The Breakdown

Matt Luongo got his start in bitcoin in 2013. In 2016, he watched a pivotal moment where the sound money, digital gold narrative subsumed the payments use case for bitcoin. While he agreed, ultimately, with the important of bitcoin as a new reserve asset, he still wanted to build and found his way to Ethereum.  Now his company is launching tBTC, a trust-minimized bridge between bitcoin and ethereu...

The economic outlook is grim. The jobless claims keep piling up and even the most intransigent states are shutting down business. There isn’t - yet - a realistic plan - for returning to any sort of economic normalcy.  Yet in this bleak view, there are a handful of crypto indicators that suggest for cautious optimism. In this episode, @NLW discusses: The crypto community’s volatility resilience  A...

“Some countries just aren’t going to emerge from the Coronavirus.” Peter Zeihan is one of the world’s foremost geopolitical experts. In his new book “Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World,” Zeihan argues that we’re at the end of the largest expansionary period in human history. As America withdraws from global leadership, a totally new (and for most parts of the world, m...

In this wide-ranging discussion, Castle Island Ventures founding partner and Coin Metrics co-founder Nic Carter joins @NLW to discuss: Why corporations weren’t adequately prepared for any serious economic trouble, much less a global pandemic  Why government backstopping the corporations leads to inappropriate risk-taking  How stock buybacks became a boogeyman of the current crisis  Why the crisis...

On January 28th, Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal tweeted “Notable overlap on here between the most alarmist people tweeting about the virus and those who are obsessed with the size of the Fed balance sheet.”  There is no doubt that the bitcoin and crypto community broadly were far earlier in recognizing the potential significance of the Covid-19 crisis than most professional communities. Today, America...

The full week's episode, in one convenient file.  Monday | Unlimited QE and Why Markets Can’t Price In COVID19 Tuesday | Cronyism, Zombie Companies and the True Cost of the Corona Crisis, Feat. Morgan Creek's Mark Yusko Wednesday | How the U.S.' $2 Trillion Stimulus Will Expose the Monetary System’s Flaws Thursday | How BlackRock Ended Up on Both Sides of the Bailout, Feat. Meltem Demirors Friday...

In this episode of The Breakdown, @NLW reflects on the themes that defined an absolutely wild week in global markets and society.  Those themes include: Unlimited QE - broad new powers (corporate bond buying anyone?) and an unlimited checkbook for the Fed  Digital Dollars - a surprise inclusion of a digital dollar in an early Stimulus draft shifts the Overton window Narrative Shift to “Grandma Die...

The Senate passed $2T in Stimulus. That includes a one time $1,200 check to impacted individuals and….you guessed it, billions and billions for corporate relief. Included in that are hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate bond buying programs. The Federal Reserve has recruited asset management giant BlackRock to administer three of those programs.  Here’s the kicker. As Bloomberg describes i...

CoinDesk’s Chief Content Officer Michael Casey and Head of Research Noelle Acheson join for a lively debate about the new $2 trillion stimulus package and era of “unlimited” QE, including: Whether (and on what time scale) fiscal and monetary stimulus might lead to inflation Whether the Fed buying corporate bonds amounts to a nationalization of the bond markets Why the appearance of a ‘digital doll...

Mark Yusko is the founder of Morgan Creek Capital Management. In this wide-ranging conversation, he and @NLW discuss:  Why bitcoin has fallen with stocks over the last few weeks Why price and value are not the same thing Why stocks have been manipulated  An argument for buy backs being illegal  Why cronyism is not capitalism  Why bailouts and other types of intervention help zombie companies that...

Last October, Ikigai Asset Management’s Travis Kling predicted that Central Banks would have to “juice QE to infinity” in order to save markets from recession. Yesterday on 60 Minutes, Fed President Neel Kashkari said “there is an infinite amount of cash at the Federal Reserve. We will do whatever we need to do to make sure there is enough cash in the financial system.”  This was followed this mor...

The week's episode, in one convenient file. Also including short clips from CoinShares CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti and SwanBitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten.  Monday | Can $700B in Quantitative Easing Calm The Markets? Feat. CoinDesk’s Michael Casey and Noelle Acheson Tuesday | Gov't Stimulus Goes BIG and Why Bitcoin Is the Only Truly Free Market, Feat. Dan Tapiero Wednesday | Is the COVID19 Fiscal & Monetar...

