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How A Crypto Side Quest Spiralled Into A Perennial Story Of Risk, Gambling, Markets & Obsession.

Nat Eliason is an absolute legend.

I’ve been subscribed to his newsletter, following his tweets, and listening to his interviews for what feels like years now.

He’s a prolific online writer who recently published his debut book, a memoir of a crypto side quest he spiralled deep down into which is serves as revelatory for the sheer insanity that is crypto. It’s meme coins, making loads of money, losing it, secret discord servers, exit liquidity and all the rest that foreshadows the same stuff happening now. 

Crypto is back in the news, and therefore so is Nat’s book - Crypto Confidential - which is a must read if you want to get a sense for, or contribute to, the mania.

However, writing is Nat’s circulatory system, so we ended up speaking half about books and half about crypto. When you check out the episode, navigate the timestamps if you wanna skip the writing stuff and go straight to crypto.

Before I leave you with Nat, he’s got this tremendous call to action on his Substack that I wanted to share here…

“Among my strongest life goals is to write something worthy of outliving me”

#189 of ‘The Curious Worldview Podcast’ with Nat Eliason.

Similar to this episode - Zeke Faux on his book, Money Go Up

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Here is a transcript of the opening exchange from the conversation…

Ryan
So I wanted to start with this incredible anecdote that I had today. Very serendipitous. I'm in London for work and I was meeting with a client and at the end of the meeting, we started talking books and he brought up crypto. and I mentioned Zeke Fowl and his book number go up and then he goes, you know, I'm actually reading this incredible book right now.

Think it's called crypto confidential or something like that. And I, and I interjected that is so amazing that you've actually said that. and then I went on to explain that I have this podcast and actually interviewing that today showed in my calendar, you know, just a totally insane moment. And I just thought for you, this anecdote, two random guys you've never met, on the exact same day, just randomly having your book brought up in conversation.

I couldn't imagine that there's any better organic feeling.

Nat
That's pretty amazing. It's been really cool to see too. You know, the book came out and I had the initial launch fanfare and whatnot, but it definitely came out at a challenging time for that topic because nobody cared that much about crypto outside of crypto. You know, there was no like retail mass market interest over this summer.

when the book launched. So it was pretty quiet the last few months. And then I was telling you just before we got on this call, like yesterday or Monday was the highest rank that it had hit on Amazon since launch, which was just awesome. mean, like books don't normally do that, right? You get like the peak when it launches and then it finds somewhere where it settles. And to see it kind of like, this was my hope was that it would get out, it would get some reviews under its belt. And then when the bull market came back, then there would be a lot more motivation to read it and

Hopefully starting to see that play out now. So it's exciting.

Ryan
How significant has the uptick been?

Nat
Pretty meaningful. I like it was just not selling many copies the last month or two. It would, you know, it would hang out around like 250 to 500,000 on Amazon in books, which is low. You know, it's like a few copies a day. And then on Monday it jumped up to like 10,000 or 12,000. Nice. Right. it's pretty significant. It hit number one in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency books that like, which was really cool. Cause it was like, was like me and then Michael Lewis. was like, okay. Print screen that send it to Michael Lewis. Yeah. I texted it to my editor at portfolio. was like, we did it. That's worth framing, man. Honestly. I know. I know. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was pretty awesome to see.

So I hope that it, hope that it keeps up in the word of mouth keeps spreading. Cause it is like, I mean, it's a book for a mania. It's a book for a bull run. It's about, you know, like being in that craziness and making the most of it, not losing your head during it, the emotional ups and downs as well as the financial. And so I think that people can hopefully get a lot of value out of it as we're entering this like next crazy era.

Ryan
It's funny how you say that. Cause I've heard you talk about that. You don't want this to be a crypto book, but rather…….

continue the conversation with the podcast here.