The Breakdown

A daily analysis of macroeconomics, bitcoin, geopolitics and big picture power shifts, hosted by Nathaniel Whittemore @nlw. The Breakdown is part of Blockworks.

Business
Investing
1501
How Monopolies Sow the Seeds of Their Own Destr...
Today on the Brief: A consumer spending rebound A new crypto regulatory regime in Europe A bitcoin warning from a famed investor Our main discussion:  Tuur Demeester is the managing partner of Adamant Capital, a bitcoin investment firm that...
70 min
1502
Is Scam Selling Suppressing the Price of Bitcoin?
Today’s edition of The Breakdown is an extended version of the Brief, this time covering five topics. New Jobless claims - sticking stubbornly at ~1.5 million new claims per week, despite economist expectations  The “whack-a-mole” economy...
17 min
1503
Bull vs. Bear: Who Has the Economy Right?
The economy is nothing if not confounding right now.  Across every domain, from real estate to oil to retail, there are bull signals and bear signals.  In this episode, NLW looks at those signals in the following areas: Markets - strong...
23 min
1504
Oil 101: How Easy Money Enabled the Shale Revol...
Today on the Brief: PayPal and Venmo reportedly adding crypto buying and selling Trump executive order temporarily suspends H1-B visa program Continued growth in derivatives Our main conversation: Tracy Shuchart is an oil- and commodities-focused...
76 min
1505
Macro Investors Sound Off! Featuring Ari Paul, ...
Today on the Brief: New Federal Reserve research suggests reaction to Facebook’s Libra basket approach was overblown Italian Banking Association pushing to test a digital euro U.S. housing has worst month since 2010 Our main conversation: Earlier...
47 min
1506
Fight the Fed or Love the BRRR? [Long Reads Sun...
A reading of two pieces by Jill Carlson | CoinDesk + Jesse Felder | The Felder Report 
12 min
1507
A Dozen+ Statistics Proving Millennials Are F%#...
The big narrative in financial media for the last few weeks has been the insurgent Robinhood rally, led by the AC/DC-blaring Pied Piper Dave Portnoy, owner of Davey Day Trader Global Global (DDTG Global).  As people try to make sense of the...
11 min
1508
Why Monetary Debasement Is Here to Stay, Feat. ...
Today on the Brief: FTX lists two Compound tokens Reddit partners with Ethereum Foundation on Layer 2 scaling Black-In Freedom Festival reimagines Juneteenth Our main topic:  Dr. Vikram Mansharamani is a lecturer at Harvard and author of...
68 min
1509
6 Things Jobless Claims Tell Us About the State...
Today on the Brief:  Powell says private companies shouldn’t be involved in Central Bank Digital Currencies According to former NSA head John Bolton, Trump told Mnuchin to go after Bitcoin Interest around Compound driving speculation around a...
25 min
1510
The Satoshi-fication of Social Media: Why The F...
On the Brief: Big tech vs. the American political right and left Why TikTok users are pretending to love China for clout Decentralizing venture capital  Our main conversation: The Crypto Dog is one of crypto Twitter’s best known characters....
47 min
1511
The Fed's Folly: From Moral Hazard to Business ...
Today on The Brief: An unexpectedly good retail sales report drives market confidence  Are we in for a second wave of white-collar layoffs?  The latest rumblings in central bank digital currencies Our main conversation: Jesse Felder is an...
73 min
1512
Sorry, Bloomberg: Here Are 6 Reasons Why 2020 I...
Today on the Brief: Stocks down on coronavirus fears Demand destruction The looming retirement crisis Our main theme:  is up more than 30% on the year. After a crash alongside equities, it has proved incredibly resilient. There are famous new...
28 min
1513
BONUS: Rubbish Rallies and Investor Amnesia by ...
After a week where bankrupt Hertz pumped 890%, the question is: what is the historical precedent?  Luckily, we have finance history guy Jamie Catherwood to fill us in. In this essay "Rubbish Rallies" (written by Jamie, read by NLW), Catherwood...
15 min
1514
The Chad Index Versus Doomer Internet Money: Th...
The stock market has long been disconnected from the underlying economy, but much of what happened this week - particularly the pumping of bankrupt company stocks - suggests that something new is afoot.  In this episode, NLW breaks down three...
11 min
1515
Avoiding the Narrative Trap: Bitcoin Is More Th...
Today on the Brief: Why bitcoin sold off A bank-the-unbanked narrative for the digital dollar It’s Dave Portnoy’s world and we’re all just living in it Today’s main topic: Why inflation isn’t the only bitcoin narrative that matters. When...
25 min
1516
Why the Fed Keeps Denying Its Role in Increasin...
Today on the Brief: Three Arrows holds more than 6% of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust New platform for censorship-resistant blogging Coinbase announces new token potentials as anti-surveillance hodlers flood out  Today’s main topic: Why the Fed...
26 min
1517
Bitcoin, Property Rights, and Why the Old West ...
Today on the Brief: A record week for peer-to-peer exchanges in the developing world A digital dollar gets discussed in Congress  Previewing the Federal Reserve’s FOMC guidance  Our main topic: A brainstorm on digital property rights...
33 min
1518
What the Stock Market’s ‘Robinhood Rally’ Means...
Today on the Brief: Saudi Arabia injects $13 billion in bank liquidity via blockchain. China’s state TV CCTV says Binance is still allowing crypto trading in China. MakerDAO community greenlights real world collateral.  Our main topic: The...
32 min
1519
Why War Reporting Is the Right Mental Model for...
On today’s episode of The Breakdown, we introduce the Breakdown Brief - a look at three key topics in bitcoin and crypto. Today, the Brief covers: Brave browsers auto adding ref links to Binance.us  The disconnect between Wall Street and...
77 min
1520
The Revolution Will Be Retweeted: The Breakdown...
The Breakdown Weekly Recap looks at the key themes that shaped the week. On this week’s episode, NLW discusses: The modern significance of Tiananmen Square, and why this week’s U.S. protests show why the tools of surveillance need to be applied...
8 min
1521
Everything You Need To Know About The US & Chin...
The U.S.-China relationship has an outsized impact on global economics and politics. As that relationship comes even more into focus in the wake of COVID-19 and a return of trade tensions, this episode provides a historical primer.  Graham...
87 min
1522
The Mirage of the Money Printer: Why the Fed Is...
The conventional wisdom is that central banks are the most important economic actors in the world. Markets hang on their every word.  Yet, what if that power has less to do with actual monetary policy and more to do with how the performance of...
64 min
1523
5 Numbers That Tell the Story of Markets Right Now
Every day that protests continue and the stock market goes up, more people ask what the disconnect between markets and the real economy is. In this episode of The Breakdown, NLW peels back the story of today’s economy by looking at five numbers: ...
14 min
1524
Bitcoin, Cellphones and the Citizen Tools of An...
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...
45 min
1525
The Power and Peril of the 'Bitcoin Fixes This'...
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...
25 min