Hello,
Welcome to Edition 20 of The Reading List. Starting last week, we made this a weekly, and not fortnightly, Saturday affair. Every Saturday, I’ll keep sharing my favourite reads across crypto, finance, technology, culture, and beyond, alongside what I’m watching and reading.
Before we get to the reading, here’s what moved markets and what we covered at The Token Dispatch.
Let’s get going…
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The Week That Was
Last week, the US economy handed the Fed another awkward combination to deal with. While businesses in the country were still expanding, hiring was subdued and price pressures persisted.
Monday’s services survey showed the ISM index easing to 54.9 in September, comfortably above the 50 mark separating expansion from contraction. But its input-price index climbed to 74, the highest since July 2022. Fuel costs and supply disruptions were making it more expensive to meet demand. An expanding economy is good for company revenues, but rising costs complicate what shareholders get to keep.
September’s weak payroll gain of 29,000, reported on 2 October, suggested employers were reluctant to hire. But Thursday’s release showed new unemployment claims falling to 197,000 for the week ending 3 October. Slow hiring had not become widespread firing.
For the Fed, that leaves room to wait without declaring victory over inflation. Minutes published on Wednesday showed most officials expected another rate increase before year-end. Christopher Waller reinforced that message on Thursday, while allowing that increases need not come at consecutive meetings. A possible October pause is still compatible with higher rates later. September’s CPI report, due on 14 October, is the next important test.
US markets finished the week with gains across major US equity indices: the S&P 500 rose 1.2%, the Nasdaq 0.6% and the Dow 0.9%. Small caps diverged, with the Russell 2000 losing 0.9%. The US 10-year Treasury yield ended around 5.24%, slightly lower over the week but still elevated. Gold futures gained 1.4%.
Bitcoin was trading around $82,750 on Saturday morning in the US.
Crypto still faces a demanding backdrop. A Fed pause could offer relief, but expensive money and persistent energy inflation limit the case for an easy liquidity-driven rally. The economy’s resilience gives investors something to buy into, and central banks a reason to remain cautious.
What We Covered This Week
At The Token Dispatch, we examined what changes when software makes more of our financial decisions, and which parts of the system remain difficult to automate.
In Everything Everywhere All at Once, I explored why we need agents that can navigate across stocks, perpetual futures and prediction markets. In the piece, I also talk about the challenges that constrain the current agentic stack.
In Remittance Won’t Have a Global Winner, I explained why the evolving remittance stack will be won by local champions who will dominate licences, banking relationships and last-mile payouts.
Thejaswini tested how much judgement we hand over in The Apps That Trade for the Clueless. Turning a hunch into a strategy is getting easier; knowing whether its backtest means anything, or whether its creator benefits from unnecessary trading, remains harder. She then went shopping for discounted intelligence in GPT 97% Off, examining AntSeed’s open marketplace for AI access and the problem of verifying what an unfamiliar seller actually delivers.
Vaidik, meanwhile, questioned the foundations in DeFi Built the Wrong Toolkit. DeFi’s early tools were shaped by volatile tokens and anonymous borrowers. He explored why the arrival of income-producing assets could require different market structures, and bring on-chain finance closer to the traditional infrastructure it set out to challenge.
We have got more lined up for you in the coming weeks. Until then, we’ve got some recommendations that will keep you in good company.
On to this week’s reading list.
Regulation & Policy
What Is Needed for Tokenisation to Deliver: The IMF examines the legal rights, interoperable networks and reliable settlement assets needed for tokenisation to move beyond fragmented markets.
Asymmetry: Scott Galloway argues that cheap drones and unconventional tactics expose the weaknesses of America’s expensive military. In this piece, he also makes the case for rethinking defence spending.
Crypto & Tech
Crypto Can Originate-and-Distribute Now: Byron Gilliam explores how USD.AI’s GPU Loan Exchange brings the banking model of originating and selling loans to on-chain infrastructure financing.
Does the Internet Need to Be Liberated?: Grass’s business of collecting web data for AI revives an old conflict: information is easy to copy, but the people producing it still need to get paid.
Stocks With Benefits: DCo traces how tokenised stocks evolve from price exposure into useful collateral and native on-chain shares, asking which apps and issuers capture the value.
Finance & Economy
Consilience of Curves: Alexander Campbell connects AI acceleration, geopolitical fragmentation and Western reindustrialisation into an investment thesis grounded in energy, minerals and the cost of capital.
Markets Are Feeling Crowded: Byron Gilliam examines whether AI’s enormous financing needs are raising borrowing costs and crowding out investment across the rest of the economy.
Underwriting Digital Credit Liquidity: Keyrock tests whether Bitcoin-backed preferred shares can function as dependable collateral, examining stressed liquidity, exit times and reliance on issuer buybacks.
Losing Less Between Your Best Ideas: Rhino offers a compact reminder that preserving capital between high-conviction opportunities matters as much as finding the next winning trade.
AI & Innovation
Vibe Manufacturing Is Here: Greg Isenberg explores how AI-assisted design, desktop 3D printing and on-demand factories could make small-scale physical-product businesses easier to build.
Honor Among Machines: Samuele Marro introduces dovetail, a research project developing verifiable rules that could let independent AI agents cooperate without a central gatekeeper.
The Physics Nobel for Hunting Cosmic Neutrinos: Francis Halzen’s Nobel recognises the IceCube observatory and its discovery of high-energy cosmic neutrinos, opening another way to study the distant universe.
Culture & Beyond
What If Your Kid Becomes a Nepo-Baby?: Jords questions how we judge inherited advantage, arguing that success should account for where people started and whether they enjoy the lives they build.
How to Assemble Science: Helen Pearson explains why combining existing evidence can reveal life-saving insights that the constant pursuit of individual scientific breakthroughs overlooks.
That’s all for this week. I’ll be back next Saturday.
Until then, happy reading!
Prathik
P.S.: Read, watched or listened to something worth sharing? Send it my way for a future edition.
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