Thread by @jeffzh4ng

Hey all, this giant ass tweet thread is a more like a personal journal entry on what I've been learning about this past year. Excited to share more in the near future.

This past year my portfolio has been getting destroyed due to crypto markets and global macro conditions.

Although expensive, it's a great learning experience because it's motivated me to learn and educate myself in fields I was never interested in. I'm much much more motivated to learn when because I have skin in the game now.

Me being in crypto (both my portfolio and my employment security) means I'm exposed to more risk and volatility than investing in your traditional index funds and working at a classic FAANG company with stable RSUs.

Yes Netflix stock is down but they pay in cash. Working at Google or Apple would have been much better for my compensation in RSU, but working at Coinbase has exposed me to many intriguing questions in which I want to find the answers to.

The company was started and pushed to DPO through the tech boom — an era with low interest rates and tech stocks booming. Now that we're entering stagflation territory, how long will this crypto winter last?

Why is crypto not being treated as an inflation hedge? Are there any real use-cases to web3? Will the company survive? Will I still be employed?

My portfolio burning up and uncertain employment security question has motivated me to learn more about topics macroeconomics, finance, business, history of technology, and rationality.

I wasn't exposed to these topics at all growing up, and it wasn't only until my senior year of highschool where I turned on the gas with grades, and was able to sneak myself into a great school.

I didn't even get admitted for computer science or software engineering because my grades weren't the best—I studied mathematics. I barely graduated as well: I graduated with a 3 year general bachelors of math when my original program was a 4 year honours one.

But the school, program, and students taught me how to critically think, and how to learn. The focus was math (and I self-taught myself computer science). But that's why topics like economics, history, etc are new to me.

I tweeted about this a few months ago, but this is why highschools like Shannon School are great:

https://twitter.com/jeffzh4ng/status/1515738097664860163

I'm not a savant or genius. Just have a strong thirst for knowledge, and a curiosity for how things work.

Who knows, maybe that Google engineer investing in S&P 500 will fare out better than my degen portfolio, but for myself, I hate not knowing how things work.

This is why I've been fairly quiet this past year. It's just been a lot of reading during my spare time after work. I'm going to share a list of recommended books in the near future and twitter accounts to follow. Hopefully it'll be of use to you if you're in a similar boat.