Reading library

Howard Marks's memos

oaktreecapital.com

Overview

Not crypto. Worth more than most crypto reading.

Notes

Howard Marks is one of the most respected investors of the last 50 years. He has been publishing client memos since 1990. They are free, available on the Oaktree website, and they are the single best long-form analysis of market cycles, risk, and thesis-building available anywhere. His memos on the dangers of being too confident, the discipline of sizing, and the patience required to ride through cycles apply directly to crypto even though they're written about traditional finance. Read three of his memos this weekend. They'll outlast anything else on this reading list.

Read the originalHoward Marks's memos on oaktreecapital.com↗

Related in the library

← Back to the module that introduced thisModule 29 — Building your own thesis

Crypto Glossary

Bitcoin
The first cryptocurrency, launched in January 2009 by an anonymous developer or group using the name Satoshi Nakamoto. Designed as peer-to-peer electronic cash that doesn't require a financial intermediary.
Cryptocurrency
A form of digital money that uses cryptography to secure transactions and is recorded on a blockchain rather than in the books of a central institution.
Blockchain
A shared, append-only ledger maintained by a distributed network of computers rather than by a single authority.
Cryptography
The mathematical techniques used to secure information. In crypto, primarily public-key cryptography (which lets users prove ownership without revealing secrets) and hashing (which fingerprints data).
Decentralization
The property of a system in which no single party can unilaterally change the rules or block participation.
Double-spend problem
The challenge of preventing someone from spending the same unit of digital money twice. Solved by Bitcoin without needing a central authority.
Block
A bundle of transactions added to the blockchain at one time. New blocks are produced on a regular cadence (about every 10 minutes for Bitcoin, about every 12 seconds for Ethereum).
Hash
A cryptographic fingerprint of a piece of data. If the data changes at all, the hash changes completely. Used to chain blocks together and detect tampering.
Proof-of-work
The mechanism by which Bitcoin participants compete to add the next block. Requires real computational effort, which makes attacks expensive.
Node
A participant in the blockchain network. Full nodes hold a complete copy of the chain's history and help validate new blocks.
Byzantine Generals problem
A 1982 computer-science problem describing the difficulty of getting independent parties to agree on a shared state when some of them may be dishonest. Bitcoin's blockchain solves a real-world version of this problem.
Block explorer
A website that lets you read the blockchain. Etherscan, mempool.space, and similar tools show every transaction, address, and block in human-readable form.