Agreed. As for reference materials, you missed the key point that they tend to go out of date. An outdated reference book is largely useless, in contrast to a good novel.
> What they don't tell you right away is that there's no end to the stuff
Is there an end to any field worth studying? I would argue the allure of studying such fields lies in the endless horizons. The possibilities of expanding human knowledge by pushing beyond what is known.
It's been my experience that they do prepare chicken ahead of time. I've always seen trays of cooked chicken sitting under heat lamps. Also, I'm not sure about your last point. I eat at Popeyes about once a month and have never felt that their service was any different from any other fast food establishment.
I don't believe true crypto HFT strategies exist (i.e. sub-millisecond tick to trade). It's just not possible with websockets and http requests being the standard for data feeds and order placement on crypto exchanges.
> Making markets does not add any value to anyone other than the marketmakers and the stock exchanges.
Could you elaborate on this statement? It is my understanding that the value market markers provide is liquidity and tighter spreads. Worst case, they pull orders when informed volume is detected, but then the book is no worse off than what it would be if the market makers weren't there.
I would advise against Google's python course, as it is geared toward python devs working at Google. The course teaches Python 2, and goes against widely accepted guidelines such as PEP-8.
I highly recommend David Beazley's Python Cookbook (https://www.dabeaz.com/cookbook.html) for the most idiomatic and comprehensive introduction to Python.
If I understand your example correctly, you mean to say that wash trading can be used to inflate prices. This could be true if Tether was simply another no-name altcoin with abnormally large percentage volume on Kraken. However, Tether trades on the magnitude of a few billion USD daily[1]. $13 million is a drop in the bucket. And as the article states, the trade did not impact price.
Suppose wash trading is indeed occurring, what is the benefit to the perpetrator? Fees are 0.20% for both maker and taker on Kraken. You'd have to pay ~$52,000 to print a $13 million trade.