The Breakdown

Today on the Brief: Disappointing jobless claim numbers with first increase in 4 months US banks now allows to custody crypto Senate hears arguments for a digital dollar in the context of US-China economic competition Our main conversation with Sahil Bloom Sahil Bloom is an investor with Altamont Capital Partners and a prolific author of financial literacy Twitter threads.  In this conversation, h...

Today on the Brief: US Gov’t forces China’s Houston consulate to close US previously-owned housing market grows 20.7% May to June Insider stock selling reaches record levels Our main discussion: DeFi 101 Today’s episode of The Breakdown is a primer for anyone who has lost track of the terminology surrounding decentralized finance. In it, NLW goes over: DeFi’s background and origins Market making i...

Today on the Brief: EU leaders agree on $2 billion stimulus package LinkedIn job cuts show weakness in the professional sector Has DeFi jumped the shark? Our main discussion: The Fed’s changing inflation strategy University of Oregon professor and Bloomberg columnist Tim Duy recently penned a piece called “The Fed Is Setting the Stage for a Major Policy Change” arguing that we’re likely to see mor...

Today on the Brief: Mastercard, Standard Chartered and PayPal all deepen their engagement with crypto Japan inches closer to a central bank digital currency The real estate “doom trade” opens up Our main discussion: GPT-3 Generative pertained transformer-3 – or GPT-3 as it’s better known – absolutely took over the internet this weekend.  It’s a new AI language model that can do some truly incredib...

On this week’s Long Reads Sunday, we look at two essays about stablecoins previously published on CoinDesk.  The first is called “USD Stablecoins Are Surging, but Zero Interest Rates Complicate Business Model” by Hasu and was one of the first pieces to recognize that demand was coming not just from the crypto space but from emerging markets facing crisis time currency pressures.  The second is “Hy...

On this edition of the Weekly Recap, NLW explores: No-volatility bitcoin and DeFi’s big quarter An uptick in central bank currency action PayPal crypto confirmation A China-U.S. rhetoric flare up Social media as democracy’s fault line In Fed World, is the narrative trade the only trade?

Today on the Brief: The latest information in the Twitter hack Thailand starts using its central bank digital currency Treasury Secretary Mnuchin calls on Congress for more funds  Our main conversation is with Jon Turek, author of “Cheap Convexity.”  In this conversation, he and NLW discuss: Why the dollar has gotten stronger thanks to a savings glut from Asia How a too-strong dollar hurts other m...

Today on the Brief: Adjustment to bank profits in anticipation of growing debt delinquency  The lowest decrease in jobless claims since March  A boost in retail spending  Today’s main discussion: The Great Twitter Hack, feat. Dr. Tom Robinson, chief scientist and co-founder of Elliptic  Wednesday, at around 2:15 p.m. EDT, prominent Crypto Twitter accounts started sharing a similar message about a...

No geopolitical relationship will shape the world over the coming decade as much as that of the U.S. and China.  A day after President Trump signed the Hong Kong Autonomy Act enabling sanctions on those that threaten the autonomy of China (and the companies that do business with them) and the UK worked to ban Huawei 5G infrastructure, this episode of the Breakdown looks at the key faultlines and i...

Today on the Brief: A followup on Tesla, corporate earnings and PayPal’s crypto ambitions New COVID-19 shutdowns in California  Small businesses on the brink  Our main conversation: Bloomberg has reported recently bankrupt companies including J.C. Penney and Hertz had provided executives with more than $131,000,000 in bonuses.  On this episode of The Breakdown, NLW examines: The logic behind these...

Today on the Brief: Wall Street quarterly earnings season opens Investor flock to higher-yielding Chinese government bonds Bitcoin whales go down but other types of HODLers go up Our main conversation: What the hell is going on with $TSLA? Elon Musk is now richer than Warren Buffett. A year ago, Tesla wasn’t as valuable as Ford or GM. Now it’s more than 25% of the value of the auto market as a who...

On this episode of Long Reads Sunday, we look at Professor Stephen S. Roach’s piece “The Covid Shock To The Dollar.” In it, he argues: Americans have been squandering their savings potential  Because of this, we are forced to borrow surplus savings from abroad We have usually been able to do this on favorable terms That window may be coming to a close There could be a 35% drop in the dollar over t...

