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...

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...

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...

A reading of two pieces by Jill Carlson | CoinDesk + Jesse Felder | The Felder Report 

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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: ...

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...

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...

The week's episodes in one convenient file.  Monday |   Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |

As the economic dimension of the COVID-19 crisis comes into clearer view, what have we learned about the battle for the future of money? Does the dollar reign supreme? Are within-the-system competitors like the euro or China’s digital yuan gaining...