Crypto — Investing responsibly

Get rich quick

This is not financial advice. I could have called this blog “3 Altcoins That Will Make You Rich in 2023” or “5 Cryptocurrencies You Should Buy Now That Will Rise Soon” or some variation thereof, where the rules would be to use an odd number, mention crypto assets and make the assertion that you will get rich quick, the quicker the better. You’re probably laughing, but only because you know it would actually work and get lots of clicks.

This blog has no AI input whatsoever. That’s a choice I have made that will undoubtedly make this exercise more difficult and, I’m not even ashamed to admit, perhaps of lower quality. There’s always an improvement that can be made by using good tools in the right way.

Everyone wants something and most of us want it fast. Trying to get rich quick is the quickest way to get poor. With this blog, I want to help you invest responsibly but invest in cryptocurrencies. I know most will say this is an oxymoron, but bear with me.

To achieve my goal, I “have” to waltz around while stating my rationale from first principles or making essential, albeit seemingly unrelated; arguments to make my point. If you read these weekly insights, I hope that by now you’re not only used to it, but expect it.

I assume that you don’t need convincing that investing is not something we should do — responsibly, absolutely; but something we must do. I might expound on why later, though.

If you like reading longer texts, you’re in for a treat, otherwise, you might get some value out of it by using the table of contents and cherry-pick your venom.

Outline

I usually don’t do this sort of thing and may delete it before publishing, but if you’re reading it, you’ll know that I have made an editorial decision to leave it here and that gives you yet another insight into my thought process and writing style. I’m laying out the sub-headings for the blog I plan to write. This will help me structure it and make sure I touch on everything I want to address.

• The world is falling to pieces
• The system is broken. Or is it?
• The game we all play
• The devil’s advocate
• Everyone is a speculator
• Investing is speculation
• Crypto is a scam
• Can I make money from it?

The world is falling to pieces

I can’t start this blog without addressing the elephant in the room. Some banks around the world are crashing, bankrupt. The cracks have been showing for quite a while, patches have been used for some time to keep them from closing. And again governments and central banks intervene to keep these zombies alive.

This is nothing new and affects not only the banks but also many zombie companies that are kept alive by governments and not by the free market. Before I even try to side with the banks, which I will, since critical thinking requires it, I will try to destroy their very flimsy reputation. This is harder to do without the help of my AI friend, so I will either continue with more broad statements that you can research for yourself, or I will go back, delete my previous mention of not using AI, and you will never know it if I choose the latter.

The billions of dollars the big, established banks have paid in fines over the last 10 years for anti-money laundering (AML) violations is probably more or less equal to the value of the entire crypto market — if not more. To be clear: These fines were just a slap on the wrist for the banks and a cost of doing business. So you can only imagine the vast amounts of dollars that were laundered by these institutions. This raises many questions about requirements such as Know Your Customer (KYC), as our identities are available on the net for anyone to buy, precisely because institutions must comply with KYC requirements. Criminals continue to launder their money and our identities continue to be breached by hacking attacks where millions of identities are stolen in one fell swoop.

The creation of toxic derivatives that led to the disaster of 2008 still rears its head, but we don’t even think about it because we have short memories. Much of what we see and experience today started being irrigated in 2008. It was already planted but received a good dose of water to encourage the growth of its seeds.

The practices of moral hazard are widespread in financial institutions, and the following example is not unique to this institution.

https://twitter.com/MacroAlf/status/1634626124260028419

These companies hold our money and charge us for the privilege and then behave in ways that most poker players would condemn. There are reasons why this happens, which I will address when I side with these companies, but I must say already that there’s no excuse for this behaviour and that there are always other options, even if that may mean fewer or no rewards.

Before we got to the point we are at today, not too long ago, last week when I actually thought of writing this blog, all the fuss was around the crypto banks going bust. This was largely because Silvergate, the largest and most well-known crypto-friendly bank, ran into liquidity problems, which led to a bank run. Bank runs are self-fulfilling prophecies. If you find Bank Runs as a subheading in the outline, I have added it now. Caitlin Long does a good job of clarifying why Silvergate’s doom was not related to crypto but its own investment and risk management practices.

https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1633608132713938945

I have to make an edit here and add a link to Pomp’s substack as this post is quite relevant and Pomp has done a great job of showing that there is more to what is happening with crypto-friendly banks than meets the eye.

