Serendipity Sundays is a weekly newsletter aimed at digesting ideas, concepts, and media relevant to my interests. Topics range from Bitcoin, Art, Privacy, Entrepreneurship and Continuing Education. If you find this newsletter interesting, feel free to share it with a friend, or read my other work: Earning a bit of Bitcoin.
My Favorite Newsletters
One of the problems with many social media services is that the content is algorithmically driven for engagement rather than quality. Over the past year I’ve shifted my focus toward newsletters as they offer a better, long-form way to consume information; they often have a higher signal:noise ratio than your typical social media feed. The long form content also solves the problem of short attention span that the current stream of short bursts *cough* TikTok *cough* panders to.
I usually end up reading ~5 newsletters a day and keep them straight by sending them to a gmail account (alex+newsletters@alexhalloran.com). This provides me an easy way to set up a rule for categorizing all my newsletters into one inbox. If I find something of note in a newsletter I put it in my Newsletter notebook in Roam and tag it appropriately.
Curation-style
5 Bullet Friday by Tim Ferriss. Tim has great books, podcasts, and of course, a great newsletter. I’ve followed Tim for nearly a decade and enjoy his meta-learning approach.
Dickie’s Digest by Dickie Bush. A newsletter focused on the topic of growth. Read his Best of 2020 for his first year writing a newsletter.
Friday Finds by David Perell. I was inspired to write my own newsletter in part because of David’s work such as The Ultimate Guide to Writing Online.
Unsupervised Learning by Daniel Meissler. Cybersecurity, technology, and interesting book recommendations.
Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency
Marty’s Bent - Marty co-founded Great American Mining which monetizes gas at point of extraction that would otherwise be flared or vented by using it for Bitcoin mining on site.
The Pomp Letter - The $50/yr for the paid tier is worth it on this daily newsletter. Anthony Pompliano is one of the biggest in the Bitcoin space and has great macro perspectives and insight on the regulatory environment.
New Money - A great weekly newsletter for keeping up with adoption and market changes for Bitcoin investors. The Roth IRA is the God Vehicle for Bitcoin is a must read.
Other
Flow State, a weekday newsletter, sends out ~2 hours of new working music that generally don’t have vocals, or in limited amounts. Recent favorites from here include:
The Bombillas - The Bombillas (40m, no vocals)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / TidalWalking In The Naked City - Kuniyuki (70m, vocals on tracks 5 and 10 only)
Spotify / Apple Music (substitute) / Amazon Music / BandcampFor more of my favorite working music check out #002
Ark Invest’s Weekly newsletter - Ark is an innovation focused fund and their newsletter is great for staying informed of the work by analysts in the firm. I’ve been working through their Big Ideas 2021 Report and am a big believer in CEO Cathie Wood’s approach to their ETFs.
The New Generation of Investors
I got this text from a friend the other day and although anecdotal, shows how the “stocks only go up” sentiment has drawn in Gen Z. Free and open information from Redditors who have been right about Tesla, airlines/oil, GameStop, AMC and even DOGE coin is invaluable. You can learn about all aspects of markets and personal finance from YouTube videos anywhere in the world. If you’re entering a society with 5-7% real inflation and 2% wage growth then trading and taking advantage of an ever-growing equities bubble is pretty attractive. Consumer trading platforms such as Robinhood, WeBull, and Coinbase have made huge gains against traditional brokers when looking at mobile app downloads in January.
Robinhood: 3 million
Coinbase: 1.3 million
WeBull: 800,000
TDAmeritrade: 370,000
Fidelity: 340,000
eTrade: 220,000
SoFi: 121,000
Charles Schwab: 75,000
I wouldn’t underestimate a generation who have experienced high levels of money printing for most of their lives. Over 78% of all US Dollars were printed in just the last decade alone.
Messari published the above diagram in a recent newsletter that accurately summarizes the effect of a central bank propping up asset prices and how hard assets fit into the larger picture.
Closing Thoughts
It’s been an eventful 12 months since the last Super Bowl, but here’s to hoping everyone can come together and relax for a night… even if you care more about the food and commercials. I’m optimistic we’ll see the stadium full of fans next year as the vaccines continue to roll out. Rooting for the Chiefs to win it this year! Let’s go, Mahomes!
I buy 90% of my Bitcoin through Swan. Their easy to use Bitcoin savings platform is perfect for beginners and the 1% fee can’t be beat. You can get a $10 bonus for using my affiliate link.