Book picks similar to
Blockchain Bubble or Revolution: The Present and Future of Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies by Neel Mehta
crypto
finance
non-fiction
business
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
Satoshi Nakamoto - 2011
Users hold the crypto keys to their own money and transact directly with each other, with the help of a P2P network to check for double-spending.https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
The Physics of Wall Street: A Brief History of Predicting the Unpredictable
James Owen Weatherall - 2013
While many of the mathematicians and software engineers on Wall Street failed when their abstractions turned ugly in practice, a special breed of physicists has a much deeper history of revolutionizing finance. Taking us from fin-de-siècle Paris to Rat Pack-era Las Vegas, from wartime government labs to Yippie communes on the Pacific coast, Weatherall shows how physicists successfully brought their science to bear on some of the thorniest problems in economics, from options pricing to bubbles.The crisis was partly a failure of mathematical modeling. But even more, it was a failure of some very sophisticated financial institutions to think like physicists. Models—whether in science or finance—have limitations; they break down under certain conditions. And in 2008, sophisticated models fell into the hands of people who didn’t understand their purpose, and didn’t care. It was a catastrophic misuse of science.The solution, however, is not to give up on models; it's to make them better. Weatherall reveals the people and ideas on the cusp of a new era in finance. We see a geophysicist use a model designed for earthquakes to predict a massive stock market crash. We discover a physicist-run hedge fund that earned 2,478.6% over the course of the 1990s. And we see how an obscure idea from quantum theory might soon be used to create a far more accurate Consumer Price Index.Both persuasive and accessible, The Physics of Wall Street is riveting history that will change how we think about our economic future.
The Intelligent Investor
Benjamin Graham - 1949
Graham's philosophy of "value investing" -- which shields investors from substantial error and teaches them to develop long-term strategies -- has made The Intelligent Investor the stock market bible ever since its original publication in 1949.Over the years, market developments have proven the wisdom of Graham's strategies. While preserving the integrity of Graham's original text, this revised edition includes updated commentary by noted financial journalist Jason Zweig, whose perspective incorporates the realities of today's market, draws parallels between Graham's examples and today's financial headlines, and gives readers a more thorough understanding of how to apply Graham's principles.Vital and indispensable, this HarperBusiness Essentials edition of The Intelligent Investor is the most important book you will ever read on how to reach your financial goals.
More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite
Sebastian Mallaby - 2010
Wealthy, powerful, and potentially dangerous, hedge fund moguls have become the It Boys of twenty-first century capitalism. Ken Griffin of Citadel started out trading convertible bonds from his dorm room at Harvard. Julian Robertson staffed his hedge fund with college athletes half his age, then he flew them to various retreats in the Rockies and raced them up the mountains. Paul Tudor Jones posed for a magazine photograph next to a killer shark and happily declared that a 1929-style crash would be "total rock-and-roll" for him. Michael Steinhardt was capable of reducing underlings to sobs. "All I want to do is kill myself," one said. "Can I watch?" Steinhardt responded. Finance professors have long argued that beating the market is impossible, and yet drawing on insights from physics, economics, and psychology, these titans have cracked the market's mysteries and gone on to earn fortunes. Their innovation has transformed the world, spawning new markets in exotic financial instruments and rewriting the rules of capitalism. More than just a history, More Money Than God is a window on tomorrow's financial system. Hedge funds have been left for dead after past financial panics: After the stock market rout of the early 1970s, after the bond market bloodbath of 1994, after the collapse of Long Term Capital Management in 1998, and yet again after the dot-com crash in 2000. Each time, hedge funds have proved to be survivors, and it would be wrong to bet against them now. Banks such as CitiGroup, brokers such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, home lenders such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, insurers such as AIG, and money market funds run by giants such as Fidelity-all have failed or been bailed out. But the hedge fund industry has survived the test of 2008 far better than its rivals. The future of finance lies in the history of hedge funds.
