Items in italics are direct quotes from the articles below
On Monday, the Los Angeles Lakers retired two jerseys. Magic Johnson emceed the ceremony before a standing-room-only crowd at the Staples Center in the heart of downtown L.A. As the two jerseys, numbers 8 and 24, were hoisted to the rafters, the adoring Laker fans showered applause on the Laker greats who wore them. For this storied franchise with a long list of Hall of Famers, it was a fitting tribute. There’s only one twist to this fairy tale. Both numbers were worn by the same man. During Kobe Bryant’s 20-year career, he elevated a Laker franchise that had already seen the likes of Jabbar and Magic. His record wasn’t without its smudges–he was arrested in 2004 in connection with a sexual assault complaint in Colorado, and while the charges were later dropped, his reputation was tarnished. Even so, he remains one of the very early success stories of players who came right out of high school to the NBA. “Those times when you get up early and you work hard,” Bryant said during the number-retirement ceremony. “Those times you stay up late and you work hard. Those times when you don’t feel like working. You’re too tired. You don’t want to push yourself, but you do it anyway. That is actually the dream.” Bryant’s career has mirrored the path many entrepreneurs travel. By any measure, he has made it. But, don’t be fooled: Understanding his approach to the process is the lesson for any entrepreneur. It’s Kobe’s legendary work ethic, which has possibly landed him a position in the NBA Hall of Fame. Even during the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, Kobe would do pre-dawn workouts prior to official practices starting. Now out of the league, Bryant appears to be shifting his attention to the business and entrepreneurial world. He has been known to text successful business friends at all hours of the night and cold call others who catch his interest via a tweet or article.
Bryant told Bloomberg Businessweek:
I’ll just cold call people and pick their brain about stuff. Some of the questions that I ask will seem really, really simple and stupid, quite honestly, for them. But if I don’t know, I don’t know. You have to ask. I’ll just do that. I’ll just ask questions and I want to know more about how they build their businesses and how they run their companies and how they see the world.
It’s this work ethic and intensity, which will accelerate his business experience.
A few months ago, I had lunch with a former trader who told me: “This is my third asset class. I have traded commodities, then derivatives and now it is crypto. However unlike the precedent waves, Wall Street is late to the party and early investors are very different. They are very technical and sometimes often see crypto/decentralization as a religion. They don’t want a yacht or a Lambo; They want to hodl their tokens.” I think he was right. We are at the birth of a new asset class. As Andreessen Horowitz puts it, “cryptocurrencies are a new asset class that enable decentralized applications”. Or something like that. Some much smarter people than me like Chris Burniske and Adam White already wrote about the birth of the new asset class few years ago. In this post, I highlight the different stages of the birth of the crypto asset class through a simple framework of technology adoption. In a second post (to publish on Medium during the last week of December), I shall discuss why institutional investors are keen on crypto. Finally. I address the adoption challenges for institutional investors.
Paradigm shift->Believers->Converts->Speculation->Retail FOMO->Institutional money->BURST
The first adopters are believers. According to this article as of December 2017, cryptocurrency is in the speculation phase. It should be noted that two advanced projects are still considered to be in “beta mode”
- Bitcoin: It has become expensive and slow to transact. Even though the number of transaction grows, it is very far from being able to be a real medium of exchange. The recent forks try to provide alternatives and new updates such as lightning aim to enhance the network capacity.
- Ethereum: The only disruptive-use case ethereum has brought so far is token launch/initial coin offering. It has somehow disrupted early-stage financing. But that’s pretty much it. When people starts to trade/purchase too many “cryptokitties” (a pokemon-style game run on ethereum), the network clogged. Yes. I know. Awkward. But cool updates like lightning, sharding etc.. are soon coming to market.
The author believes there is possibly even more money that can be poured into this asset class. Personally, I do own cryptocurrency, however these articles remain my objective review of topics that are interesting, and I encourage you to do your own research.
This week, I’ve included Best Motivational Video 2018 – Speeches Compilation 6 Hour Long – Motivation By Mulliganbrothers from the Mulligan Brothers YouTube channel.
“If you think you know it all, you’re a fool for sure; real survivors learn wisdom from others.”
Proverbs 28:26 MSG
Pursuit of Excellence 
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