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.

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Investing
1551
The Breakdown Weekly Recap | Feb 22 2020
The full week's episode run in one long-run, long-chill, long-sleep episode: Monday | Off Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
83 min
1552
Diagnosing the Dip: Why Today's Leading Exchang...
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...
12 min
1553
Why We Should Stop Thinking of ‘Crypto’ as a Si...
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,...
15 min
1554
Chainlink's Sergey Nazarov on What DeFi Can Lea...
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...
34 min
1555
Is It Exploitation Season for DeFi?
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...
17 min
1556
The Breakdown Weekly Recap | Feb 15 2020
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...
116 min
1557
The Top Narratives Driving Crypto Market Growth...
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...
18 min
1558
The US Government Sends Mixed Signals on Digita...
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 before the Senate Financial Services Committee, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says that FINCEN is planning more...
21 min
1559
Why Crypto Sentiment and Prices Are Soaring: Pu...
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 between Hedara Hashgraph and Google Cloud pumped HBAR more than 50% - featuring...
18 min
1560
Muneeb Ali Explains Blockstack’s Big Bet on Bit...
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...
32 min
1561
On the Frontlines of the SEC Safe Harbor Propos...
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...
23 min
1562
The Breakdown Weekly Recap | Feb 6 2020
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...
111 min
1563
Kraken’s Dan Held on What’s Different About Bit...
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...
25 min
1564
The Federal Reserve Has Its ‘Come to Satoshi’ M...
That’s the way Meltem Demirors  Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard’s  at Stanford yesterday. For the first time, the Fed has  it is actively researching and experimenting with digital currencies and distributed...
17 min
1565
What All This VC and M&A Activity Tells Us Abou...
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 of the Lightning Network; a new for a tokenized securities...
20 min
1566
Are Uncensorable Web Domains Blockchain’s Next ...
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...
22 min
1567
Deplatforming, Ethereum Marketing and Whether B...
Much of the Crypto Twitter conversation this weekend was dominated by talk of Twitter’s suspension of ZeroHedge. @nlw explores why the specifics of the infraction or the quality of the publication aren’t the important part of the conversation, and...
21 min
1568
The Breakdown Weekly Recap | Feb 1 2020
The full week's episodes in one (plus a bonus TL;DR on ZeroHedge's deplatforming.  Tuesday | Narrative Watch: The Future of Fud Wednesday | Exclusive Interview with Binance US CEO Catherine Coley announcing staking  Thursday | The Unsolved...
124 min
1569
The Founders of Chainlink and Synthetix on DeFi...
Yesterday Chainlink price reference data for 25 of its decentralized oracle networks which, together, power more than $100m in DeFi.  On this special interview episode, @nlw talks with Sergey Nazarov and Kain Warwick, the founders of Chainlink...
51 min
1570
The Unsolved Mystery of How to Fund Public Prot...
The best way to fund open source projects remains a question, and one that - in the context of crypto protocols - has never had higher stakes. Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen live action experiments in a number of different approaches.  ...
21 min
1571
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Binance US CEO Catherine C...
In a Breakdown exclusive, Binance US CEO announces that the exchange will begin supporting staking, starting with ALGO and ATOMs.  On this episode, Catherine and I discuss: How the company prioritizes both new features and which audiences to...
22 min
1572
Narrative Watch: The Future of Crypto FUD
We’re over $9,000! That means a lot of good things, of course. But any price increase brings with it increased scrutiny and, yes, increased FUD. The question for this time around is whether the FUD is the same old same old or something new.  In...
22 min
1573
The Breakdown Weekly Recap | Jan 25 2020
A single long-form episode with all the week's content + a TL;DR. This week was all about macro frame-setting coming out of Davos.  Monday - 4 Reasons Crypto Should Care About Davos Tuesday - Gitcoin's Kevin Owocki on Controversy and the Future...
114 min
1574
Davos Takeaways, CBDCs & the Rise of Bitcoin Ar...
That’s a wrap! The World Economic Forum is over, and the key ideas coming out of Davos for our industry are: 1) a continued ‘blockchain, not crypto’ narrative; 2) a believe in the inevitability of cashless futures (without much concern about the...
20 min
1575
Will Mass Adoption Be More PayPal or Pornhub?
There is an ongoing debate in the crypto community about where mainstream adoption. One point of view is that it will be the slow steady acceptance of digital assets. On that front, Bakkt president Adam White said in Davos yesterday that the company...
19 min