Books I'm Reading

It’s amazing how often non-fiction books narrating the history of various significant periods inevitably confirm specific patterns.

For instance, human nature. Human nature doesn’t change and it won’t until Jesus returns and recreates humanity, the earth, and the heavens. The first generation of Pilgrims lived out certain qualities, many of which enabled them to establish a colony where no European had before. But subsequent generations gradually changed and fell away from these qualities.

Such is human nature. The environment/culture created by those living a certain way produces different qualities in those raised in that culture. These different qualities, when lived out, produce a different culture, and so on and so forth.

The more recent book The Fourth Turning unpacks this well.

Podcast I'm Listening To

Here’s another excellent interview from Lex Fridman.

Pavel Durov is the founder and CEO of Telegram. He’s a talented engineer and an inspiring leader. I find the design choices made in Telegram very interesting, and the challenges inherent in building what their team built are quite unique: maintaining a consistent U/X for hundreds of millions of international users who may be using a low-tier smartphone with very little compute, designing an encrypted messaging platform that not even Telegram staff can decrypt, etc.

I don’t agree with many choices Durov has made or even the values by which he orders his life, but this conversation is nonetheless fascinating.

On Bitcoin

Is the four-year cycle over? This question is debated often now.
 
Historically, ~18 months after the halving represents the top of the Bitcoin four-year cycle as the price rolls over and a bear market begins.
 
Proponents argue this pattern persists due to consistent market psychology, supply dynamics, and on-chain signals.
 
On the other hand, some think the cycle is dead or evolving into a “supercycle” due to Bitcoin’s maturation: spot ETFs ($100sB+ inflows), nation-state adoption, and steady institutional buying have decoupled price from halving scarcity alone.
 
I’d love to see a supercycle. But I’m only assigning a 50/50 chance to it. Who knows?

Tweets I'm Reading

 


 


 


 



If you have feedback for me, if something resonates and you want to see more of it, reply in the comments below. You can also tweet at me on Twitter @the_cody_hall.

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