Circle Three 53 / Delta

Circle Three is back in your inbox with a new look

Jul 26, 2022

Hi C3ers,

Circle Three is BACK.

Things are a little different around here, both in life and in the newsletter.

You can expect more notes on technology, culture, and leadership, less random map websites, and the same amount of inspiration for the week. I moved longer personal pieces to my blog.

The Circle Three hiatus offered some moments of inspiration. I realized I missed the writing. It helps me synthesize, formulate opinions, and understand topics deeply.

Also, the posts started feeling detached. I want the writings to be more integrated into the week, what is happening in culture and tech with some evergreen lessons on health and business.

Nowadays, I’m writing, investing, and managing operations for FirstWatch Crypto.

Hope you enjoy. Stay curious.

Lyric: Delta

It only felt right to start the lyrics section with Mumford & Sons. I’ve been living with more of a bias for action, including a rebrand of my website, the FirstWatch website, and process automations. Less screaming into the shadows, more finding a way.

Delta by Mumford & Sons
“My words are empty vessels, if I do nothing in this place
And we can scream into the shadows
And it's good that we can
But walk with me, I think we'll find a way
And walk with me, I think we'll find a way”

Psychology & Health

A book review of The Power of Habit. All habits, the book describes, are structured around a repeated cycle: Cue, Routine, and Reward. I highly recommend reading it. Even just read the first section on personal habits. Not only for the stories and science but to help you think differently because we see habits everywhere, and once we identify them we have the responsibility to change them.

Dementia is preventable. A TEDx talk from Max Lugavere, who’s mom started showing signs of dementia in her early fifties. “Our genes load the gun while our choices pull the trigger.” If one third of Alzheimer’s diagnoses may be preventable, I’d like to do what I can to avoid it. Unsurprisingly, diet is the primary level we can pull.

Business

Probabilities behind words. Confusion arises when people use words to describe probabilities. Words like always and a real possibility don’t offer much. It’s better to be comparative or improve forecasting or just say the probability itself. A small tool with a lot of power.

Bear Markets in Perspective. Grayscale Insights from July 2022. An excellent overview of crypto market cycles. This cycle: Leverage, Institutions, & DeFi Battle-testing. Seems fair. But is this time different? you might ask. Not according to Grayscale.

Technology

The Standards Innovation Paradox. “A standard is a specification for how a technology (hardware or software) should talk to other technologies. Standards are generally developed by the community.” A great piece on how technology propagates and evolves. I find this similar to how protocols are figuring out how to evolve from centralized to decentralized.

Use Cases for Crypto. SBF goes through pain points that crypto can help solve and how we might get there in a Twitter thread. I like his emphasis on the democratization of technology and that crypto isn’t a U.S.-centric tool.

Stablecoins are Eating the Financial World. Packy McCormick’s deep dive into stablecoins offers a great thought exercise on the use cases of crypto to follow up on SBF above. Circle’s CEO Jeremy Allaire, who in huge news last week posted Circle’s reserve breakdown, wants to be the platform for digital money that moves value on the internet. I don’t know where stables will be in five years, but the machine Circle has created is tough to ignore.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers,

Dan

Circle Three