We are now seeing that it is not only crypto-friendly banks that are being stress tested. We see, for example, Credit Suisse, which we all knew was another contributor to the fines paid for compliance failures or, to put it bluntly, AML fraud and other malpractices. Have we forgotten that Deutsche Bank was recently in the headlines again for failing to comply with the rules and was on the verge of bankruptcy? I could list almost every bank you have ever heard of and give examples of wrongdoing. No bank can survive a bank run due to the fractional reserve system. I’m not making justice to the financial crisis we are seeing playing out at the moment, but you can see it and feel it. Money makes the world go round, the world is falling to pieces.

The system is broken. Or is it?

The world is at war, all the time. Not everywhere, all the time, but all the time somewhere. There’s a shortage of food, not everywhere, but somewhere all the time. Prices are rising all the time, and right now, it seems, everywhere.

People are protesting, not everywhere, because in some places they’re just gunned down if they do. People are turning on each other, whether it’s because of religion, politics, self identity, sexual identity, or any other reason they can find.

The system is broken. Or is it? What if that’s what the system is designed to do? I’m not going to argue for or against. I just want to think about how to live a good life, knowing that this is the reality out there, that is either by design or simply due to the way humans have evolved. And I want to help improve things wherever I can as well.

What does all this have to do with investing, responsibly or otherwise, you may ask. This is one of those seemingly unrelated arguments that I presumed you have agreed we dance around with. Praxeology helps us better understand how people behave, regardless of where they are in the hierarchy or their role in this game we play, called the economy. You can undoubtedly avoid playing politics, racism, xenophobia, wokism or prejudice of any kind, but you cannot avoid playing economics.

The game we all play

Make no mistake, we all play in the game we call economy. You can’t just decide that you do not want to play this game. You’re born into it and immediately registered as a player, you have no choice. Save your breath if you want to mention hermits and Buddhists or anything of the sort. And don’t shy away from calling it a game either, for there are rules, there are players (actors), there are winners and there are losers. If it’s a game, you better know the rules. I don’t think I need to explain why. So what are the rules?

You know the rules, at least some of them, possibly many. Rules are the laws and policies that govern the reality of your country. Most are national laws and policies because we live in sovereign countries, but there are also international laws and policies, as well as laws and policies that may not apply in the countries we live in, but which affect our own economy and which we, as responsible players, need to be aware of and play by accordingly.

We often hear ignorant comments claiming that the rich are cheats and criminals who evade taxes and thus harm the economy. It’s less ignorant to say that the wealthy legally avoid taxes and the poorer commit tax evasion; caveat for exceptions. That is, some play by the rules and others cheat, but both tend to pay for it.

You can argue that it is expensive to play by the rules, and I agree, because whoever makes the rules makes them in their favour. You can’t expect anything else if you wouldn’t do anything else yourself.

I always like to defer authority to someone who has earned it and who I believe can help us improve in the area we are focusing on. For economics, I would recommend reading at least, Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. It’s 140 pages long, easy to read, done in 2 days. Or Essentials of Economics by Faustino Ballve, which is 100 pages long. I preferred the former and there’s no reason to read both. Finally, I would once again recommend Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell. In my opinion, this is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the game they are in, but it’s a little longer at 750 pages. It’s worth every minute of it. Want to play responsibly? Learn the rules of the game.

The devil’s advocate

The number of rules at play here is so numerous and so complex that everyone, without exception, can know and understand them all. What we end up with, is experts in a field or area of a field, and we have many experts. That was said nonchalantly, but not sarcastically. I’m not an expert on law, public policy or any of the subjects I write about if you ask me. Me and my disclaimers. That reminds me, I need to go back to the introduction to add the same “This is not financial advice”disclaimer that everyone on the internet uses when giving financial advice.

I’m going to focus on one policy, possibly the mother of all policies and the one I think is most relevant to this blog. Not the only one, but the most relevant. The monetary policy.

Monetary policy is basically the plan that the central bank of a country or economic area decides to implement in order to attempt to establish the price of money. This is done primarily by setting the interest rate and controlling the money supply. If you look it up and land on one of the many central bank websites, you will read something that is probably quite different but that when squeezed, will gift you the same juice I have just given you. They waltz around unemployment, national currency and price stability, stable and controlled inflation. They also love a good dance.