Peter McCormack is the host of What Bitcoin Did and the Defiance podcast. He recently returned from travel to a number of countries in South America including Venezuela and Colombia as well as the Turkey-Greece border.  In this off-the-cuff and wide ranging conversation, Peter and @NLW discuss Bitcoiner politics and the bitcoin community’s reaction to the potential for increased state power in the...

In his daily Coronavirus press briefing today, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said “our main scramble now is ventilators.” The state anticipates that within 45 days, it could need 37,000 ventilators. It currently has 3000.  Bruce Fenton was one of the early crypto community canaries in the coal mine warning of the impending threat of Coronavirus. As the world has caught up to the warning, he has s...

President Trump and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced a significant slate of upcoming stimulus measures, including deferred taxes and direct payments to Americans (although those details remain to be seen).  On this episode of The Breakdown, 10T holdings CEO Dan Tapiero joins to discuss: How this forthcoming stimulus might impact the bitcoin narrative Why some traditional safe havens like...

Over the weekend, the Fed decided it couldn’t wait for Wednesday’s planned meeting to act, cutting interest rates to nearly 0%. It also announced $700 billion of direct capital injection through the purchase of Treasury securities and mortgage-backed debt.  The question is whether this action can actually calm markets? So far, it’s not looking great. Within minutes, emergency circuit breakers were...

The entire week's shows in one convenient file: Monday | What the Market Crash Means for Bitcoin, Feat. Delphi's Kevin Kelly Tuesday | Crypto Fundraising and the Nothing-Is-Safe Haven Wednesday | Ben Hunt on the Clash of Narratives in the Age of Coronavirus Thursday | 6 Good Reasons for Bitcoiners to Keep Calm and HODL On Friday | What Happens When Currencies Fail? Featuring Preston Pysh

Yesterday, the Federal Reserve announced more than a trillion dollars in liquidity injections into the market. In the coming weeks, many observers expect trillions of more in stimulus in a variety of exotic new intervention tactics.  While this will (hopefully) stem the still emerging economic fallout from the pandemic, it creates its own new set of problems. In this episode of The Breakdown, @NLW...

The Coronavirus got really extra real today for markets. A two and a half week selloff was tipped to the next level by a major ratcheting up of action from the US government (which still seemed clearly to be not enough to calm markets).  In bitcoin, this meant a drop from around $8000 yesterday to under $6000 today - a head-spinning dump, especially for those who are more recent to crypto.  Still,...

The week of February 12, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was reaching new all time highs. Meanwhile, China’s quarantine of the 11 million people in Wuhan was three weeks old and expanding to other parts of the country.  While the global equities markets have finally started to catch up to the fear of a global pandemic, the Coronavirus has been one a profound case study in the power of narratives...

Whatever you thought of the uncorrelated or safe haven narratives a few weeks ago, it’s hard to deny that bitcoin and crypto are moving in lock step with equities - even mirroring a small bounce in the morning that retreated in the early afternoon.  On this episode of The Breakdown, NLW looks at hot takes on the narrative from Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal and crypto investor Ari David Paul.  Not all...

Bitcoin’s price has cratered, but it’s nothing compared to the broader market havoc. From the Coronavirus scare to an oil price war, a confluence of factors is aligning to make it a very rough Monday.  On this episode of The Breakdown, @nlw is joined by Delphi Digital’s Kevin Kelly to discuss: Why the stock market is just catching up to what the bond markets have been saying Why the bond markets h...

The full week's episodes in one convenient package The View From China: Crypto, Crisis and Digital Currencies Feat. Matthew Graham What Us Election Outcome Is Best for Bitcoin? Libra Plus? A New Global Digital Currency Strategy For Facebook Why Bitcoin Mining Might Be the New Business Model for US Power Plants Riccardo 'Fluffypony' Spagni on How Coronavirus Could Impact Privacy

As the Coronavirus took hold in China, officials in the Hubei province tracked potential patients by examining purchase records for cough and flu medicine for the previous month.  Welcome to the new frontiers of privacy. In this wide-ranging episode, @NLW chats with former lead maintainer of Monero and Tari co-founder Riccardo Spagni - aka @FluffyPony on Twitter - about privacy in the context of:...

It was another good day for global crypto, as South Korea votes to formally integrate the industry into the existing financial system, opening the market to new players and potentially improving services for crypto companies.  In New York state, meanwhile, a recently renovated power plant is taking advantage of low cost energy with 7000 bitcoin miners. This is part of a larger trend of US-based mi...