CoinDesk Podcast Network

'The best Sundays are for long reads and deep conversations. Recently the hosts of the Let's Talk Bitcoin! Show gathered to discuss the systemically important "Be Your Own Bank" Bitcoin narrative and what it means around the world today. The episode is sponsored by eToro.com and The Internet of Money Vol. 3 On today's episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! you're invited to join Andreas M. Antonopoulos, A...

A recap of one of the most significant weeks in recent American political history. This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Ciphertrace. The Breakdown Weekly Recap looks at the key themes that shaped the week. On this week’s episode, NLW discusses: The modern significance of Tiananmen Square, and why this week’s U.S. protests show why the tools of surveillance need to be applied to states, not ci...

How one of the world’s most important geopolitical relationships came to be what it is in 2020. This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Ciphertrace. The U.S.-China relationship has an outsized impact on global economics and politics. As that relationship comes even more into focus in the wake of COVID-19, this episode provides a historical primer.  Graham Webster is editor-in-chief of the Stanfo...

The meme is “money printer go brrr,” but according to this macro expert, central banks have almost no power to actually influence money itself. This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Ciphertrace. The conventional wisdom is that central banks are the most important economic actors in the world. Markets hang on their every word.  Yet, what if that power has less to do with actual monetary policy...

U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order last Thursday, seeking to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 prevents social media companies from civil liability for the content posted on them. The order targets Twitter and Facebook after Twitter fact-checked two of the President’s tweets.  Today, CoinDesk tackles the topic with Chief Content Officer Michael Cas...

Every day that protests continue and the stock market goes up, more people ask what the disconnect between markets and the real economy is. In this episode of The Breakdown, NLW peels back the story of today’s economy by looking at five numbers: This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Ciphertrace. The growth of the S&P500 since the March 23 low Current unemployment stats and a Bloomberg Economic...

A conversation with the outspoken pro-bitcoin, anti-surveillance human rights advocate and global power expert. This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Ciphertrace. Alex Gladstein is the chief strategy officer of the Human Rights Foundation. He is a powerful voice for the role of bitcoin in combating authoritarianism around the globe.  In today's episode, he and NLW discuss:  What the protests t...

As the U.S. experiences the most sustained civil disobedience in more than a generation, an exploration of what role bitcoin has to play in building a better system. This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Ciphertrace. Cities around the country have been engulfed in protest in the wake of the murder of 46-year-old black man George Floyd. There is an intense battle for the narrative around the pr...

'The best Sundays are for long reads and deep conversations. Recently the hosts of the Let's Talk Bitcoin! Show gathered to discuss state sponsored propaganda, corporate censorship and how cryptocurrency or decentralization changes the game. The rallying cry of the totalitarian is "He farted first", but if both systems have produced similar outcomes, is there much of a difference? Inspired by a re...

As the economic dimension of the COVID-19 crisis comes into clearer view, what have we learned about the battle for the future of money? Does the dollar reign supreme? Are within-the-system competitors like the euro or China’s digital yuan gaining ground? Does an outside the system alternative like bitcoin stand a chance?  This episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and ...

A macro expert joins to discuss why the U.S. dollar and economy are more broadly poised to suck the liquidity from the entire global economy. This episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund. You know the meme: Money printer go brrr. It means inflation right?  Not necessarily, says Brent Johnson. Since 2016-2017, Johnson has bee...

This episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund. Twenty-one different people can reasonably claim to have invented the light bulb, but Thomas Edison is the one we know about. Was it just good PR? According to Matt Ridley, it was because Edison was the progenitor of an “innovation factory” that didn’t just create things but brou...

This episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund. The battle to control narratives is the battle to shape how people understand the world around them. But the traditional gatekeepers of narratives - the media - have never had more competition to shape what is perceived as truth.  In this episode, NLW speaks with Bedrock Capital...

This episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund. On Wednesday, a batch of coins mined just a month after bitcoin’s birth were moved. It was the first time since August 2017 that any bitcoin from early 2009 had been transferred, and the action set Bitcoin Twitter on fire. While a number of bitcoin archaeologists quickly and pers...

This episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund. The European Union and the euro are part of the most ambitious political and economic experiment of the 21st century. The COVID-19 crisis, however, has exacerbated growing questions of political will and political legitimacy and led some to wonder if the eurozone can survive.  Tu...

This episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund. The dollar has a unique role in the world due to its reserve currency status. For many years that status has created incredible opportunities for the U.S. Increasingly, however, some are wondering if the global standard has outlived its usefulness - not only for the world but for...

This episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund. Jamie Catherwood works at O’Shaughnessy Asset Management, a quantitative long-equity investment firm. More importantly, however, he is the finance history guy on Twitter. His “Financial History: Sunday Reads” curation pieces and longer form articles on his site Investor Amnesia h...

This episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund. Albert Wenger is a partner at Union Square Ventures as well as a prolific thinker and writer. His “World After Capital” is an evolving digital book project that looks at a set of megatrend shifts as the world moves between economic paradigms from the Industrial Age to the Knowled...

This episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund. Niall Ferguson has called this moment an “age of experimentation” when it comes to currencies. One of the unique features of this moment is the experiments are not limited to the traditional actors. It is not just nation-states trying to elevate their currencies in the face of th...

This episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund. This is the second in a series of episodes on how the economic crisis is challenging and transforming different industries. NLW looks at: Movies Direct releases are already making more than box office counterparts AMC is on the verge of bankruptcy (or buyout by Amazon)  Productio...

This episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund. Two powerful and diametrically opposed forces are shaping the economy.  On the one hand is inflationary economic policy, which keeps the price of assets like real estate and stocks rising ever higher, but at the expense of savings as the value of currency depreciates.  On the oth...

This episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund. There is a shared sense that the world has shifted. Now begins the messy work of figuring out what it means for the future we’re headed into.  This live episode of The Breakdown podcast, recorded during Consensus: Distributed with NLW, features four conversations about how the fu...

This episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund. Last week, investing legend Paul Tudor Jones rocked the world of crypto and traditional markets with his full throated entrance into the bitcoin market via his latest letter to Tudor BVI investors.  While the headlines (and the quick price bump on the back of FOMO buying) were gr...

Although some believe bitcoin mining is a wasteful activity, on today's show we dig into the relative world of constant fuel production, lumpy demand and bitcoin based load balancing. After years of bitcoin mining domination by china-based miners, some US power producers, both professional and incidental, are beginning to get into the game as a way to be more green. It's a narrative reversal if ev...

“Some of the greatest theorists about money…thought it better to be multiple competing currencies rather than a single global standards, and there were plenty of periods in history where that was the case. Standardization of money came relatively late to the world. One of the lessons of history is that with globalization comes a tendency for a particular currency to become the number one dominant...