Late-night bombshell! A bear-market top-secret reading list from a “Walter” level trader: the 3rd book lets retail investors peer over the edge of the well, and the 7th book predicted the birth of $BTC!

The shrinkage of paper numbers isn't what makes a bear market most agonizing; what truly hurts is the uncertainty about the future. $BTC's history is only seventeen years old, yet it has already gone through four complete bull-bear cycles. Each bear market is a reshaping of the industry—some leave in disappointment, some choose to stay, and others complete their transformation in the depths. This is both brutal and fascinating.

Recently, a friend recommended an article: "Sharing 10 Books That I Think Are Must-Reads in the AI Era." It suddenly occurred to me: if AI professionals have a reading list, what about Web3 professionals? What can help us navigate through cycles isn't just whitepapers and technical papers, but also classics about history, civilization, technology, business, and human nature. Hence, this bear market reading list. They don't talk about K-lines nor wealth codes; they concern something more fundamental.

Book 1: 2049: The Possibilities of the Next 10k Days

The greatest pain of a bear market isn't paper losses, but the confusion about the future. When short-term K-lines lose their reference value, we need the "long-term telescope" of a top technology thinker. Kevin Kelly, the godfather of Silicon Valley, accurately predicted the explosion of the internet, cloud computing, IoT, and AI thirty years ago in Out of Control. In 2024, he strikes again, outlining in 2049 a tech ecosystem that could be widely implemented in 25 years: brain-computer interfaces, VR, the space economy, mirror worlds, and of course, the cryptocurrency we care about most.

Regarding $BTC's position in the future world, KK offers an extremely rational and imaginative judgment: "I don't think virtual cryptocurrencies will replace national currencies in 25 years, but they could become a second currency, even a global universal currency—just like English has become a global lingua franca." He also emphasizes the combination of AI and crypto, believing that crypto and smart contracts are crucial for AI operating systems and are indispensable cornerstones of the future mirror world operating system.

KK doesn't just give fish—prediction results—but also the fishing method—prediction methodology. He shares three underlying models for observing the future: watch what rich people are doing, as the masses will emulate them; watch edge geeks, as many innovations move from the edge to the mainstream; watch new vocabulary, as new words signal change. The emergence of new terms like $BTC, DAO, Metaverse, and NFTs indicates the rapid expansion of this field.

Reading this book during a crypto bear market is not about seeking a quick-profit guide for tomorrow, but about identifying, over the long cycle of the next 10k days, that deterministic coordinate worth betting on and holding onto.

Book 2: Human Action

When the market tells you through continuous declines that "nothing you do matters," Mises tells you: upgrade your entire underlying thinking framework by understanding the nature of action, the relationship between action and money, and the relationship between praxeology and economics. Mises, the mentor of Hayek, is recognized as the third-generation leader of the Austrian School of Economics. If Hayek gave $BTC "institutional legitimacy," Mises gave it "philosophical inevitability."

Mises says that the purpose of action is only one—to make the future situation more satisfactory than the present. What prompts action is always some kind of "discomfort." However, discomfort alone is not enough; one must also believe that one's actions can eliminate or alleviate that discomfort. In a bear market, when you feel "the market is hopeless," action stops, and you transform from an actor into a surrenderer.

Mises has an alarming statement: "The results of action are uncertain; action is nothing but speculation." In the crypto industry, "speculation" is often stigmatized, but Mises gives it the simplest meaning: any action oriented toward the future includes a judgment of uncertain outcomes. Buying $BTC is speculation; holding stablecoins is speculation; reading this book instead of scrolling through short videos is also speculation—the key is based on what cognitive framework your speculation relies on.

In a division-of-labor society, Mises says monetary calculation is the "North Star" of action. Fiat money is the compass of the old world; crypto assets are becoming another coordinate system for the new world. Mises writes: "The excellence of the acting man is manifested in that he consciously and purposefully maintains and enhances his vitality." Price crashes in a bear market can shake your belief in action, but Mises tells you: the meaning of action never depends on short-term results, but on whether you consciously and purposefully strive to improve the future state.

Reading Human Action won't give you the answer to "when will the bull market come," but you will find the confidence to persist in action amid uncertainty—because economy is the logic of human action, and logic is something a bear market cannot destroy.

