Five top reads for new crypto investors
By Daniel (Danny) Won
Though cryptocurrency is a relatively young sphere (with Bitcoin’s first block being created in January 2009), the explosive booms and busts of the market seem to grab peoples’ attention with each successive market cycle.
When viewed over the course of its history, Bitcoin has offered attractive returns over the long term that blow most investments out of the water:
Buying $100 worth of Bitcoin on Jan. 1, 2011 (333.33 BTC at 30 cents per Bitcoin) would have made you a multi-millionaire when Bitcoin hit its all-time high of $19,783 on Dec. 17, 2017, turning your $100 into $6.6 million in less than 7 years.
Such returns are generally unheard of in traditional markets like the stock market. This and other factors have led to the number of cryptocurrency users roughly doubling every year.
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However, many that enter the space with the intention of investing often don’t come from a finance background, leading to more money lost than made.
For such investors (and even those with more experience), here are some of the best books to learn from when investing in this exciting new asset class.
Digital Gold: The Untold Story of Bitcoin
Digital Gold: The Untold Story of Bitcoin by Nathaniel Popper is a great look into the history of Bitcoin and its development up until May 2016, when the book was written.
For those unfamiliar with how Bitcoin (and cryptocurrency as a whole — since Bitcoin was the first crypto) came about, Digital Gold is a great primer on the story of Bitcoin. As a bonus, it’s an accessible read (shortlisted for the 2015 Financial Times and McKinsey business book of the year) that reads more like a story for those who aren’t as technically minded.
Mastering Bitcoin: Programming the Open Blockchain
Mastering Bitcoin: Programming the Open Blockchain by Andreas M. Antonopoulos goes more into the technical side of things and breaks down the various technical facets of Bitcoin for those looking for a more in-depth explanation as to how this technology works.
His follow-up book on Ethereum, Mastering Ethereum, goes into detail about Ethereum, another popular cryptocurrency, which spawned the term ‘Blockchain 2.0’ for its emphasis on programming decentralized applications (Dapps) on blockchain.
Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor’s Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond
Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor’s Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond is a book that goes beyond Bitcoin and breaks cryptocurrencies into different ‘asset classes’: cryptocurrencies, cryptocommodities and cryptotokens. Each one is covered in detail and examples are given.
Moreover, the authors provide basic guides on things like wallets, exchanges and ICOs as well as a framework for assessing the investment potential of different crypto assets.
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is considered one of the best investing books of all time by the likes of renowned modern-day investor and hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones and is based on the life and trading philosophies of Jesse Livermore, who many consider to be one of the best stock traders of all time.
Livermode made and lost several multimillion-dollar fortunes throughout his lifetime and is credited with popularizing the practice of “day trading”.
While the book’s setting is the early 20th century stock market, the lessons in this book apply to all speculative markets as they deal with universal topics, such as crowd psychology (one aspect of which would be called ‘FOMO’ in the crypto world) and market timing.
While Reminiscences is a trading classic that covers trading principles as they relate to the stock market, Cryptocurrency Trading & Investing: Beginners Guide To Trading & Investing In Bitcoin, Alt Coins & ICOs is a great primer on trading written by Aimee Vo as it relates to crypto.
The section on technical analysis is especially useful, as ‘TA’, as it’s called by traders, is often used by traders to evaluate investments and trading opportunities.
Conclusion
There are a lot of books out there that you can read on investing and crypto investing in particular.
The aforementioned books will give you a good foundation to take on the wild, 24/7, global cryptocurrency market but realize that your education doesn’t stop there. It’s only until you actually start putting concepts into practice and formulating your own conclusions and hypotheses that you start gaining real experience and success.
Danny Won knew about Bitcoin when it was $4. Unfortunately, he didn’t buy enough. Ever since witnessing the $35 million Basic Attention Token ICO selling out in 30 seconds, Danny realized how serious crypto was and has been staying on top of all the latest blockchain and crypto developments and seeing what implications this could all have for our everyday lives.
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