Technology is what makes us human.
It’s what distinguishes man from animal.
Fire arguably made us human.
The invention of fire allowed humans to outsource some of our metabolism to the fire and allocate more scarce calories for brain development.
Truth and technology go hand-in-hand.
Technology is birthed everytime we discover a non-obvious truth.
A truth either about humans or the world.
Build products based on truths other people can’t grasp.
If it works, they will buy it. Their confusion is your advantage.
Unlock unseen value.
It requires more empathy and more imagination to think about value that isn’t seen.
You can see a skyscraper. You can’t see what could’ve been built but wasn’t.
If the internet was programmable communication, crypto is programmable money.
Before the internet, you needed a deal with a telecom company to deploy information-transferring code.
Before Bitcoin, you needed a deal with a bank to deploy value-transferring code.
Those saying, “Crypto is just another asset class” sound like those who said, “The internet is just another media outlet.”
They didn’t understand programmability, permissionless-ness, or peer-to-peer, and they overestimated the robustness of legacy institutions.
History repeats with crypto.
Balaji S. is a scientist, technologist, entrepreneur, and investor who was previously CTO of Coinbase and author of a recently published book “The Network State: How to Start a New Country”.
Eric Jorgenson writes and podcasts about technology, startups and investing who previously published one of my favourite books: “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant”.
Happy reading! 📙