A list of educational resources to get you through the Bitcoin bear market

Introduction

Things are fairly depressing at the moment, and even if you aren’t worried, bear markets are fairly boring. I know I am not doing much apart from my weekly DCA into Bitcoin. Therefore, I have compiled a list of educational resources that I aim to make my way through over the bear market. This is mainly for myself but I thought others might be interested so I am going to share here.

Below you will find a list of books, blogs, podcasts and courses that are widely recommended in the Bitcoin space. If I’ve read or consumed some of this content, I will give some opinion on it, but for the others listed here I will just give a small blurb on each.

Just to so you are aware, this list is fairly Bitcoin maxi, I wouldn’t say I am 100% a maxi I still hold some ETH, and I will trade alts when the bull market returns, but a lot of that will be with the intention of gaining more Bitcoin. Also because Bitcoin is the first and most well established cryptocurrency out there it means there is far more educational material relating to it than any other cryptocurrency.

Whitepapers:

You really should read them.

• The Bitcoin Whitepaper by Satoshi Nakamoto (How many have actually read this? I would strongly advise everyone to read this at least once it is truly revolutionary)

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Courses:

There are loads of absolutely fantastic free courses out there on Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency, I would strongly advise everyone to pick up at least one over the bear market.

• Saylor Academy — There are several courses relating to Bitcoin, and plenty of other brilliant topics on the Saylor academy. I’ve been slowly making my way through the Bitcoin for developers course, and the Austrian economics course.
• Khan Academy — The Khan Academy got me through my first two years of college, Khan teaches complex topics and makes them easy, the exact same thing is done for Bitcoin.
• MOOC: Introduction to Digital Currencies — By Andreas Antonopoulos, I have not done this one yet, but it’s supposed to be very good.
• Udemy — Introduction to Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain.
• Coursera — Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies.
• There are also courses on Binance Academy and Coinbase Learn although I haven’t done either or heard whether they are good or not.

Books:

The most traditional form of education on this list, personally I don’t have much time to read but pretty much everything on this list has an audiobook format, and I find that much easier to digest, while in the Gym or on the road.

• The Price of Tomorrow: Why Deflation is the Key to an Abundant Future — by Jeff Booth — this one I have read, and found very interesting while it us not directly related to Cryptocurrencies it elegantly puts forward why we may need a deflationary currency to be the world reserve.
• The Sovereign individual — William Rees-Mogg (yes of that Rees-Mogg family) — I’ve also read this one, again it is not specifically about Bitcoin, but many Bitcoiners rave about it. It’s an interesting book and it predicted many of the developments that we see today in the world and I think the “critical” part of the book is very good, but I really don’t like the authors or their politics and that is to put it mildly.
• Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order — by Ray Dalio — Again I have not read this yet but I watched the video and was enthralled, so I have bought the book.
• Essays on Bitcoin — Compiled by John Gleeson — I have not read this yet but it’s free, so it’s on my list.
• The Internet of Money (Volumes 1 & 2) — By Andreas Antonopoulos.
• Mastering Bitcoin: Programming The Open Blockchain — By Andreas Antonopoulos.
• Mastering Ethereum: Building Smart Contracts and DApps — By Andreas Antonopoulos.
• The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking — by Saifedean Ammous.
• The Cryptopians — by Laura Shin - This one is brand new but looks very interesting, it covers the history of Ethereum and the 2017 ICO craze. Definitely on the list.
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius - very important for anyone attempting to live a stoic life, and not let their emotions rule them, vital for investing. The book can be found here and an audiobook can be found here.
• Road to Serfdom by Haye — Seems to apply well to the modern world.
• Layered Money — Nick Bhatia — How the monetary systems work around the worlds
• The creature from Jekyll island — G. Edward Griffin — an exposé of the Fed
• The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War — by Nicholas Mulder — A look at how fiat sanctions are now used as a weapon of war.
• Daylight Robbery: How Tax Shaped Our Past and Will Change Our Future — Dominic Frisby — Taxes what do they actually do for us?

Podcasts:

Like Youtube videos below, these probably aren’t the very best source of information, however, I love Podcasts and I do rate these a little higher on the education scale than the majority of Youtube channels. The problem is there are just so different topics I end up missing out on a few and not keeping up them them constantly, here are a couple Cryptocurrency related Podcasts I listen to semi-regularly.

• What Bitcoin Did — For Bitcoin this the pick of the lot.
• Bankless — Very Eth centric but decent for a different opinion to WBD
• Lex Fridman — Not Crypto Specific but Lex get’s a lot of Crypto industry experts on
• Unchained- Not listened but heard its a good allrounder
• The Investor’s Podcast Network — This one is a general all round investing podcast but has some great stuff on Bitcoin

Blogs:

• Willy Woo — Chart Overload!
• Unenumerated — This is a blog I have always meant to get around to reading but still haven’t found the time, there is a huge amount here on the history of money.
• Dan Held — Has some great practical Bitcoin advice.

YouTube:

Don’t treat Youtube or Youtubers as an education sources, and these defiantly fall under the guise of edutainment, although in my opinion there is some good information to be gained from each of these channels. Just don’t go relying on them as your primary source of financial advice (Not a financial advisor and all that)

• Benjamin Cowen — The best of the lot IMO, I actually spend some of my spare time recreating some of his charts using Python.
• Coin bureau — Mainly entertainment.
• Invest Answers — Okay, shilled Luna a little though, so black mark for that.
• Ray Dalio — Okay not Crypto but man there is some great educational content here.
• Glassnode- Personally I am trying to learn a little more about OnChain Analysis and this is great channel for figuring that out.
• Cathy Wood of Ark Invest. She does a monthly Macro video
• Dominic Frisby regular short vlogs on various economic topics
• Robert Breedlove
• The Nomad Capitalist for some the how and why of multi citizenships

Other Resources:

I’ve included a few twitter accounts here but if you are getting educated off twitter then there really isn’t much hope for the world, however, there are a couple of people I didn’t know where to include but I find hugely insightful, so I decided to link there twitter accounts. There are also other miscellaneous resources I have found that I have included here

• Lyn Alden — When Lyn talks I listen! She has a free newsletter but I mainly just keep up with her appearance on podcast.
• Will Clemnte — More charts, Will also has an excellent free newsletter.
• Plan B — He’s a little (a lottle) sus, but his technical content still has value IMO.
• Jamson Lopp — Huge repository of Bitcoin knowledge.

Technical Education

Here are some more technical things you can do to educate yourself on Bitcoin and how to use it, these are in order of difficulty.

• Buy Bitcoin (I guess you have already done this)
• Make an on-chain transaction
• Make a lightening transaction
• Self custody by setting up a hardware wallet (with proper backup)
• Setup a Bitcoin full node + connect to your hardware wallet
• Setup Lightening node
• Setup a mobile lightening app using your own lightening node

Conclusion

So that’s all I have so far, I posted this in the hope that others would find it useful, but I also selfishly would love if you added your suggestions in the comments so I have even more resources. Happy learnings!