than When You Woke Up (Farnam Street)

• Trying Too Hard (Dean Williams)

• Measuring the Moat (Michael Mauboussin)

• P/E Multiples (Michael Mauboussin)

• The Base Rate Book (Michael Mauboussin)

• Size Matters (Michael Mauboussin)

• Sharpening Your Forecasting Skills (Michael Mauboussin)

• Outcome Bias and the Interpreter (Michael Mauboussin)

• Capital Allocation (Michael Mauboussin)

• Building an Effective Team (Michael Mauboussin)

• Looking for Easy Games (Michael Mauboussin)

• Estimating the Cost of Capital (Michael Mauboussin)

• Calculating Customer Based Corporate Valuation (Michael Mauboussin) 

• Expectations and the Role of Intangible Investments (Michael Mauboussin)

• Thirty Years Reflections on the Ten Attributes of Great Investors (Michael Mauboussin)

• Something of Value (Howard Marks)

• I Beg to Differ (Howard Marks)

• Risk Revisited Again (Howard Marks)

• Dare to be Great II (Howard Marks)

• Selling Out (Howard Marks)

• The Truth About Investing (Howard Marks)

• Risk Revisited (Howard Marks) 

• Getting Lucky (Howard Marks)

• What Really Matters? (Howard Marks)

• The Psychology of Money (Morgan Housel)

• Sustainable Sources of Competitive Advantage (Morgan Housel)

• The Four Fundamental Skills of All Investing (Morgan Housel)

• Why Complexity Sells (Morgan Housel)

• The Laws of Investing (Morgan Housel)

• Short Money Rules (Morgan Housel)

• The Psychology of Prediction (Morgan Housel)

• Not Caring: A Unique and Powerful Skill (Morgan Housel)

• The Investing Playing Field (Graham Duncan)

• Taking Investment Teams from Good to Great (Michael S. Falk)

• Valuation Multiples Primer

• The P/E Ratio: A User’s Manual

• Keep It Simple: 11 Rules for Equity Valuations

• Securities in an Insecure World - 1963 Lecture (Benjamin Graham)

• Ten Ways to Create Shareholder Value (Alfred Rappaport)

• Ten Commandments for Aspiring Superforecasters (Farnam Street)

• The Greenwald Method

• The Common Denominator of Success (Albert E. N. Gray)

• ROC, ROIC and ROE: Measurement and Implications (Aswath Damodaran)

• The Kelly Criterion: You Don’t Know the Half of It (Alon Bochman)

• What Makes Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurial? (Saras D. Sarasvathy)

• The “Venture Capital Method” - A Method For Valuing High-Risk, Long-Term Investments (HBS)

• SaaS: Playbook Fundamental, Análises Cohorts e o SaaS Vertical - Astella (Guilherme Lima)

• The Elephant in the room: The myth of exponential hypergrowth (Jason Cohen)

• The Death of the SaaS LTV/CAC (Michael B. Gilroy)

• Why LTV/CAC is a Misleading SaaS Metric and Should be Replaced with Customer NPV (Scott Stouffer)

• Baupost Shareholders Letter 2011 (Seth Klarman)

• Baupost Shareholders Letter 2013 (Seth Klarman)

• Baupost Shareholders Letter 2016 (Seth Klarman)

• Baupost Shareholders Letter 2021 (Seth Klarman)

• Netflix Culture: Freedom and Responsibility

• O que é Estratégia - HBR - Parte 1 (Michael Porter)

• O que é Estratégia - HBR - Parte 2 (Michael Porter)

• Corporate Law 101 - Artigos Compilados Sobre Direito Societário

>  Foundations & Bitcoin

• The Quest for Digital Cash (Bitcoin Magazine)

• How does a blockchain work - Simply Explained

• Blockchain 101, A Visual Demo - Part 1

• Blockchain 101, A Visual Demo - Part 2

• But how does bitcoin actually work? - The math behind cryptocurrencies

• Bitcoin Whitepaper

• Why Bitcoin Matters (Marc Andreessen, a16z Partner)

• Visions of Bitcoin: How major Bitcoin narratives changed over time (Nic Carter)

• What is Money, Aniway? (Lyn Alden)

• A Normie’s Guide to Becoming a Crypto Person How to (cautiously and skeptically) fall down the rabbit hole (New York Magazine)

>  Ethereum and other Smart Contract Platforms

• Ethereum in 25 minutes (Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum Founder)

• Ethereum Whitepaper

• What is a Smart Contract?