The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives
Peter H. Diamandis - 2020
Then, in Bold, they chronicled the use of exponential technologies that allowed the emergence of powerful new entrepreneurs. Now the bestselling authors are back with The Future Is Faster Than You Think, a blueprint for how our world will change in response to the next ten years of rapid technological disruption. Technology is accelerating far more quickly than anyone could have imagined. During the next decade, we will experience more upheaval and create more wealth than we have in the past hundred years. In this gripping and insightful roadmap to our near future, Diamandis and Kotler investigate how wave after wave of exponentially accelerating technologies will impact both our daily lives and society as a whole. What happens as AI, robotics, virtual reality, digital biology, and sensors crash into 3D printing, blockchain, and global gigabit networks? How will these convergences transform today’s legacy industries? What will happen to the way we raise our kids, govern our nations, and care for our planet? Diamandis, a space-entrepreneur-turned-innovation-pioneer, and Kotler, bestselling author and peak performance expert, probe the science of technological convergence and how it will reinvent every part of our lives—transportation, retail, advertising, education, health, entertainment, food, and finance—taking humanity into uncharted territories and reimagining the world as we know it. As indispensable as it is gripping, The Future Is Faster Than You Think provides a prescient look at our impending future.
This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly
Carmen M. Reinhart - 2009
Each time, the experts have chimed, "this time is different"--claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters. With this breakthrough study, leading economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff definitively prove them wrong. Covering sixty-six countries across five continents, This Time Is Different presents a comprehensive look at the varieties of financial crises, and guides us through eight astonishing centuries of government defaults, banking panics, and inflationary spikes--from medieval currency debasements to today's subprime catastrophe. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, leading economists whose work has been influential in the policy debate concerning the current financial crisis, provocatively argue that financial combustions are universal rites of passage for emerging and established market nations. The authors draw important lessons from history to show us how much--or how little--we have learned. Using clear, sharp analysis and comprehensive data, Reinhart and Rogoff document that financial fallouts occur in clusters and strike with surprisingly consistent frequency, duration, and ferocity. They examine the patterns of currency crashes, high and hyperinflation, and government defaults on international and domestic debts--as well as the cycles in housing and equity prices, capital flows, unemployment, and government revenues around these crises. While countries do weather their financial storms, Reinhart and Rogoff prove that short memories make it all too easy for crises to recur. An important book that will affect policy discussions for a long time to come, This Time Is Different exposes centuries of financial missteps.
Way of the Turtle: The Secret Methods That Turned Ordinary People Into Legendary Traders
Curtis Faith - 2007
What started as a bet about whether great traders were born or made became a legendary trading experiment that, until now, has never been told in its entirety.Way of the Turtle reveals, for the first time, the reasons for the success of the secretive trading system used by the group known as the "Turtles." Top-earning Turtle Curtis Faith lays bare the entire experiment, explaining how it was possible for Dennis and Eckhardt to recruit 23 ordinary people from all walks of life and train them to be extraordinary traders in just two weeks.Only nineteen years old at the time-the youngest Turtle by far-Faith traded the largest account, making more than $30 million in just over four years. He takes you behind the scenes of the Turtle selection process and behind closed doors where the Turtles learned the lucrative trading strategies that enabled them to earn an average return of over 80 percent per year and profits of more than $100 million. You'll discoverHow the Turtles made money-the principles that guided their trading and the step-by-step methods they followedWhy, even though they used the same approach, some Turtles were more successful than othersHow to look beyond the rules as the Turtles implemented them to find core strategies that work for any tradable marketHow to apply the Turtle Way to your own trades-and in your own lifeWays to diversify your trading and limit your exposure to riskOffering his unique perspective on the experience, Faith explains why the Turtle Way works in modern markets, and shares hard-earned wisdom on taking risks, choosing your own path, and learning from your mistakes.
Den of Thieves
James B. Stewart - 1991
Stewart shows for the first time how four of the eighties’ biggest names on Wall Street—Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Martin Siegel, and Dennis Levine —created the greatest insider-trading ring in financial history and almost walked away with billions, until a team of downtrodden detectives triumphed over some of America’s most expensive lawyers to bring this powerful quartet to justice. Based on secret grand jury transcripts, interviews, and actual trading records, and containing explosive new revelations about Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky written especially for this paperback edition, Den of Thieves weaves all the facts into an unforgettable narrative—a portrait of human nature, big business, and crime of unparalleled proportions.
Rule #1: The Simple Strategy for Successful Investing in Only 15 Minutes a Week!
