Shoot your Shot (Why I Wrote A Book)

Here are two things you probably don't know about me:

1. I'm lazy
2. I'm an idiot

When I had kids, my time instantly became more valuable and my tolerance for sloppy communication evaporated. Just give me the four C's: clear, concise, correct, and compelling.

Today I will do the least amount of work required to complete a project. I'm not saying I don't care about quality, I care very much about quality. That's why any activity that doesn't directly improve quality gets ignored.

When surveying what I knew about bitcoin, I realized I had a huge number of seemingly-unrelated facts, observations, and ideas rattling around in my head. There was simply no room to keep absorbing more information (through podcasts, blogs, products, etc.). I needed a way to thread it all together in a coherent way so that I could delete everything else from memory.

Deadlines give me anxiety, but they work for me. I rarely miss them. Setting out to compile all the things I felt I should know (at a high level) in order to consider myself a bitcoiner was a daunting task. But if I didn't force myself to go through the process, I'd continue to have my conviction shaken every few years by the latest narrative.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm an idiot. I forget important dates, I never check the receipt, and I can't drive and talk at the same time. Michael Saylor sent me a DM the other day...to tell me that I'd made a spelling error in an illustration. Welcome to my life.

If I was going to write a book, it would have to be brief and to the point. Nowhere for my ego to hide. Know your shit or know you're shit. It was never something I thought might be read outside of a handful of bitcoiners and maybe a few normie friends. The response blew me away and showed that I wasn't alone in wanting a resource that was pure bitcoin from first-principles.

1.5 years later (with much guidance and support from my publisher and bitcoiners around the world) the hardcover book landed on my kitchen counter. It's pretty surreal. It's certainly not the first book about mental models. Heck, it's not even the first bitcoin book covering mental models (see Bitcoin Clarity).

The lesson I've taken away from the experience is this: there's plenty of room on the ship.

When something as interdisciplinary and innovative as bitcoin shows up, don't assume someone else is going to make the thing you wish existed. Because we're still so early. That's what The Bitcoin Handbook was for me- the book I wish existed. And it turns out so did many others. So, shoot your shot.

The Bitcoin Handbook

A collection of the most relevant and applicable frameworks, mental models, and heuristics as they relate to bitcoin.

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Recent Conversation with Preston Pysh

Praise for The Bitcoin Handbook