Here’s another orange. The interest rate goes up, the price of money goes up as it becomes more expensive to buy money (credit). Money printing goes up, the value of money goes down as more money is then chasing the same economic goods in the economy. The opposite actions have the opposite results. The wealth of a nation is not measured by its money but by its economic goods, otherwise countries like Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Bolivia and many others would be filthy rich instead of shamefully poor.

However, every economic actor has to play by the rules. If monetary policy says that the interest rate is 0 (or below 0, believe it or not), then one can’t, or rather shouldn’t, act as if the interest rate were at say 2%. And one doesn’t, or rather, the educated who know the law/policies or hire experts to know it for them, don’t.

Every player acts in their own best interest. Knowing the rules of the game helps, but it doesn’t change the fact whether you know the rules or not. You always act in the way you believe is in your best interest, regardless. This leads to unintended consequences as players change the way they play according to the rules or at least the reality they are exposed to.

This reality is influenced by the rules, but even if they are not aware of the rules, they see them in action, feel their impact and change according to the best of their ability. This is why there are many cases where a certain tax or fee is increased and revenue decreases or, conversely, the tax or fee decreases and revenue increases. This is because actors act in their best interest and are guided by reality.

You can easily understand how an increase in a tax or fee can lead people to change their behaviour to avoid the impact of the change, even if they need to stop using a service or whatever that is at stake. Similarly, actors who were avoiding a particular activity may now engage in it because the associated tax or fee has decreased. Even if the tax or fee is lower, the increase in activity leads to higher revenues.

When you hear a politician or one of their economists say that they will increase a particular tax by any basis points to increase revenue by any amount, you may laugh out loud to hide your frustration, because you understand that their assertion and numbers are based on the assumption that everything remains the same but the tax or fee that changed. That’s never the case.

I think that’s enough of a primer to side with the devil. The devil being all the zombie companies that still exist, or banks that don’t fail because they get bailed out. These players play according to the rules, but unlike everyone else, they don’t get punished when the rules are changed on them, they get bailed out. Wouldn’t you ask for a loan you might not be able to repay, so you could buy a bigger house, if you knew the government or central bank would pay your mortgage if you couldn’t? I’m sure you would and so do the banks.

The monetary policy, which has set the rules of the game for some time, is anchored in the belief that spending is good for the economy, regardless of where or what you spend it on.

John Maynard Keynes once said very presciently: “ . . .the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.”

Unfortunately, the world’s current monetary policy is rooted in Keynes ideas. Although to be fair, many of today’s ideas were simply extrapolated and Keynes never said or advocated for some of the abhorrent conclusions, illustriously misjudged or handsomely paid for, that govern our economy today; I’m thinking specifically of Modern Monetary Theory but there are others. This is not to say that Keynes’ ideas were not wrong in themselves — many of them were. It’s not well known that the man who wrote the economics books that academics today have to study to get a degree in economics did not himself read any of the German-language classical economics writings of his time, translated or otherwise. If you care about these things, you must agree that this is ludicrous. If you don’t, I’m done with this point anyway. When the rules encourage and reward irresponsibility, you act irresponsibly.

Everyone is a speculator

Speculation is considered a dirty word and activity by those with a lack of understanding of what speculation is. It’s common to think less of those who have come into wealth as speculators, as if this had been done only by luck. This is because speculation is commonly thought of as gambling, when in fact it’s actually the opposite.

In gambling we create a risk when we decide to gamble; pick your vice; before that decision is made there’s no risk, it only exists for the person who chooses to gamble. In speculation, there exists a risk already, and the speculator agrees to take on that risk for an agreed price. So in essence rather than creating a risk, it removes it. Not literally, as the risk doesn’t disappear, but it removes the risk from whoever was carrying it.

An example would be a farmer who, once he invests time and capital in growing a crop, takes the risk that this crop will not produce the required yield, which rewards not only the investment and the work invested, but also the risk. So many things can happen that result in the farmer not being able to sell his produce or being able to sell it at a price below its cost. A speculator takes this risk from the farmer and bears it with the intention of making a profit. The farmer can sleep easy in the time between the deal and the harvest, knowing that his produce has already been sold.