Phil Town - 2006
As a guy who barely made a living as a river guide, I considered the whole process pretty impenetrable, and I was convinced that to do it right you had to make it a full-time job. Me, I was more interested in having full-time fun.So I was tempted to do what you’re probably doing right now: letting some mutual fund manager worry about growing your nest egg. Let me tell you why that decision could one day make you absolutely miserable. The fact is, because of natural market cycles, the mutual fund industry is likely to soon be facing twenty years of flat returns. That means that if you’ve got your nest egg tucked away in funds—especially the type found in most 401ks—your egg won’t get much bigger than it is now. Translation: Get ready for a retirement filled with lots of cold cuts, plenty of quality TV-watching time, and a place to live that’s too small to accommodate your visiting kids.In this book I’ll show you how I turned $1,000 into $1 million in only five years, and then proceeded to make many millions more. I came to investing as a person who wasn’t great at math, possessed zero extra cash, and wanted a life—not an extra three hours of work to do every day.Fortunately, I was introduced to The Rule.Rule #1, as famed investor Warren Buffett will tell you, is don’t lose money. Through an intriguing process that I’ll clarify in this book, not losing money results in making more money than you ever imagined. What it comes down to is buying shares of companies only when the numbers—and the intangibles—are on your side. If that sounds too good to be true, it’s because the mind-set I’ll be introducing you to leads not to bets but to certainties. Believe me, if there were anything genius-level about this, I’d still be a river guide collecting unemployment much of the year.Part of the secret is thinking of yourself as a business owner rather than a stock investor. Part is taking advantage of today’s new Internet tools, which drastically reduce the “homework factor.” (We’re talking a few minutes, tops.) Part is knowing the only five numbers that really count in valuing a potential investment. And part—maybe the most important part—is using the risk-free Rule #1 approach to consistently pay a mere 50 cents to buy a dollar’s worth of a business.What I won’t waste your time with is fluff: a lot of vague parables reminding you of what you already know and leaving you exactly where you started. This is the real deal, folks: a start-to-finish, one-baby-step-at-a-time approach that will allow you to retire ten years sooner than you planned, with more creature comforts than you ever imagined.Also available as a Random House AudioBook and eBook.
Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter
Dan Ariely - 2017
Emotions play a powerful role in shaping our financial behavior, often making us our own worst enemies as we try to save, access value, and spend responsibly. In Dollars and Sense, bestselling author and behavioral economist Dan Ariely teams up with financial comedian and writer Jeff Kreisler to challenge many of our most basic assumptions about the precarious relationship between our brains and our money. In doing so, they undermine many of personal finance’s most sacred beliefs and explain how we can override some of our own instincts to make better financial choices.Exploring a wide range of everyday topics—from the lure of pain-free spending with credit cards to the pitfalls of household budgeting to the seductive power of holiday sales—Ariely and Kreisler demonstrate how our misplaced confidence in our spending habits frequently leads us astray, costing us more than we realize, whether it’s the real value of the time we spend driving forty-five minutes to save $10 or our inability to properly assess what the things we buy are actually worth. Together Ariely and Kreisler reveal the emotional forces working against us and how we can counteract them. Mixing case studies and anecdotes with concrete advice and lessons, they cut through the unconscious fears and desires driving our worst financial instincts and teach us how to improve our money habits.The result not only reveals the rationale behind our most head-scratching financial choices but also offers clear guidance for navigating the treacherous financial landscape of the brain. Fascinating, engaging, funny, and essential, Dollars and Sense provides the practical tools we need to understand and improve our financial choices, save and spend smarter, and ultimately live better.
Cryptocurrency Investing For Dummies
Kiana Danial - 2019
If you want to get in on the action, this book shows you how. Cryptocurrency Investing For Dummies offers trusted guidance on how to make money trading and investing in the top 200 digital currencies, no matter what the market sentiment. You'll find out how to navigate the new digital finance landscape and choose the right cryptocurrency for different situations with the help of real-world examples that show you how to maximize your cryptocurrency wallet. Understand how the cryptocurrency market works Find best practices for choosing the right cryptocurrency Explore new financial opportunities Choose the right platforms to make the best investments This book explores the hot topics and market moving events affecting cryptocurrency prices and shows you how to develop the smartest investment strategies based on your unique risk tolerance.
Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy
George Gilder - 2018
Gilder says or writes is ever delivered at anything less than the fullest philosophical decibel... Mr. Gilder sounds less like a tech guru than a poet, and his words tumble out in a romantic cascade." “Google’s algorithms assume the world’s future is nothing more than the next moment in a random process. George Gilder shows how deep this assumption goes, what motivates people to make it, and why it’s wrong: the future depends on human action.” — Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies and author of Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future The Age of Google, built on big data and machine intelligence, has been an awesome era. But it’s coming to an end. In Life after Google, George Gilder—the peerless visionary of technology and culture—explains why Silicon Valley is suffering a nervous breakdown and what to expect as the post-Google age dawns. Google’s astonishing ability to “search and sort” attracts the entire world to its search engine and countless other goodies—videos, maps, email, calendars….And everything it offers is free, or so it seems. Instead of paying directly, users submit to advertising. The system of “aggregate and advertise” works—for a while—if you control an empire of data centers, but a market without prices strangles entrepreneurship and turns the Internet into a wasteland of ads. The crisis is not just economic. Even as advances in artificial intelligence induce delusions of omnipotence and transcendence, Silicon Valley has pretty much given up on security. The Internet firewalls supposedly protecting all those passwords and personal information have proved hopelessly permeable. The crisis cannot be solved within the current computer and network architecture. The future lies with the “cryptocosm”—the new architecture of the blockchain and its derivatives. Enabling cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether, NEO and Hashgraph, it will provide the Internet a secure global payments system, ending the aggregate-and-advertise Age of Google. Silicon Valley, long dominated by a few giants, faces a “great unbundling,” which will disperse computer power and commerce and transform the economy and the Internet. Life after Google is almost here. For fans of "Wealth and Poverty," "Knowledge and Power," and "The Scandal of Money."
The Business Blockchain: Promise, Practice, and Application of the Next Internet Technology
William Mougayar - 2016
At its core, a blockchain injects trust into the network, cutting off some intermediaries from serving that function and creatively disrupting how they operate. Metaphorically, blockchains are the ultimate non-stop computers. Once launched, they never go down, and offer an incredible amount of resiliency, making them dependable and attractive for running a new generation of decentralized services and software applications.The Business Blockchain charts new territory in advancing our understanding of the blockchain by unpacking its elements like no other before. William Mougayar anticipates a future that consists of thousands, if not millions of blockchains that will enable not only frictionless value exchange, but also a new flow of value, redefining roles, relationships, power and governance. In this book, Mougayar makes two other strategic assertions. First, the blockchain has polymorphic characteristics; its application will result in a multiplicity of effects. Second, we shouldn't ask ourselves what problems the blockchain solves, because that gives us a narrow view on its potential. Rather, we should imagine new opportunities, and tackle even more ambitious problems that cross organizational, regulatory and mental boundaries.Drawing on 34 years of technology industry experience as an executive, analyst, consultant, entrepreneur, startup mentor, author, blogger, educator, thought leader and investor, William Mougayar describes a future that is influenced by fundamental shifts brought by blockchain technology as the catalyst for change. William Mougayar has been described as the most sophisticated blockchain business thinker. He is a blockchain industry insider whose work has already shaped and influenced the understanding of blockchain for people around the world, via his generous blogging and rigorous research insights. He is a direct participant in the crypto-technology market, working alongside startups, entrepreneurs, pioneers, leaders, innovators, creators, enterprise executives and practitioners; in addition to being an investor, advisor, and board member in some of the leading organizations in this space, such as the Ethereum Foundation, OpenBazaar and Coin Center.Just as the Internet created new possibilities that we didn't foresee in its early years, the blockchain will give rise to new business models and ideas that may still be invisible. Following an engaging Foreword by Vitalik Buterin, this book is organized along these 7 chapters:1. What is the Blockchain?2. How Blockchain Trust Infiltrates3. Obstacles, Challenges & Mental Blocks4. Blockchain in Financial Services5. Lighthouse Industries & New Intermediaries6. Implementing Blockchain Technology7. Decentralization as the Way ForwardThe Business Blockchain is an invitation for technologists to better understand the business potential of the blockchain, and for business minded people to grasp the many facets of blockchain technology. This book teaches you how to think about the blockchain.
The Predictors: How a Band of Maverick Physicists Used Chaos Theory to Trade Their Way to a Fortune on Wall Street
Thomas A. Bass - 1999
Who better to try to find order in the apparently unreasoned chaos of the global financial markets? Thomas A. Bass takes us inside their start-up company, following it from its inception as a motley collection of longhaired Ph.D.s to its passage into the centers of financial power, where the predictors find investors and finally go live with real money. The Predictors is a dizzying, often hilarious tale of genius and greed.