The Breakdown

There is perhaps nothing more important or contentious in macroeconomics right now than the question of inflation.  On the one hand, there is a growing concern that rapidly growing money supply and increasing central bank balance sheets will inevitably lead to inflationary pressures. On the other, critics of that point of view point to significant counterveiling forces such as the 10% unemployment...

Earlier this week, the Winklevoss brothers introduced Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy to bitcoin.  One of the notable parts of the recap video was a discussion of how Elon Musk was set to destroy the value of gold on Earth by mining gold from asteroids.  While much meme fun was had, on this week’s Long Reads Sunday NLW has chosen a selection that looks at how fiat beat out gold and how gold b...

On this edition of The Breakdown’s Weekly Recap, NLW looks at the strange melange of realities interacting in the new emerging bull market.  On the one hand, bitcoin has found narrative relevance and technical importance in a world of social unrest and increased state involvement in economies and citizens’ lives. On the other, insane financial engineering experiments are seeing three-quarters of a...

Today on the Brief: Jobless claims down and retail sales up The U.S. Federal Reserve is running distributed ledger technology experiments  The end of an era, as BitMEX begins KYC Our main discussion: the big battle brewing between Epic Games and Apple/Google. NLW looks at: Why Fortnite got kicked off the Apple and Google app stores  Why Epic Games is suing in response Why this was all very clearly...

The Investor’s Podcast Network cofounder Preston Pysh last recorded with The Breakdown on Black Thursday in March. As NLW and Pysh discussed the potential of future currency crises, bitcoin smashed all the way below $4,000.  In the five months since, bitcoin has risen 200%. It has attracted the devotion of leading hedge funders such as Paul Tudor Jones II and more recently has become the reserve a...

Today on the Brief: WSJ study finds TikTok was tracking data in a way that broke Android rules The latest Core Inflation statistics  MicroStrategy stocks pops 10% after cash to bitcoin announcement Our main discussion: What’s the Ethereum #SupplyGate really about NLW breaks down: The historical narratives bitcoiners and ether advocates hold relative to one another The history of dominant narrative...

Today on the Brief: A public company has switched $250 million in cash reserves to bitcoin The latest in the vaccine rumor trade with Vladimir Putin’s propaganda play  Hong Kongers use the stock market to protest Our main conversation is with former hedge fund manager Hugh Hendry.  After a few years of focusing on a “volatility at the end of the world trade” in property development in St. Barth’s,...

Today on the Brief: Grayscale launches national digital asset TV ad campaign Rough times for oil as Saudi Aramco sees 73% decline in revenue Kodak crashes as government grant paused amid allegations of impropriety   Our main conversation is a look at the latest skirmishes between the United States and China, including: U.S. sanctions on Hong Kong leaders including Carrie Lam  Retaliatory Chinese s...

On this week’s Long Reads Sunday, NLW reads three pieces: Public Markets Don’t Matter Like They Used To - Matt Levine in Bloomberg A look at how public markets are less and less about accessing new capital and more about narrative and liquidity for early investors. Two Reasons Crypto’s Bull Market Is Coming - Anil Lulla on CoinDesk The next bull market isn’t just about the bitcoin-dollar devaluati...

This week’s Breakdown Weekly Recap is all about that vibe you’ve been feeling - that inescapable notion a new crypto bull market is afoot.  NLW looks at the evidence: Rising gold price Recirculation of crypto money out of zombie protocols  New growth in small holder addresses Demand from emerging market p2p markets    It’s just possible this new bull market isn’t just starting to be seen in narrat...

Mainstream financial media loves reporting the stock market like it's the only economic indicator that matters. On this episode, NLW breaks down 11 numbers that together tell a much more complete story, including: Record price of gold Square’s bitcoin revenue National debt as a percentage of GDP Fall of the Turkish lira  Price of coffee, sugar and cocoa Housing in auto demand Anti-Chinese sentimen...

Today on the Brief: Better news in the jobless claims this week A new bitcoin adoption cycle? A check in on Lebanon Our main conversation is with Dr. George Selgin.  Dr. Selgin is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Cato Institute's Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives as well as Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Georgia.  In this eye-opening conversation, he and NLW g...