A hypothetical example would be that a crop that is to be sold in a few months at a price of €1/kg is sold today at a price of €0.85/kg (a contract to buy at a later date at a price agreed today). The farmer is happy because even though the selling price is lower than the price that could be achieved in a few months, it is a guaranteed sale and is enough to pay for his investment and make a profit. The speculator is happy because she can earn over 15% return on investment (ROI). At the time of harvest, the market value of the product may be below or above the €1/kg, but only the speculator can actually lose on this deal. If the produce sells for more than € 1, the farmer has lost potential profits, he could have earned more, but he has not actually lost his investment of time and capital and the smaller profit. If the product sells for less than €0.85, the farmer still sells his product for the €0.85. The speculator takes the loss by selling for less than she paid.

But it’s not only the professional speculator who speculates. In the example above, all the other farmers who do not sell to the speculator are also speculating. They are speculating that in a few months the price will be higher than the €0.85 that the speculator is offering. They can’t possibly know what the price will be, how the weather will develop, what quantities other farmers will provide to the market and a myriad of other reasons that may influence prices in the future.

Every time we decide to take the risk in the hope of future returns that may not materialise, we are speculating. When we invest time and effort to write the lyrics for a song that an artist might buy from us, or paint a painting or produce anything in the hope of selling it at a profit, we are speculating. And the artist who buys the song and the collector who buys the painting are also speculating, because they expect their purchases to yield a profit, a return on investment.

Even though professional speculators make their living speculating on commodities such as gold and silver, oil and uranium, agricultural commodities, currencies and anything else that carries a risk and that they are willing to take at a certain price, they’re not alone. We all speculate when we take a risk in the hope of making a profit from it in the future. With that out of the way…

Investing is speculation

Investing is basically the act of spending today on something that will yield an income in the future. In this context, spending can be understood as sacrificing something today, not just money, in the hope of receiving a return in the future. I can choose to spend my time learning a new skill and investing in my competence and confidence. So I sacrifice my time as I could be doing something else that would bring more immediate results, like working on something or other. I can decide not to buy this and that and instead invest my money in bonds or equities or whatever I think might bring an income in the future. I sacrifice all the things I could buy today in the hope of that future income. Time preference plays a crucial role in investing, and the lower your time preference, the higher your chances of success.

I have read a little about investing. I have read a few of the popular books on the subject, but I have yet to find a good book on investing in cryptocurrencies. Maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe it’s too young an asset class, if you can even call it that, maybe it’s something else. It’s probably something else. A couple of books that I think are good on the topic of investing are One up on wall street by Peter Lynch and The Dao of Capital — Austrian Investing in a Distorted World by Mark Spitznagel, the latter being my favourite book on the subject so far. These books are focused on the stock market, but their lessons can be applied to any market.

The best investments we can make are first and foremost on ourselves, and the main resource we need to invest is our time. Prioritise and invest in your wellbeing, physically and mentally. Make learning a constant in your life, improve or acquire new skills, try new things, do your best to fail every day if possible. As Samuel Beckett said, try again, fail again, fail better.

At the same time, think; not as an afterthought, because unfortunately our reality doesn’t allow us this privilege; about how you can invest your money. Where and in what you should invest is the million dollar question. There are no right answers, but there are a lot of wrong ones.

Investing, just like speculation, involves risk. It’s the risk that makes reward possible, because no one would give away a reward unless risk was paid for it. Proper risk management is important, but we won’t go into that now. I’ll just say this much: only invest as much as you can afford to lose, not a penny more — that’s a good rule to start with. I have to plug in another book here for those thinking that they don’t have any money spare to invest, any money that they can afford to lose, The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason, a classic.

As we have seen above, investing, like any other economic activity, is inextricably linked to the rules of the game. That is, what is a really good investment decision today may turn out to be in the near future, the worst decision you have made.

It’s as if you’re waltzing to your heart’s content and the DJ suddenly and abruptly, changes the tune to hip-hop. Think about it for a moment. Would you continue dancing as if nothing had happened? You would probably grunt and reluctantly try to move your hips, clumsily and awkwardly. You might break a leg trying to follow the music without missing a beat.

