When I was 17 I had a "free reading" class where the only work was to read a certain number of pages and write a book report for each book I read. To minimize the number of reports, I selected the largest fiction book on my parents book shelf - Atlas Shrugged (800 pages). I've been skeptical of government economic and cultural propaganda since.

It's been a gradual awakening about other topics since then, but 2008 made me very awake about classic investing. Although I took the wrong lessons - I should have double downed on leverage and buying stocks instead of into mostly cash and SPY.

It wasn't until Bitcoin that exactly how the economic game has been played by those in power has started to make sense.