The Breakdown

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 tell us about the state of democracy in the U.S. The potential impact of protests and COVID-19 on surveillance norms  The potential for a "biological Patriot Act"  The...

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 protests. Are they legitimate outcries against institutional racism and police brutality? Is the looting covertly being driven by white supremacists on the one hand or ANTIFA on the other?  In the Bitcoin community, some ha...

The week's episodes in one convenient file.  Monday | Best of April/May (not included in Weekly Recap)  Tuesday | Deglobalization and Other Narrative Violations, Feat. Geoff Lewis Wednesday | Why Innovation Matters (and How Not to Screw It Up), Feat. Matt Ridley Thursday | The Geopolitical Implications of a Too-Strong Dollar, Feat. Brent Johnson Friday | The Battle for the Future of Money, feat. L...

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?  Over the last month, the “Money Reimagined” series has looked at the battle...

You know the meme: Money printer go brrr. It means inflation right?  Not necessarily, says Brent Johnson. Since 2016-2017, Johnson has been arguing the big economic issue of our time isn’t inflation of the U.S. dollar due to excess money printing, but the havoc caused by a global system where the dollar keeps getting stronger and sucks up liquidity from the rest of the world.  As the dollar has st...

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 brought them to market in a way no one else did.  Innovation is one of the most important forces in the economy, and arguabl...

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 founder Geoff Lewis about what it means to seek out opportunities in “narrative violations.” They also discuss:  Why de-...

Highlights from some of the most interesting conversations on The Breakdown from the last two months.  4/1 - Peter Zeihan on why the world we’ve known for 30 years is changing forever 4/6 - Emerson Spartz on a moment of punctuated equilibrium  4/17 - Jared Dillian on the political football of stock buy backs 4/21 - Joe McCann on how financial engineering came to dominate Wall Street 4/22 - Luke Gr...

The complete week's shows in one convenient episode Monday | Economic Freedom in the World After Capital, feat. Albert Wenger Tuesday | Lessons from the Financial History of Pandemics, feat. Jamie Catherwood Wednesday | Why a Strong Dollar Is Bad for the US and Bad for the World, feat. Lyn Alden Thursday | ‘Dismantle the Euro to Save Europe’ Feat. Tuomas Malinen Friday | The Shadow of Satoshi’s Gh...

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 persuasively argued the tokens were almost assuredly not mined by bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, it was a moment that rei...

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.  Tuomas Malinen is the CEO of GnS Economics, a macroeconomic advisory firm, and Adj. Professor of Economics at the Universi...

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 the U.S., too.  In this illuminating conversation, one of FinTwit’s brightest minds, Lyn Alden, shares her perspective...

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 have become required reading for anyone who wants the historical context for current financial issues.  On this episode o...

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 Knowledge Age.  In this wide-ranging conversation, he and NLW discuss:  Why attention is at the center of the new Knowledge Age...

The complete week's shows in one convenient file  Monday | The Great Monetary Inflation: Paul Tudor Jones' Complete Case For Bitcoin Tuesday | How We Future Now - Live With Kathleen Breitman, Caitlin Long and More Wednesday | A Coming Reckoning: Why The Fed Can't Outspend Deflation, feat. Jeff Booth Thursday | Surveying The Carnage: Movies, Sports, and Education in Crisis Friday | The Great Inflat...

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 the global dominance of the dollar, but non-sovereign monies born of decentralized networks that are plausible contenders...

  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)  Production is on hold and even when it resumes, likely to have strict rules on how it is carried out Sports Depending on your s...

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 other is technology-wrought deflation. As technology increases its capacity exponentially, it causes everything it touches...

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 with NLW features four conversations about how the future is shifting before our very eyes.  How We Game and Entertain Now - featuring Kathleen Breitman, co-founder of Tezos and founder of blockchain game studio Co...

Jones' letter lays out his bitcoin and macro thesis.  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 great, the story is even more interesting than the soundbyte.  In th...

The week's complete show run in one convenient file.  Monday | Why Buffett’s Bearishness Should End V-Shaped Recovery Talk Tuesday | Why Crypto Matters for Financial Inclusion, Feat. Celo's Marek Olszewski Wednesday | Surveying the Carnage: How Real Estate, Travel and Music Are Faring During the Crisis Thursday | 9 Reasons Why Bitcoin Has Never Been Stronger Going Into A Halving Friday | The Rise...

Libra, the Euro, China's DCEP.  Do any of these currencies have a chance at displacing the dollar in the global order? Or is it possible - as Niall Ferguson suggestions on this episode - that we're poised to shift back to a multipollar, multi-currency world? The second in our four-part documentary micro-series on the battle for the future of money.  Also featuring Michael Casey, Matthew Graham, Ka...

The bitcoin halving is just a few days away and the growing excitement is palpable. On this episode of The Breakdown, NLW argues that the excitement is also legitimate, and looks at nine reasons why bitcoin has never been stronger going into one of its every-four-year issuance reductions: Price Hash rate Mining competition Accessibility and Services  Infrastructure Institutional awareness and part...

The second order effects of the COVID-19 crisis are here, and they’re painful. In this episode, NLW looks at how COVID is impacting three industries: Travel and tourism 100m lost jobs expected globally  $2.7 in lost GDP  Airbnb lays of 25% of employees  Music & Concerts From a record $12.2B concert year to a loss of $9B Expectations of concert prohibition lasting up to two years Industry organizin...

Around the world, an estimated 1.7 billion people remain unbanked and lacking access to high quality financial services.  Some projects see cryptocurrency as an answer. In this episode of The Breakdown, NLW speaks with Celo co-founder Marek Olszewski about: How Celo was designed differently to address financial inclusion as a primary use case  The problems with centralized approaches to mobile mon...