Does that mean it’s better not to invest at all? No. You’re worse off not investing at all. In an inflationary economy, where monetary policymakers aim for 2% stable inflation, you would lose just over 20% of your purchasing power in 10 years; if it went up to 4%, you would lose close to 50%. Now look at today’s inflation rates. Saving used to be a responsible thing to do, but unfortunately, Keynesians have destroyed this practice not only through rhetoric but also through their policies.

Crypto is a scam

The crypto space is rife with frauds and scams. Conditions are ripe for swindlers and fraudsters, this market has all the characteristics they need. A new technology that is not well understood and has a steep learning curve. The opportunity to make money from it, quite easily. It’s not yet well regulated because it is so new. Thousands of willing victims begging for someone to take their money. The illusion of wealth and easy money that attracts these victims.

Investing responsibly in such an environment is an impossible task, you might be tempted to argue. I’ll try to convince you that it’s not only possible, but that it’s the responsible thing to do. I can easily give you the tools and tricks to avoid scammers and minimise your risk when it comes to fraudsters. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to eliminate risk completely, but no risk no reward. I make a distinction between scammers and fraudsters that may not be semantically correct, but I hope you will understand it, and that’s what matters when it comes to semantics.

I’ll rob you of potential profits by avoiding almost everything in the crypto market, but will also help you avoid almost certain losses.

There are a number of people who make a lot of money from these scams who are in no way affiliated with the scammers. They are usually day traders who get in and out quickly. It may take a day or two, but it is usually only a few hours or even minutes. They buy and sell whatever (as long as the charts give them the confidence to trade that asset) and make a profit as quickly as possible. The vast majority of day traders lose money. There are a small number of exceptionally good traders who take the money of the large number of traders who keep coming and going, not before enriching that small number of really good and experienced traders.

It’s quite common for people who want to invest in cryptocurrencies to start thinking about trading after a while. The reason for this is the high volatility and the fact that as newbies they are putting their money on something they don’t understand. And in trying to see how their investment is performing, they cannot take their eyes off the current price of the asset they bought. The price goes up, and when it unfailingly goes down, they think they have missed a good opportunity to make money or increase their holdings in the asset they own. This leads them to chase the next opportunity. Most of the time, these people end up buying high and selling low, or in other words, losing their money.

Trading is not the same thing as investing, it’s completely different actually. Investors and traders don’t use the same approaches, tools or techniques. Investing is a low time preference activity that they started with a high time preference mentality, more akin to trading. They end up feeding experienced traders and thinking crypto is a scam.

How to avoid scammers

Easy. But not effortlessly.

• Do not invest in something someone recommends to you before you have researched it thoroughly. If you invest in something before two weeks have passed since you found out about it and you haven’t read at least four hours of material not provided by the project itself, you have not conducted thorough research.
• Do not believe anyone without publicly recognised credentials and even then you should take anything they say with a grain of salt. Regardless of the credentials or how well you know the person, you must never skip the step of thorough research. Everyone acts in their own best interest. If you don’t act in your own interest, no one will.
• If it sounds too good to be true, assume it is. If, after thorough research, you don’t believe it’s a scam, but the opportunity sounds too good to be true, let it go. Every day there are an almost infinite number of opportunities sprouting. It’s better to pass up a good opportunity than to be scammed by one.

How to avoid fraudsters

Fraudsters are of a different calibre altogether. These people usually have something that at least makes them appear to be in good standing with the public, are often recognised as successful in their field, have a seemingly reputable business and put a lot more effort and even money into their scams.

For example, a difference between a scammer and a fraudster would be someone who develops a new smart contract for a new altcoin that is only available on decentralised exchanges (DEX) like Uniswap or SushiSwap, markets it via social media (unpaid) and a few niche forums, and drains the liquidity pool shortly after launch and has what they believe is enough to pay for their troubles. The characteristics here are low effort and low investment. A fraudster, would attempt a similar scam, but would have a white paper to describe his ingenious token, use a lot of jargon, nice pictures and/or videos, possibly paid marketing campaigns on social media and other media, and might even buy a listing on a reputable enough exchange. The result is the same: you lose your money when they leave the project and you end up with a worthless token.

There are all sorts of scams. Some have a worse impact on your life and wallet, others are less damaging, but all a net negative for the crypto industry and its participants. The biggest frauds you may have heard of were the big exchanges that at some point simply closed the doors and kept all customers’ money.