Book 3: The Nature of Technology

Many people don't understand Crypto and Web3 because they span across numerous fields such as cryptography, computer science, monetary theory, blockchain, finance, the internet, payments, the metaverse, and AI. The threshold for understanding this industry is not along a single knowledge line, but in the ability to see the intersections and connections between these disciplines. Brian Arthur's The Nature of Technology provides precisely the underlying lens to see these intersections.

Arthur gives definitions of technology: "Technology is a means to fulfill human purposes"; "Technology is an assemblage of practices and components"; "Technology is a collection of devices and engineering practices available to a culture." But the most important insight is "combinatorial evolution"—technology does not arise all at once, but is a process of continuous combination and recombination. Every new technology is essentially a "new combination."

Looking back at the crypto industry: What is $BTC? It's a combination of cryptography + distributed systems + economics + monetary theory. Satoshi Nakamoto didn't invent any underlying technology, but he combined them. Everything since then has been further combinations: combining with computer hardware gave birth to the mining industry; combining with finance gave birth to DeFi; combining with the metaverse/NFTs gave birth to digital collectibles; combining with the US dollar gave birth to stablecoins; combining with AI gave rise to autonomous payments by AI agents; combining with compliance boosted the valuations of prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi.

Arthur also proposes: "A solution, if used often enough, becomes a module." This means blockchain technology is undergoing modularization—smart contracts, zero-knowledge proofs, account abstraction, and Layer2 are all becoming modules. When modules are repeatedly used and verified, they become more stable and invisible. And when an industry's technology becomes increasingly modularized, something more profound happens—technology begins to create an "economy." The crypto economy is not designed; it is an organism that grows out of countless technological combinations, countless human actions, and countless market games.

Price drops in a bear market may lead people to mistakenly believe that technology has stagnated, but Arthur will tell you: technology has never been driven by bull markets. Truly important technological combinations often happen when no one is watching, and right now is the moment when combinations are occurring.

Book 4: The Distant Savior

This is considered a strange book. It lets people at the bottom of a well climb up to the edge and take a look, then fall back down—the contrast is enough to wake anyone up. Crypto is, to some extent, an industry where people "climb to the edge and look outside." Some thereby cross class boundaries, while others fall even deeper. Where is the difference? This book provides an extremely cold answer: cultural attributes.

"To see through society, there are three levels: technology, institutions, and culture. Every destiny is ultimately a product of its cultural attributes. Strong culture creates the strong; weak culture creates the weak." Every crypto practitioner should read this sentence three times. What is strong culture? A culture that follows the laws of things. What is weak culture? A culture that relies on the moral expectations of the strong to obtain things undeservedly—a culture that expects a savior. The core is one word: dependence.

"The dead knot of traditional thinking lies in the word 'dependence': at home, depend on parents; outside, depend on friends; depend on God, depend on Buddha, depend on the emperor's grace... In short, depend on anything, just don't depend on yourself." This passage applied to the crypto industry today is so accurate it sends chills down your spine. Some people during the bear market study protocols, write code, participate in governance, preach, and build; others wait for the bull market, for institutional entry, for the Fed to print money, or for some KOL to call a buy. The former are practitioners of strong culture; the latter are patients of weak culture.

"The survival rule is simple: endure what others cannot endure, and do what others cannot do. Endurance is one line; ability is another line. The gap between the two is your survival opportunity." Endure what? Endure the paper losses of the bear market, the long days without positive feedback, the doubts of traditional friends, the self-doubt amid the AI wave. Do what? Write code others can't understand, produce quality thoughts, do community operations others are unwilling to do, build infrastructure others find too slow for returns.

"Don't touch the interests of the upper class, and don't touch the ideas of the lower class. Touching the interests of the upper class is like taking their lives; touching the ideas of the lower class is like digging up their ancestors' graves." Crypto has always been touching the interests of the upper class, but the real obstacle to its mass adoption is the ideas of the lower class—people are used to depending on others. When Crypto tells them, "You need to manage your own private keys," "You need to research protocols yourself," many instinctively shrink back. This is the inertia of cultural attributes.