Today on the Brief: Robinhood doubles quarterly trading revenue Square did $875 billion in bitcoin revenue in Q2 - up 600% YoY ADP report: 167,000 jobs added in July (instead of expected 1.2 million)  Our main conversation is with Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough.  Before building Hedgeye into a “no-excuses provider of real-time investment research and a premier online financial media company,” Keith...

Today on the Brief: President Trump wants a cut of the TikTok deal Previewing this week’s COVID-19 vaccine trade  Dave Portnoy breaks into bitcoin Our main conversation is with Bobby Goodlatte.  Bobby is the founder of Form Capital, a new seed investment firm that focuses on supporting portfolio companies with value-add design.    Bobby was an early employee at Facebook and has been an active ange...

Today on the Brief: The TikTok-Microsoft Deal The Twitter hacker was 17 A changing of the guard for crypto hedge funds Our main discussion: recapping the best interviews of July 2020 Despite a huge variety of perspectives and experiences, one theme shown through in Breakdown conversations in July: the disparity between the stock market and the real economy and a growing unwillingness of people to...

Bitcoin started as a rebellious, anti-establishment technology. In many parts of the world, and for many people, it remains exactly that.  At the same time, however, there is a wave of traditionalists and institutional players moving into the space.  Are they buying into the revolution, or are they trying to capture value while fitting the disruption into a box that maintains the current power str...

On this week’s edition of The Breakdown Weekly Recap, NLW argues the big story of the week was actually a set of smaller stories that preview the faultlines and economic debates likely to absorb us in the coming months.  These include: The Federal Reserve signaling that fiscal stimulus needs to do more The beginning of the battles on fiscal stimulus The introduction of the “not safe to vote” narra...

Today on the Brief: The DXY hits a 52-week low Consumers seeking alternatives to cash  Bank of England rebuilds settlement system to work with CBDCs Our main conversation is with trader and analyst Tony Greer. In this conversation, he and NLW discuss: The Federal Reserve’s role in increasing inequality  How the Robinhood crowd differs from the 1999 bubble Why high-frequency traders might be the re...

Today on the Brief: More bad news from jobless claims and the GDP The big tech hearing was a whole bunch of nothing; watch TikTok instead Robinhood dives into Kodak (but so do illegal insider traders) Our main conversation is with independent bond strategist George Goncalves. We discuss: How the bond market watches Federal Reserve meetings What, if anything, was new about this week’s FOMC meeting...

Today on the Brief: Big tech goes to Washington The debate on the next COVID-19 relief act heats up More on institutional investors’ move into gold  “Imagine a world without counterparty risk.” That was Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov’s answer when asked to describe the true disruption of decentralized finance to a traditional finance audience.  On this episode of The Breakdown, Sergey and NLW...

It was a beautiful Monday.  Bitcoin crashed through $10,000 and got all the way up to a new yearly high of about $11,000 before retracing slightly.  As with any dramatic price action, people were quick to start giving their interpretations of why it happened.  In this episode, NLW explains eight of those interpretations, including: Banks stacking due to changes in custody rules Money printer go br...

Special purpose acquisition companies have been around since the 1990s, but have seen a significant uptick in popularity in recent years. Companies like Virgin Galactic, Draft Kings and Nikola have changed SPAC’s reputation from a tool for second- and third-tier private equity shops to win fees to a legitimate alternative to initial public offerings. In 2020, SPACs have made up roughly 40% of the...

This week on Long Reads Sunday, our selection is “Whose Century?” by Adam Tooze in the London Review of Books.  Nominally a review of four recent scholarly works on the conflict between the US and China, Tooze main argument is that the central problem with viewing this as a new Cold War is the idea that it is new.  Instead, we need to understand that, contra Fukiyama’s famous essay, history didn’t...

This week on the Breakdown Weekly Recap, NLW covers: A terrible week for US-China tensions, with dueling Consulate closures and an incredibly hawkish speech from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Worsening economic indicators, particularly around jobless claims which saw their first weekly rise in four months The likely size of the next US stimulus bill - $1T to $3T  

Today on the Brief: Which industries are recovering the best China retaliates against U.S. after consulate shutdown  Dollar heads toward its worst month since 2018 Our main discussion features returning guest Tuomas Malinen, CEO of GnS Economics. In this discussion, Tuomas and NLW discuss: An outline of the European Union’s new recovery plan The new debt issuance structure that marks a first for E...