100 books like Capital Is Dead

When I first entered the crypto space, I found that one of the biggest issues was the dominance of free market fundamentalist ideology even when trying to learn about things completely technical. I desperately searched for writing that aligned more with my political leanings, and this book was the first one I found.

In the book, Mark argues that the significance of cryptocurrencies goes well beyond cryptoanarchism. In so far as they allow us "to appropriate, collectively, the means of monetary production," to paraphrase Marx, and to replace "the government of persons by the administration of things," as Engels advocated, they form the basis for a political regime that begins to look like a communism which has, at last, come to fruition–a cryptocommunism. 

Being in the crypto space for as long as I have, I’ve heard the argument repeatedly that tokenization is a new thing that blockchains enable and that they are inherently good or bad, depending on where you stand on the issue. But that is an oversimplification.

Rachel O'Dwyer's book is an approachable exploration of the evolving landscape of tokens beyond the usual critique of financialization. Through a first-person exploration of history, O'Dwyer reveals the deeply political nature of tokens, shedding light on their enduring presence and demonstrating how today's digital tokens are simply a continuation of humanity's longstanding use of tokens to facilitate a wide range of social processes since antiquity.

The Ethereum blockchain ecosystem is arguably the largest and likely to keep that position for the time being therefore making it an important technology to have a firm grasp and understanding of. This includes not just the hard technical aspects of it, but also its history and culture.

Dr. Dylan-Ellis has been involved in the Ethereum ecosystem and teaching cryptocurrency courses at the University College Dublin, and as someone who has similarly been involved in the Ethereum space for so long and watching its political and cultural evolution, this textbook offers a good intro for anyone wanting to get up to speed on Ethereum.

In all of my observations of the web3 space, I’ve noticed that while there are plenty of radical propositions to completely disrupt how we relate to tech and finance, there’s often a lack of understanding of how we got here in the first place.

Reading this book helped me place our current situation onto the trajectory that neoliberalism has taken for the past half a century. The concept of hegemony from Gramsci, which Williams and Gilbert expand upon for the modern age, showed me how even in web3, we are not immune to the influence of neoliberalism.

I recommend this book to anyone looking to be able to identify the cracks in the system to shape a way where web3 could be useful in creating new institutions.

Well, the author is a friend of mine but it’s also on a topic close to my own academic research interests. So it was kind of compulsory reading for me, but it might be the most enjoyable compulsory reading I’ve ever done.

I thought NFTs were just a gimmick to do with internet pictures. But the authors explain, with great examples, that NFTs are best thought of as a new technology for creating digital assets. And better still, providing the true owner with irrefutable proof of ownership of these digital assets.

What I took away was that NFTs are a new technology for tracking property rights. And since property rights have been fundamental to economic development for millennia, this is a topic one can’t afford not to understand.

I first heard about this book on one of my favorite podcasts: Hard Fork. The author is a famous crypto investor at perhaps the world’s leading technology venture capital firm: a16z. The author got a hard time from the hosts, who are both pretty skeptical of crypto. But he handled it so well I knew I had to read the book.

Read Write Own is persuasive in cautioning against dismissing the entire crypto sector due to early failures. The examples used are great: like the Helium project—a kind of crowdsourced “people’s 5G network” that uses cryptocurrency payments as incentives. If you want to hear the “glass is half full” case for crypto, this is a must read.

Many people have heard of Bitcoin’s “proof of work” (POW) consensus protocol which involves using huge amounts of energy to solve cryptographic problems. Some of us have also heard of “proof of stake”, an alternative to POW now used by the second largest cryptocurrency, Ether. What Joshua’s book taught me was the similarities and linkages between these two different ways of running a blockchain.

By focusing on the economics, not just the technology, of different consensus protocols, we learn about fundamental issues like the “cost of computational trust”, the future of consensus protocols, and indeed the future of cryptocurrencies.

Critical Path is a tour de force of structured thought that tackles some of the biggest problems facing humanity. R. Buckminster Fuller is one of the most lucid thinkers of the 20th Century who writes with inimitable style. Absorbing his work helped me to distill the issues facing the 21st century that blockchain technology and decentralized systems are trying to solve.  

Tangle’s Game is a clever examination of the near future with an exploration of prejudice that is massively relevant in today’s society. The very best science fiction offers us a mirror to our own circumstances and situations. In the world of Tangle’s Game, we see the cultural behemoths of blockchain technology and social media as even more dominant forces than they are today.

Hotston uses this story to offer an informed and nuanced perspective on the world. Amanda’s descent from conformity highlights the ways in which we are measured and judged.

Wow! This book is exactly what every programmer has always wanted to know or even felt guilty about not knowing and it’s all presented in an extremely simplified and fun way. 

This is one of those books where you get excited in the morning when you wake up because you know you are going to be able to read more in the book and you are hoping the book will never end.

It’s rare to find a big book that I enjoyed reading so much and felt so short. This book covers almost everything you ever wondered about computer science. After reading this book, I felt like I finally understood everything a programmer was supposed to know and I no longer felt that nagging feeling of being an imposter.