Ding Yuanying says: "Those who act according to the laws are gods." Strong culture is not some mysticism; it is four words: act according to the laws. In the long run, protocols that solve real problems will accumulate value; projects that create noise will eventually go to zero. After reading this book, you will understand: Web3 has no savior. Those who can save this industry are only those who strive tirelessly and do what others cannot.

Book 5: The Sovereign Individual

The most amazing thing about this book is that it was published in 1997, yet it accurately predicted the birth of $BTC, foresaw the rise of cyber warfare, and saw through how the internet and digital currencies would shake the power foundations of nation-states. If The Distant Savior tells you "don't depend," then The Sovereign Individual tells you: this world is evolving from sovereign states to sovereign individuals. This is also what crypto culture and internet culture advocate—freedom to hold any country's currency, freedom to exchange information globally, and freedom to trade global assets.

In 1997, James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg published The Sovereign Individual. It didn't cause a stir at the time, but has been rediscovered with the explosion of $BTC in recent years. Peter Thiel says this book influenced him more than any other, and some believe Satoshi Nakamoto may have drawn inspiration from it.

In the information age, the speed of capital flow exceeds the government's ability to control it; the difficulty of spreading information is lower than the difficulty of patrolling territory. High-value individuals can leave jurisdictions faster than nations can adjust their enforcement mechanisms. The fiat currency system will not collapse due to hyperinflation or political collapse, but will collapse asymmetrically—the most productive, most liquid, and most informed groups exit first, adopting more advanced monetary technologies and detaching from the state's fiscal base. This creates a feedback loop: tax base shrinks → states raise taxes, tighten regulation → more people accelerate their exit.

In the world of sovereign individuals, currency is no longer a monopoly but a competition among multiple currency systems. Individuals choose currencies the same way they choose software: based on reliability, security, portability, and resistance to manipulation. Trust is no longer placed in politics but turns to cryptography and protocol design. This book imagined in 1997 a digital currency composed of encrypted sequences, unique, anonymous, and verifiable. Later, such a currency really appeared—$BTC.

Today, you can open a crypto exchange app, buy $BTC with US dollars, and use stablecoins to make cross-border transfers with people around the world—this set of operations was unimaginable twenty years ago. All of this points in the same direction: individuals are gaining unprecedented sovereignty. After reading this book, you will understand why Crypto is not a speculative bubble, but a fundamental restructuring of power.

Book 6: Taking Japan as a Mirror: A Survival Guide for the Era of Decline

Everyone's development must take historical processes into account. Japan, as the first East Asian economy to slide from a growth society to a stock society, has a path and pitfalls that offer highly realistic references for understanding the current economic downturn and the crypto industry's position in a bear market.

The "never-bankrupt" banking industry became the sector with the highest proportion of layoffs in Japan in the late 1990s. Who says banking is an iron rice bowl? When the economy declines and fiscal pressure is huge, even the "iron rice bowl" can be broken. During the collapse of Japan's financial system, a total of 153 banks went bankrupt, and the cumulative losses of surviving banks reached 11 trillion yen. In terms of civil servants, Japan basically completed its reform goal of cutting civil servants by 25% within 10 years by 2001, with national grassroots civil servants dropping from over 800k in 1994 to 290k.

But even during a recession, within a large ecosystem there are still tracks that don't slow down. After Japan's bubble economy ended, there was a 20-year wave of nationwide overseas expansion, with the entire industrial chain going global becoming one of the few golden tracks in the lost economy. High-end manufacturing was the biggest winner; anime, tourism, and other cultural products also became important forces in cultural exports.

This has great reference value for both ordinary Chinese citizens and cryptocurrency practitioners. In a national economic downturn, some industries still flourish, such as AI, going global, and high-end manufacturing. During a crypto industry bear market, some tracks are still developing rapidly, such as stablecoins, tokenized US stocks, and prediction markets. Regardless of bull or bear, the crypto industry has always been an industry focused on the global market. There is always somewhere "bullish."

Reading this book is not for pessimism, but to clearly understand what is happening in this era and where you should focus your efforts.

Book 7: Denationalization of Money

When central banks around the world are diluting your wealth by printing money, Hayek offered a prescription half a century ago—let money return to competition. This book is the spiritual manifesto of $BTC and a must-read for everyone who believes that "money should not be monopolized." Reading it during a bear market, you will understand that what you hold is not a speculative ticket, but an experiment in monetary systems.

