The Breakdown

Yesterday, The Information reported that Facebook’s Calibra wallet would be abandoning the backed-by-a-basket-of-currencies Libra for a set of fiat-backed digital currencies for different regions. The company quickly amended that while they would be launching those fiat-based digital currencies, they weren’t abandoning Libra. In this episode, @NLW argues that these fiat digital currencies could be...

Today is Super Tuesday - the biggest day of the US primary election season. Increasingly, prediction markets and pollsters suggest it’s a two person race between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders (although Mike Bloomberg has insisted he’s staying in).  In this episode, NLW breaks down each candidate in the context of their positions vis a vis cryptocurrency, as well as looking at the possible role of t...

When everyone wrote their 2020 crypto prediction pieces, China featured prominently in everything from the exchange business to enterprise blockchain to the potential impact of a forthcoming digital yuan.  Coronavirus erased those issues from focus. On this episode of The Breakdown, @NLW is joined by Matthew Graham, CEO of Sino Global Capital. For the past 7 years, Matthew has lived in China and f...

The full week's episode run in one long-run, long-chill, long-sleep episode: Monday | Caitlin Long on Coronavirus, Crypto Custody and Building a Bank Tuesday | 6 Explanations for Crypto’s Coronavirus Focus Wednesday | Is Bitcoin A Safe Haven or ‘Schmuck Insurance’? Thursday | A 101 Guide To Ethereum’s ProgPoW Controversy Friday | Understanding This Week’s Market Whiplash, Featuring Scott Melker

After weeks of not reacting to Coronavirus, the markets took a profound turn for the worse this week, leading ultimately to the fastest correction - i.e. loss of 10% - in recorded history.  In this episode of The Breakdown, @NLW is joined by crypto trader, DJ, and broad market thinker Scott Melker to discuss: What the crypto markets demonstrated this week What recent price action suggests about th...

Last Friday on Ethereum’s core developer call, the devs agreed to push forward a controversial anti-ASICs consensus algorithm switch known as ProgPoW.  The broader Ethereum community was not pleased, and has spent the last week debating both ProgPoW itself as well as the way decisions in the community get made.  In this 101-guide to the controversy, @nlw breaks down: What is ProgPoW The history of...

Bitcoin is having a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day. Many are using the dump - which from a timing perspective aligns with a broader market selloff among Coronavirus fears - as a way to diminish the “bitcoin as a safe haven” narrative.  In this episode, @nlw revisits that narrative and argues that it is uncomfortably bunched up with the uncorrelated asset narrative, or, as Chamath Palihap...

The spread of Coronavirus has dominated the news cycle across industries, but the discussion has been particularly fierce in both the finance and tech worlds, with crypto right in the lead.  For a month or more, prominent crypto voices have been discussing the event in terms of skepticism of reported government cases, questions of market impact, and plans for personal preparation.  I surveyed more...

An incredible amount of work has gone into convincing institutional investors that bitcoin and crypto should be on their radar. Now that many are convinced, however, they face some significant limitations in the infrastructure.  A new crypto bank out of Wyoming is designed to address those problems. Founded by Caitlin Long, Avanti is apply for a special purpose depository institution (SPDI) charte...

The full week's episode run in one long-run, long-chill, long-sleep episode: Monday | Off Tuesday | Is It Exploitation Season for DeFi? Wednesday | Chainlink's Sergey Nazarov on What DeFi Can Learn From Early Exchange Hacks Thursday | Why We Should Stop Thinking of ‘Crypto’ as a Single Industry Friday | Diagnosing the Dip: Why Today's Leading Exchanges Are Powerful, but Not Inevitable

After settling in to the $10,000 price level, BTC suddenly and rapidly dipped more than 5% in an hour on Wednesday. As the market discusses possible explanations, some floated the unexpected simultaneous downtime of Binance and Coinbase as a causal factor.  In this episode of The Breakdown, we discuss the power exchanges wield - both in terms of market liquidity as well as the ability to shape new...

The ‘crypto’ industry is having a hard time fitting everything that’s happening inside that one monolithic term. On this episode, @nlw looks at current news stories from across at least 5 different categories - DeFi, enterprise blockchain, central bank digital currencies, digital collectibles and bitcoin - to ask whether they really all belong lumped in in the same category.  The episode also look...

