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
1576
Bitcoin, Stablecoins, DeFi and Privacy: How COV...
On January 28th, Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal tweeted “Notable overlap on here between the most alarmist people tweeting about the virus and those who are obsessed with the size of the Fed balance sheet.”  There is no doubt that the bitcoin...
21 min
1577
The Breakdown Weekly Recap | March 28 2020
The full week's episode, in one convenient file.  Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | From Corporate Socialism to Dying for the Dow: 7 Themes That Defined the Week  
206 min
1578
Corporate Socialism to Dying for the Dow: 7 The...
In this episode of The Breakdown, @NLW reflects on the themes that defined an absolutely wild week in global markets and society.  Those themes include: Unlimited QE - broad new powers (corporate bond buying anyone?) and an unlimited checkbook...
21 min
1579
How BlackRock Ended Up on Both Sides of the Bai...
The Senate passed $2T in Stimulus. That includes a one time $1,200 check to impacted individuals and….you guessed it, billions and billions for corporate relief. Included in that are hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate bond buying programs....
64 min
1580
How the U.S.' $2 Trillion Stimulus Will Expose ...
CoinDesk’s Chief Content Officer Michael Casey and Head of Research Noelle Acheson join for a lively debate about the new $2 trillion stimulus package and era of “unlimited” QE, including: Whether (and on what time scale) fiscal and monetary...
33 min
1581
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
1582
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
1583
The Breakdown Weekly Recap | March 21 2020
Featuring CoinShares CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti and SwanBitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten
188 min
1584
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
1585
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
1586
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
1587
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
1588
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
1589
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
1590
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
1591
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
1592
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
1593
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
1594
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
1595
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
1596
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
1597
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
1598
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
1599
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
1600
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