• Smart contracts - Simply Explained

• Code is Law? Smart Contracts Explained

• What Is Gas? Ethereum High Transaction Fees Explained

• Proof-of-Stake (vs Proof-of-Work) - Simply Explained

• Ethereum 2.0 - Proof Of Stake, The Beacon Chain, Sharding and Docking

• What's at Stake in Staking-as-a-Service? (Messari)

• Own the Internet - Bull Case for Ethereum (Packy McCormick)

• Solana Summer (Packy McCormick)

• Terra: Possibly the Biggest TAM in Crypto (Mario Gabriele)

• Ethereum 2025 - A Sci-Fi fan fiction on what Ethereum will look like in four years (Bankless)

>  Key Concepts

• Blockchain: Computers That Can Make Commitments (Chris Dixon, a16z Partner)

• Why Decentralization Matters (Chris Dixon, a16z Partner)

• The Meaning of Decentralization (Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum Founder)

• Progressive Decentralization: A Playbook for Building Crypto Applications

• Crypto’s Business Model is Familiar. What Isn't is Who Benefits (Jesse Walden, a16z)

• The Ownership Economy: Crypto & The Next Frontier of Consumer Software (Jesse Walden)

• Composability is Innovation

• The Purpose and Value of Cryptocurrency and Tokens

• Value of the Token Model (Fred Ehrsam)

• Turning Networks Into Economies (Chris Dixon)

• There Will Be More Tokens. Not Less. Here’s Why. (Coinlist)

• Fat Protocols (Union Square Ventures)

• The myth of "ETH killers" — why demand for blockchains will always outpace supply (Chris Dixon)

• On The Value of Layer-1s (Tascha)

• Layer-1 Blockchains as “Digital Nations” (Tascha)

• Token Design for Serious People (Jump Capital)

• Ethereum as the First Profitable Blockchain (Bankless)

• The Case for Leaving FAANG Companies for Crypto (Paradigm)

>  Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

• A Beginner’s Guide to Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

• A Brief History of Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

• DeFi Explained (Video)

• Decentralized Finance: On Blockchain - and Smart Contract-Based Financial Markets (St. Louis Fed)

• FinTech 3.0 Re-Architecting Financial Market Infrastructure & DeFi

• The True Sources of DeFi Yield

• What explains the rise of AMMs?

• Stablecoins: Designing a Price-Stable Cryptocurrency

• An Overview of Stablecoins (Kyle Samani)

• Stablecoins, Stability, and Financial Inclusion

• How should we regulate DeFi

• Statement on DeFi Risks, Regulations, and Opportunities (SEC)

>  Web 3.0, NFTs and Gaming

• The Ultimate Guide to Web3

• The Value Chain of the Open Metaverse (Packy McCormick)

• Blockchains are the New App Stores (Chris Dixon)

• Going from Web 2 to Web 3 - “Your take rate is my opportunity” (Chris Dixon)

• Seven Types of NFTs (Chris Dixon)

• NFTs and A Thousand True Fans (Chris Dixon)

• Analyzing NFTs as Social Networks Using the Status-as-a-Service Framework (Packy McCormick)

• Status as a Service - StaaS (Eugene Wei)

• Tokengated Commerce (Packy McCormick)

• 7 Essential Ingredients of a Metaverse (a16z)

• DAOs: Absorbing the Internet

• What is a DAO?

• The Dao of DAOs (Packy McCormick)

• Play-to-Earn, NFT Gaming in the Philippines (Video)

• Meet Axie Infinity, the Deceptively Cute Game with Huge Growth and a Huger Vision (Packy McCormick)

• Axie Infinity: Infinite Opportunity or Infinite Peril?

• The Financialization of Fun: Crypto Gaming Thesis

>  Scaling Solutions

• Ethereum Layer 2 Scaling Explained (Rollups, Plasma, Channels, Sidechains)

• Rollups - The Ultimate Ethereum Scaling Strategy? Arbitrum & Optimism Explained

• An Incomplete Guide to Rollups (Vitalik Buterin)

• Endgame (Vitalik Buterin)

• The ultimate guide to L2s on Ethereum

• Zero Knowledge Proofs: An illustrated primer

• How Zero-Knowledge Proofs Became Ethereum’s Magic Bullets

• Rollups, data availability layers & modular blockchains: introductory meta post (Polynya)

• Why rollups + data shards are the only sustainable solution for high scalability (Polynya)

>  Crypto Assets Valuation

• Monopolies with Growth: Ethereum (Vineyard Holdings)

• Ethereum - The First Profitable Blockchain

• How to value DeFi tokens (Bankless)

• How to value DeFi tokens - Part II (Bankless)

• MakerDAO Valuation (Messari)

• A deep dive on Lido and the LDO token (Bankless)

• A financial valuation on Rari Capital's RGT token (Bankless)

>  More Resources

• News and Research

  • Messari

  • The Block

  • Bankless

  • Delphi Digital

  • Coindesk

  • Decrypt

  • Glassnode

• Podcasts

  • Bankless

  • Web3 Breakdowns

  • Uncommon Core

  • The Blockchain Debate Podcast

• Books

  • The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography

  • DeFi and the Future of Finance

  • Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson) - Fiction, First time the term Metaverse was used

  • Ready Player One - Fiction, A Futuristic version of the Metaverse

• Documentaries

  • Trust Machine: The Story of Blockchain (2018)

  • Cryptopia: Bitcoin, Blockchains and the Future of the Internet (2020)

  • Banking on Bitcoin (2016)

  • Bitcoin: The End of Money as We Know It (2015)

• Curated Lists

  • a16z Crypto Canon

  • Softbank Crypto Collection

  • Coinbase Essential Readings

  • a16z NFT Canon

  • Balaji’s Content Archive