The DeFi world continues to dissect the recent attacks on bZx. To most, the amount lost in the attacks is far less relevant than what the attacks suggest about how DeFi applications need to be designed.  Within that, one key topic of conversation is the role of price oracles - the systems by which DeFi applications check the prices of assets that dictate what happens in a given smart contract. Sin...

Part of what makes DeFi interesting to people is how it takes advantage of open source protocols to enable types of transactions never before available. The problem, however, is that financial structures mean new financial vulnerabilities.  In the last few days, two attacks on bZx have used a similar strategy of manipulating the price of synthetic assets in the context of a new instrument called “...

The full week's shows as one long episode, featuring guests including Travis Kling (Ikigai), Muneeb Ali (Blockstack), Coinlist (Andy Bromberg)  Monday | On the Frontlines of the SEC Safe Harbor Proposal With CoinList President Andy Bromberg Tuesday | Muneeb Ali Explains Blockstack’s Big Bet on Bitcoin Wednesday | Why Crypto Sentiment and Prices Are Soaring: Puppets, Pundits, Partnerships Thursday...

There’s no denying that 2020 is off to a roaring start. From prices to volume to social media, sentiment is up up up.  But what’s driving it? On this special Valentine’s Day episode, @nlw reacts to listeners votes about which narratives are most driving the shift in energy, discussing:  The BTC halving Coronavirus and volatility Fed action Central bank digital currency intrigue Ethereum and DeFi P...

To look at the US Government, it is the best of times and the worst of times for personal financial privacy.  On the one hand, in comments before the Senate Financial Services Committee, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says that FINCEN is planning more strict regulations around anti-money laundering and crypto.  At the same time, the CEO of DropBit was arrested on money laundering charges around...

After Monday’s quick retrace, bitcoin and the rest of the market went green again. In this episode, @nlw breaks down the shifting sentiment, looking at: How a partnership between Hedara Hashgraph and Google Cloud pumped HBAR more than 50% - featuring commentary from Hedara CEO Mance Harmon  Why Figure is launching a TV campaign to educate people about blockchain CNBC Fast Money actively (and convi...

Last week, Blockstack announced a new proposal through which node operators would be rewarded in bitcoin. The concept behind Proof of Transfer is that, for the cryptoasset ecosystem to run, electricity should only have to be converted into digital scarcity once.  In this interview with @nlw, Blockstack CEO Muneeb Ali explains how, by tying the security of Blockstack’s Stacks blockchain to bitcoin,...

Last week, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce proposed Rule 195 to give token projects a 3 year safe harbor. This proposed period would allow them to distribute tokens without fear of violating securities law so long as they achieve certain standards of decentralization in that time. Coinlist is a platform for compliant token sales. On this episode of The Breakdown, Coinlist CoFounder & President Andy...

The week's full episode run in one long-run, long-drive ready podcast. Monday | Deplatforming, Ethereum Marketing and Whether Brexit Matters for Crypto feat. Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier Tuesday | Are Uncensorable Web Domains Blockchain's Next Killer App? Feat Namebase CEO Tieshun Roquerre Wednesday | What All This VC and M&A Activity Tells Us About The State Of The Crypto Markets Thursday | The Fed...

Bitcoin is on a 7 week upward trend. Having already smashed through its $9,000 Vegeta memes, it is now inching closer towards $10k.    On this episode, @nlw is joined by Kraken’s Dan Held to discuss how bitcoin has changed in a number of ways since the last time we were at the $10,000 price level last year. They look at: Narrative - Speculation around bitcoin as a safe haven and the role of the ha...

That’s the way Meltem Demirors described Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard’s remarks at Stanford yesterday. For the first time, the Fed has said it is actively researching and experimenting with digital currencies and distributed ledger technologies. This is a change in tone from a Fed that, when asked previously, has more or less dismissed digital currencies.  On this episode, @nlw looks at...

If venture investments and acquisitions provide a window into the sentiment in markets, boy did we get a big dose of information today.  Today we look at investments in the world’s best known developer of the Lightning Network; a new prominent corporate investor for a tokenized securities platform; and Square’s investment in a real-time payments company.  We also look at a set of acquisitions, inc...

As claims of election tampering, fraud, and other dubious activities fly around the botched Democratic Caucus in Iowa, trust in our public institutions continues to crater.  The question of trust and censorship are at the heart of our episode today. Handshake is a new protocol for uncensorable web domains. The goal is to create a new blockchain-based Top Level Domain system that governments can’t...