On The Breakdown’s Weekly Recap, NLW explores: The final tally on the TikTok Doge viral campaign  The growing geopolitical tension between China and the US and where it’s manifesting  Positive economic indicators in reduced jobless claims Negative economic indicators in growing COVID-19 cases and deaths Why bitcoin is sideways Why Treasury yields are down Why gold is up  

Today on the Brief: Hong Kong re-closes schools based on COVID-19 growth Coinbase explores direct U.S. exchange listing China starts selling stock, easing massive rally  Our main conversation is with Liberty Blitzkrieg creator and editor Michael Krieger. Michael announced just before recording that he is done publishing on the LB site. He and NLW discuss: How Michael became disaffected while worki...

Today on the Brief: Slight good news in new and continuing jobless claims  Record corporate equity and debt sales during the crisis USDC freezes $100k Our main conversation: Introducing the Macro Media Index. The Macro Media Index is a monthly summary of the best macroeconomic tweets, essays, podcast and videos from around the internet.  In this inaugural edition, NLW looks at a few key themes: Th...

What’s old is new again! What happens when you combine a mostly hibernating memecoin with the world’s most powerful (and controversial) meme platform, and throw in a new generation of daytraders that have become convinced that they can drive the price of anything up?  The great TikTok Doge pump of 2020, of course.  In this episode, NLW breaks down: The history of Dogecoin How TikTok became one of...

Today on the Brief: Social media apps get caught in geopolitical tensions  Pitchforks around the Paycheck Protection Program  Brazil blocks Binance Our main discussion is with Daniel Lacalle. Daniel is chief economist at Tressis and is the author of numerous books including “Life in the Financial Markets,” “Escape from the Central Bank Trap” and his most recent, “Freedom or Equality.” He has been...

In this extended Brief, NLW tells the story of the economy through five themes: The story of the economy as told by five macroeconomic indicators including Chinese stocks, New York City real estate, coronavirus cases and more. China stocks surge – but how much is it driven by Chinese state-sponsored media hype? A tale of two cities – real estate in New York City and Hong Kong are telling very diff...

An appropriate post-July 4th episode of the Breakdown's #LongReadsSunday featuring Human Rights Foundation CSO Alex Gladstein's "Why Bitcoin Matters For Freedom" Read the original on Time Follow Alex on Twitter 

Financial education and financial literacy are at crisis levels in this country. Financial advisers spend billions on advertising but a fraction of that on education. The resources that are available tend to be inaccessible and not designed for the people who need them most. Financial media remains a boring, exclusionary acronym game.  The net result of all of this is a population of Americans who...

OKCoin and BitMEX recently came together to provide a $150,000 grant to Bitcoin Core developer Amiti Uttarwar.  In this conversation, Amiti and OKCoin CEO Hong Fang discuss: Why OKCoin believes it is essential for companies in the space to support Bitcoin Core development How OKCoin and BitMEX came together around this grant Why Amiti is focused on the P2P layer Why Amiti believes Bitcoin should b...

Even before the COVID-19 crisis, Reddit’s WallStreetBets channel was featured on the cover of Bloomberg BusinessWeek as an emerging market force.  Since then, between the surge in signups for Robinhood and the wave of followers of Davey Day Trader Global Global, these day traders have taken an even bigger place in the conversation about the stock market.  While many finance professionals (and, mos...

Satoshi Nakamoto is often recognized for his technical genius in solving the double spend problem. He is also widely revered for his willingness to walk away from the protocol to make it stronger, something no other entrepreneur who has created anything on the scale of Bitcoin has ever done.  What people discuss less often is Satoshi’s marketing instincts. In this illuminating conversation, serial...

What would you do if you were approaching your 40s, burned out and realizing the type of financial success you had been pursuing wasn’t actually serving your true goal of freedom?  If you were George Gammon, the answer would be to change everything and start globetrotting in search of new opportunities.  George Gammon is the host of the rapidly growing George Gammon YouTube channel and Rebel Capit...

June 2020 will go down in the history books as an extremely chaotic and confusing period.  In this “Best of the Month” retrospective, we look at some of the best guest conversations from The Breakdown, including: Human Rights Foundation CSO Alex Gladstein on the importance of cash for privacy DigiChina Editor-in-Chief Graham Webster on China’s decade-long turn away from liberalism  Alhambra Invest...