Hayek, winner of the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics, became world-famous for The Road to Serfdom, and Denationalization of Money made him the spiritual godfather of the $BTC community. Written in 1976, when the Bretton Woods system had just collapsed and the global monetary system was in chaos, Hayek posed a nearly crazy question: Why must the right to issue money be a state monopoly? Why can't private entities issue money and let the market choose the best money?

Hayek's logic is clear: first, monopoly never produces good things. The state's monopoly on money issuance gives it the power to deprive people of their wealth through inflation. Second, competition leads to survival of the fittest. If private institutions were allowed to issue money, the market would choose the most stable, trustworthy, and value-preserving currencies. Third, money is not an extension of national sovereignty but a medium of market exchange. Its value comes from people's trust and use, not from government coercion.

These three logical points today sound like "common sense" about $BTC. Hayek writes: "I believe that monetary competition—that is, allowing private institutions to issue different kinds of money and letting the market decide which is most popular—would be the most effective means of preventing inflation and ensuring economic stability." He even imagined the basic features of a "private money": scarcity, verifiability, portability. Reading these descriptions, it's hard not to think of the $BTC whitepaper.

Of course, Hayek is not perfect; his envisioned private money still needed to be pegged to a basket of commodities to maintain purchasing power stability. But it is precisely these "imperfections" that made $BTC an upgraded version of Hayek's idea—money issued not by private institutions but by code and consensus; pegged not to a commodity basket but to mathematical absolute scarcity.

After reading this book, you will more clearly understand: why the 21 million cap of $BTC is so important—scarcity is the foundation of trust; why stablecoins still explode during bear markets—the market is choosing the most "usable" money in its own way; why there will be countless currencies coexisting in the future—just as there are countless languages and software today. Hayek concluded: "We can only hope that people will eventually realize that the monopoly of money is another milestone on the road to serfdom." Half a century later, $BTC gave him an answer beyond expectations.

Book 8: Duan Yongping's Investment Q&A

What we need most in a bear market is not a new strategy, but confirmation that we are still doing the right things. Duan Yongping repeatedly talks about an extremely simple principle that very few people actually practice: do the right things and do things right. What are the right things? Simply put, do things that are profitable, sustainable, and make you feel at ease. Return to the basics: since there is a company like Apple, the best in the world, why buy the second-tier ones? Since you believe $BTC and $ETH are the most fundamental assets in this industry, why spend a lot of energy chasing things you can't even clearly explain?

There is another extremely important thing: don't do wrong things. Good companies and outstanding people all have a "Stop doing list"—a list of things they don't do, and they keep adding to it. Buffett has said something similar: we only do the simplest, least effortful things; we stay far away from things that require constant decision-making.

Duan Yongping also said: find the most essential thing—the point that users always like and others can't provide. A good project is one you can clearly explain why it's good in one sentence; a bad project is one where you're still confused after listening to an hour-long roadshow. The same goes for people. Duan Yongping has been polishing his system for 15 years; Buffett has been polishing his for 80 years. The biggest advantage of a bear market is that it gives you enough time to settle down and do things you never had time for in a bull market—polish your system, strengthen your dam, and become that person whose "movements don't deform no matter how the market tosses."

Book 9: The Balaji Prophecy: Technology, Truth, and the Guide to Building the Future

This book comes from a crazy crypto believer who is also a successful serial entrepreneur. Balaji's resume alone is convincing: at 28, he founded the clinical genomics company Counsyl; at 38, he sold it for $375 million. As an angel investor, he invested in many projects, including $ETH, $SOL, Opensea, and Avalanche. As early as 2013, he taught one of Stanford's first $BTC online courses. In 2018, as Coinbase's first CTO, he led the team to launch the US dollar stablecoin USDC.

This book was published in 2024, but some of its predictions have already come true—like prediction markets. More predictions are awaiting realization: decentralized social networks, decentralized media, personal dashboards, on-chain Harvard, brain-computer interfaces, super soldier serums, bionics. He directly shares many entrepreneurial ideas on the table with readers.

