The Breakdown

One month after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008, Warren Buffett wrote an Op-Ed saying that he was buying stocks. Yet during the Coronavirus crisis, he is sitting firmly on the sidelines.  On Saturday night, the “Oracle of Omaha” spoke for 4.5 hours in the first ever virtual version of the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting - an event which some have called the “Woodstock of C...

The week's episodes in one long run.  Monday | Bitcoin vs. QE Infinity: The 4 Archetypes Of The Halving Debate Tuesday | The Mass Surveillance Machine, Feat. Maya Zehavi Wednesday | When Currencies Fail: A Primer on the Crisis in Lebanon Thursday | From Corrupt To Broken: An Insider’s Analysis Of The Fed, feat. Danielle DiMartino Booth Friday | Why The Dollar Has Never Been Stronger Or More Set Up...

The first of a 4-part docu-style series on the battle for the future of money. In this first episode of Money Reimagined, we look at: Why US markets took so long to react How the stock market became a political utility Why, even before the crisis, “increasingly exotic forms of quantitative easing” were inevitable Why the bailouts have some investors accusing our entire market of being cronyism rat...

Danielle DiMartino Booth is the CEO and Chief Strategist of Quill Intelligence. Before that, however, after correctly predicting the mortgage meltdown, she was called upon to serve and spent 9 years as an advisor to the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. That experience led her to write “Fed Up: An Insider's Take on Why the Federal Reserve is Bad for America.” In this episode, Daniel...

The Lebanese pound has lost at least 50% of its value since last year. 220,000 people have lost their jobs. Food prices are up 58%. An estimated 75% of the population needs assistance of some kind. And over the last two nights, at least a dozen banks have been torched by protesters.    The catalyst? Not coronavirus, but a massive dollar shortage that is destroying an economy that relies on inflows...

As the COVID-19 crisis rages, it takes on new economic and political dimensions. The frames for many of the most important questions for the next decade are being set now, in this moment.  On this episode of The Breakdown, NLW is joined by Maya Zehavi, a long-time blockchain consultant known for her insightful domain-spanning takes.  They discuss:  How the COVID-19 health crisis overlapped with a...

The bitcoin halving is just two weeks away. While the COVID-19 crisis pushed attention off the momentous event for a while, the discussion is coming back fast and strong. Google searches for the bitcoin halving already exceeding the 2016 peak, despite almost no mainstream media coverage.  In this episode, NLW breaks down 4 archetypes of people within the larger debates around the bitcoin halving:...

The full week's content in a single convenient long-run episode. Monday | Bearish or Bullish? What Oil, DeFi Hacks and Cash Hoarding Tell Us About Markets Tuesday | From Proof of Health to UBI: How Everything Changes Post COVID-19, Feat. Joe McCann Wednesday | The History of the Dollar System From Bretton Woods to QE Infinity, Feat. Luke Gromen Thursday | We Don’t Need Big Brother To Beat This Vir...

Yan Pritzker is the CTO and cofounder of Swan Bitcoin, an automated bitcoin only investing app aiming to be the best onramp to bitcoin. He is also the author of Inventing Bitcoin.  On this episode, he and NLW discuss: How immigrating from the Soviet Union taught Yan about capital controls  Buying bitcoin at $30 in 2011  Why the type of capital available shapes what type of startups entrepreneurs f...

One of the key aspects of most plans to reopen the economy is digital contact tracing. This would be an apparatus whereby mobile phones kept track of the other mobile phones they had been physically proximate to, so that if someone were diagnosed with COVID-19, the at-risk people they had been in contact with could be notified. Apple and Google have proposed one plan while a European consortium is...

QE infinity. Corporate bailouts. Nudging UBI. The incredible economic phenomena going on now didn’t happen out of the blue. They are the byproducts of a key events spread across the 70 year history of the US dollar led global monetary system.  Luke Gromen is the founder of Forest From The Trees, a macro/thematic research firm. In this episode, Luke provides a TL;DR on those key events that got us...

Joe McCann currently works in cloud and AI at Microsoft and has spent decades in tech, crypto, and open source communities. He recently wrote a piece called “A New, New World Order” all about the second and third order effects of Covid-19.  In this conversation, Joe and NLW discuss: Localism and the beginning of the end of globalization The return of domestic manufacturing  The ‘Roaring 20s’ of In...

It’s hard to look at recent news from both crypto and traditional markets and not feel like we’re getting pretty mixed signals. Stocks have been recovering, but oil is hitting historic lows. DeFi suffers a major hack over the weekend, but Coinbase sees a major spike in $1200 transactions right as $1200 stimulus checks hit. Cash hoarding is giving pretence for eliminating privacy-preserving money,...