Avoiding exchange frauds is not as easy as avoiding scammers but it is possible with a little more time and effort. In addition to what you do to avoid scammers, you also need to learn how to custody your own cryptocurrency. This means that you do not buy your cryptocurrency if you’re not allowed/able to move it from where you bought it to your own wallet. This may be because you don’t know how to do it, there’s no wallet developed to receive the token, or some other reason. Whatever the reason, you don’t buy it. As with opportunities, there are new tokens every day. Once you buy it, you immediately transfer it to your wallet.

I’m not going to show you how to set up yourself for self custody, maybe in another blog, but I do want to point out again that there is a lot of fraud in cryptocurrencies, and while it’s not common, we have seen wallets that were scams and took your tokens when they were sent there. As with investing, caveat emptor.

Can I make money from it?

The question is whether I can make money from it, responsibly. And another, perhaps more pertinent question is why invest in cryptocurrencies and not something else?

I think I’ve already answered the first question. If you make an effort to avoid scammers, you will find only a small number of opportunities in which you can invest with some confidence. Some might conclude that they’re not comfortable investing in cryptocurrencies. If they have done their work, that’s their prerogative.

The second question is not so easy to answer, nor is there a one size fits all answer. More and more professional investors have a small allocation of cryptocurrencies in their portfolios. Professional investors tend to be responsible investors, that’s not a given, but wonted. I think the main arguments I can make are:

• Its asymmetric risk reward. Granted, you’ll probably have more opportunities with negative asymmetric risk reward, but proper research will eliminate most of those opportunities and leave you with a small number of opportunities where a positive asymmetric risk reward will offset any investment in negative ones. Risk management is the key to making this actually work, so you should improve your knowledge on this subject if needed. I’m afraid I haven’t read a book yet that deals with risk management in investing, so I can’t recommend any reading for you here.
• Another reason is that the future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed. If you think cryptocurrencies are just a fad, I have a bridge to sell you. Like any other technology you can think of, it will evolve and morph into something that may be very different from what it is today. But you only have to look at the minds behind crypto to understand that our world will not exist without this technology pervading, if not all, most areas of our society. The crypto economy is brimming with some of the brightest minds in the world who are focused on developing this technology to enable a more open, free and trustless; or trust minimised; world. The people who became multimillionaires or billionaires by investing in technologies or companies that delivered outsized returns did so in their infancy and before they proved successful, not when they were clear winners.

If you believed that cryptocurrencies were an easy way to make money fast, I hope I have been able to knock down that belief. Like any responsible investment, this one requires work from you.

If you invest responsibly, you probably won’t get rich quick, even with crypto, if by quick you understand something that takes less than 5 years. But if you give it enough time, you’re making a bet — no pun intended — with an asymmetric risk reward and that’s the kind of opportunity every investor works hard to find. With crypto you’re in a first of its kind situation, where, if you decide to do so, you can invest in an asset before institutions do. And they want to believe me, but can’t yet; mostly because of regulations and market liquidity; and a lot of money and resources are being spent to enable them to enter this market. When that happens, the asymmetric risk-reward will be over before you know it. So what’s the responsible thing to do?

As mentioned in the introduction to this blog, this is not financial advice, but I would definitely suggest researching projects that have been around for a few years, have at least a few hundred thousand followers, and have a decent market capitalisation and trading volume, i.e. a significant amount of money behind the project.

There’s only one token that I can recommend in good conscience, although I think you should see it as a saving rather than an investment. Don’t ignore my previous advice and caveat emptor. Buy Bitcoin.

Addendum

I have yet to find a book that I couldn’t read or download online. I have bought books that I read online first, and I have left many books less than a third read. If it’s not doing it for me, I’m not reading it just because I started it. I learned this from, and I don’t want to name drop, I’m almost sure, Naval Ravikant. I find that easier when I haven’t spent any money on it and I save time in the process.

Although I’m aware that I don’t always reward the authors of the many books I have read online and not bought, I try to mention their work and share their knowledge, ideas and insights.

Are some of these shadow libraries that make copyrighted works available a grey area of the law? No. They’re illegal. But there are plenty of legal libraries. It’s ultimately your choice, but investing 5 minutes of your time to search online for the book you want to read should pay off in most cases. Be responsible and good luck.