Balaji's judgment on cryptocurrency is the boldest and clearest: "The emergence of cryptocurrency is a major change like a spinal cord transplant for the tech industry." Disk → Internet → Blockchain—this is the evolution of three-layer deployment. His judgment on Bitcoin is equally grand: "When $BTC's market cap reaches $100 billion, it's an industry; at $1 trillion, it's a world-level force; at $10 trillion, it will become the global government many have prophesied." Today, $BTC's market cap fluctuates around $1 trillion; the next stop is $10 trillion.

Balaji even asserts: by 2040, people under 30 will find a world without $BTC strange. On the status of blockchain, he says: "Throughout history, blockchain is the most important development since the invention of writing." Writing allowed information to spread across time; the internet allowed information to spread across space; blockchain allows value to spread across both time and space simultaneously, without needing to trust a third party.

Balaji's critique of media is equally sharp: we don't need a better media company; we need a better "truth machine"—prediction markets as media. Imagine a new media channel where every post comes with a market prediction bet, where the author's personal stake is closely linked to the game. In Balaji's vision, the future of media is decentralized across ten dimensions—reporting, sources, hosting, distribution, payments, tips, predictions, reputation, verification, consensus, and truth—each dimension being an entrepreneurial direction.

Reading this book during a bear market, you will understand why people like Balaji value crypto technology so much—because he sees not what to speculate on in the next bull market, but what the next world will look like.

Book 10: Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung

Every technological change is a revolution. The development of blockchain has faced countless troughs and confrontations—from states, traditional industries, and public perceptions. Some crypto people want to use blockchain to "overthrow" fiat currencies, "overthrow" banks, "overthrow" Nasdaq, and "overthrow" internet giants. Essentially, that's it. During a bear market trough, how to judge the situation, distinguish friends from foes, grasp the main contradiction, and accumulate strength—the answers to these questions are not found in any investment bible, but in the Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung.

This set of books is essentially a complete methodology on how to survive, develop, and ultimately win under extreme disadvantage. It writes about revolution, but the essence of revolution is: using a weak force to confront a strong old system and eventually replace it. Doesn't that sound like early $BTC? Doesn't it sound like today's $ETH and Web3?

Mao said: "Encircling the cities from the countryside." Applied to the crypto industry, what does that mean? Don't confront head-on where regulation is strictest and interests are most concentrated. Go to those countries and regions where the economy is collapsing, fiat is failing, and people have lost confidence in traditional finance—Argentina, Turkey, Nigeria, Venezuela. There, $BTC is not a speculative product but a lifeline. Infiltrate the center from the periphery, surround the strong economies from the weak ones.

Mao said: "Revolution is not a dinner party, not writing an essay, not painting or embroidering... Revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another." Today's revolutions rarely take the form of armed insurrection; instead, they unfold as technological revolutions. Whether AI or Web3, essentially it is still an act of one class overthrowing another class or classes. This is not gentle evolution, but cruel replacement.

Mao said: "Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a primary question of the revolution." So, in the crypto industry, who are enemies and who are friends? If after reading you only conclude that "traditional finance is the enemy, and the crypto industry is a friend," then you might have read it too superficially. The essence of Mao's writings is not telling you who the enemy is, but teaching you how to analyze friends and foes—based on interests, trends, and the principal aspect of contradictions. Within traditional finance, there are also friends—those institutions that see the trend and actively embrace change, like Robinhood, Futu, and BlackRock. Within the crypto industry, there are also enemies—those scams and Ponzi schemes that use the decentralized narrative to harvest retail investors. The real enemy is the old order that hinders the development of productivity; the real friend is those willing to use technology to solve real problems.

What the Mao anthology teaches us is not answers, but a framework for analysis. It tells you: in any long struggle, don't be intimidated by surface power comparisons, don't be misled by temporary troughs, don't get trapped by simple binary oppositions. You will understand why some seemingly weak forces can ultimately prevail, and why some seemingly powerful forces are destined to decline.

Conclusion: Ten Books, Ten Dimensions

They don't teach you to buy the bottom or sell the top, they don't analyze K-line patterns, and they don't predict the next 100x coin. But they all point to one thing: how to stay clear-headed, firm, and keep your movements unchanged during a bear market. The bear market eliminates not those with the worst technical skills, but those with the weakest convictions. Those who eventually transcend the cycle rely not on luck, but on cognitive depth and mental resilience. I hope this reading list can accompany you through this journey.

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