The entire week's shows in one convenient episode  Monday | Off Tuesday | The $20,000 Human IPO & 5 Other Stories That Have Nothing to Do With COVID-19 Wednesday | What the Economy Will Look Like 6 Months From Now, Feat. Ryan Selkis Thursday | Libra vs. China's DCEP? The Battle for the Future of Money Heats Up Friday | Why Money Is Losing Its Meaning, feat. Jared Dillian

Bitcoiners are particularly sensitive to Fed intervention in markets, but the degree to which the Fed is willing to print to backstop basically all risk is drawing the attention of even normal market participants.  On this episode of The Breakdown, NLW is joined by Jared Dillian, market analyst, contrarian, and editor of The Daily Dirt Nap. They discuss: What ‘safe haven’ means in today’s climate...

This week saw the latest salvos in the battle for the future of money.  Libra announced that it would be moving away from a single currency that was backed by a basket of national currency to a model of numerous individual fiat-pegged currencies. While the original model was akin to a disruptive implementation of John Maynard Keynes original concept for a global basket currency (which he called a...

As week (one million, it seems) of the COVID-19 lockdown plods on, many are wondering what the economy will look like on the other side. Ryan Selkis is the CEO and founder of Messari. He was one of the earliest voices in crypto to sound the alarm on the potential impact of COVID-19 not only on the health system but on the economy.  In this episode of The Breakdown, Ryan joins @NLW to discuss: Why...

Even as the market tries to make sense of everything happen (or ignores it, depending on your perspective), crypto keeps on plugging along.  Today on The Breakdown @NLW looks at 5 recent crypto stories that are representative of larger trends, including: Coinbase Custody enabling staking for Polkadot DOTs A Telegram-focused exchange shutting down due to regulatory compliance costs A $20k Human IPO...

The full week's episodes in one convenient file: Monday | How Covid-19's Second Order Effects Could Make Humanity Stronger, feat. Emerson Spartz Tuesday | Exit Plans, Premature Rallies and Frontline Heroes feat. Ben Hunt Wednesday | The Questions We're Not Allowed to Ask, Feat. Hidden Forces' Demetri Kofinas Thursday | Rebuilding the Resilience Economy, Feat. Anthony Pompliano  Friday | Quantitati...

As we wrap up another crazy week - 6.6m more jobless claims, $2.3T more in stimulus - this episode offers a few key themes and questions for bitcoiners and the crypto-minded to think about over the long Easter weekend: Crypto-dollarization: why money is pouring into USD stablecoins and how it could create a future onramp to bitcoin ‘Quantitative Tightening’: why a new brand for the bitcoin halving...

As host of the Pomp Podcast, author of the daily Off The Chain newsletter, and founder partner at Morgan Creek Digital Assets, Anthony Pompliano is one of the best known media personalities and investors in the crypto industry.  In this episode, he and @NLW discuss:  The Fed’s just announced $2.3 trillion stimulus package - including the authorization to buy junk bonds Why media and trust have des...

Demetri Kofinas is the host of Hidden Forces, a popular podcast that examines markets through the lens of large patterns of change.    On this episode, Demetri and @NLW discuss: How the politicization of the Coronavirus crisis has undermined smart action How media incentivizes extreme opinions regardless of underlying expertise  What conversations are we not having around Coronavirus - in particul...

Epsilon Theory’s Ben Hunt joins for a follow up to our pre-lockdown Covid-19 conversation in early March. In the month since, the markets finally started to take Covid-19 seriously, elected officials stopped calling it just the flu, and big chunks of the world economy shut down.  Now, as markets rally on early evidence the curve may be flattening, the question is: is this premature?  In this episo...

Second order effects are things that happen as unexpected outcomes of something else happening. These effects can create surprising causal chains.  Take this for example: A pandemic makes everyone need to work from home leads to an increase in video calling leads to Walmart reporting that people are buying more shirts, but not pants.  Emerson Spartz is one of the world’s foremost thinkers on viral...

The full week's episode, in one convenient file. Monday | Bitcoin, Stablecoins, DeFi and Privacy: How COVID-19 is Changing Key Crypto Narratives Tuesday | ‘If You’re Not Radicalized, You’re Not Paying Attention’ Feat. Nic Carter Wednesday | How Coronavirus Is Accelerating the End of Globalism, Feat. Peter Zeihan Thursday | 5 Reasons For Cautious Optimism In Crypto Friday | Will DeFi Even Matter In...