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
1526
Cronyism, Zombie Companies and the True Cost of...
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...
63 min
1527
Unlimited QE and Why Markets Can’t Price In COV...
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...
17 min
1528
The Breakdown Weekly Recap | March 21 2020
Featuring CoinShares CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti and SwanBitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten
188 min
1529
State Power & Authoritarianism After Coronaviru...
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...
71 min
1530
Is the COVID19 Fiscal & Monetary Response An Ov...
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...
40 min
1531
Gov't Stimulus Goes BIG and Why Bitcoin Is the ...
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...
41 min
1532
Can $700B in Quantitative Easing Calm The Marke...
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...
24 min
1533
The Breakdown Weekly Recap | March 14 2020
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...
200 min
1534
What Happens When Currencies Fail? Featuring Pr...
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...
67 min
1535
6 Good Reasons for Bitcoiners to Keep Calm and ...
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...
16 min
1536
Ben Hunt on the Clash of Narratives in the Age ...
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...
58 min
1537
Crypto Fundraising and the Nothing-Is-Safe Haven
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...
14 min
1538
What the Market Crash Means for Bitcoin, Feat. ...
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...
33 min
1539
The Breakdown Weekly Recap | March 7 2020
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...
117 min
1540
Riccardo 'Fluffypony' Spagni on How Coronavirus...
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...
31 min
1541
Why Bitcoin Mining Might Be the New Business Mo...
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,...
15 min
1542
Libra Plus? A New Global Digital Currency Strat...
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...
15 min
1543
What Us Election Outcome Is Best for Bitcoin? 
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...
24 min
1544
The View From China: Crypto, Crisis and Digital...
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...
25 min
1545
The Breakdown Weekly Recap | Feb 29 2020
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...
114 min
1546
Understanding This Week’s Market Whiplash, Feat...
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...
24 min
1547
A 101 Guide To Ethereum’s ProgPoW Controversy
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...
25 min
1548
Is Bitcoin A Safe Haven or ‘Schmuck Insurance’?
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”...
19 min
1549
6 Explanations for Crypto’s Coronavirus Focus
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...
22 min
1550
Caitlin Long on Coronavirus, Crypto Custody and...
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...
19 min