News broke yesterday that the Libra Association had seen it’s 8th high profile defection, this time from the telecom giant Vodafone. In today’s episode of the breakdown, @nlw argues that Association members are far less of a factor in Libra’s...

Ever since announcing their fourth round of grants, Gitcoin has been a major subject of conversation across the Twittersphere. In addition to all the excited buzz from both technical projects and media creators vying for grants matched based on E....

The World Economic Forum kicks off today. CoinDesk and The Block both have representatives there. Numerous panels relate to topics around the industry. At the same time, the centralized power structure is something of an anathema to the world crypto...

A single long-form episode with all daily episodes of The Breakdown along with a TL;DR on the week: Monday - Tokenized NBA Contracts & The Hunt For Crypto’s Killer App Tuesday - Mati Greenspan on the Technical and Macro Roots of Bitcoin’s...

One man. Three piping hot takes. In this special interview episode of The Breakdown, financial advisor and crypto advocate Tyrone Ross shares his thoughts on: Why Financial Advisors are the key to bringing in the next wave of crypto investors Why...

As Libra continues to spur discussions among regulators around the world, and China’s digital yuan comes ever closer to fruition, the U.S. Federal Reserve seems disinclined to look seriously at a digital dollar. Ex-CFTC Chair Chris Giancarlo - aka...

Crypto tokens weren’t the only thing that saw a major pump yesterday. The total value locked in DeFi ascended to new heights. While part of this can be explained simply by the rise in ETH price, it also reflected traders turning to DeFi platforms as...

Bitcoin is up more than 8% in the last 24 hours. BSV, meanwhile, is up nearly a whopping 100%. The question is, of course, why? Is it some larger macro context? A pump-and-dump? Or just the crypto markets being as crazy as they are. The Breakdown...

Starting today, accredited investors will be able to part of $13.5m in tokenized bonds connected to the contract of Brooklyn Nets Point Guard Spencer Dinwiddie. The first-of-its-kind offering took months of negotiation with the NBA but marks a seminal...

All 5 episodes of The Breakdown in one long file. By popular demand, this is an experiment to see if it's useful to have the full week's episodes compiled in a single file. I've also summed up what I think is most important about the week. Let me know...

China’s digital currency project continues to move ahead aggressively, with a new paper from the People’s Bank of China suggesting that a core design is complete. Whatever stage of development the currency actually is, it’s clear that China...

The aftershock of the 2016 The DAO hack meant that DAOs weren’t nearly as hyped as ICOs and later some other aspects of the web3 movement. In 2019, however, DAOs came roaring back and start 2020 with the wind at their sails.  In this episode,...

The conversation about whether bitcoin is a safe haven asset continues in the wake of Iranian missile strikes, which saw the price of BTC both surge and retrace in parallel with crude and gold. To help explain what’s going on, we feature comments...

In their annual transparency report, Kraken reported seeing a 50% increase in regulatory inquiries as compared to 2018, which CEO Jesse Powell later revealed cost the exchange more than $1m. Between this and stories like the $2m it cost Blockstack to...

Last week, the US government took out a key Iranian military leader. As the world - and the markets - reacts to the news, some are asking what happens with bitcoin. With global instability on the rise, will more people turn to bitcoin as a safe haven...

The past few weeks have seen multiple instances of large, centralized tech giants censoring crypto related content and activity. Noticed in the context of the Coinbase Wallet, Apple is pushing back against apps that have anything to do with Dapps....

Taylor Monahan is the founder and CEO of MyCrypto. In this interview as part of The Breakdown’s end of year coverage, she argues that the level of discourse in crypto matured in 2019, with more focus on things that actually matter. That’s...

Tom Shaughnessy is a co-founder at Delphi Digital as well as the host of the Chain Reaction podcast. Jordan Clifford is managing director of Scalar Capital. In this end of year interview for The Breakdown, Tom argues that the big story of 2019 was...

Katherine Wu was a founding team member at Messari before moving into a VC role at Notation Capital, but is perhaps best known in crypto for her epic annotations of key regulatory enforcement actions. In this end of year interview with The Breakdown,...

Sometimes things are clear, and to both Camila Russo (write of The Defiant newsletter) and David Hoffman (co-host of the Crypto POV podcast), it couldn’t be clearer that the essential narrative of 2019 was the rise of DeFi as a true market force. In...

Marty Bent is the author of one of the most popular daily Bitcoin newsletters and co-host of Tales From The Crypt. In this end of year interview with The Breakdown, he talks about the macro context - from trade wars to pressure on the fed to continue...

Rob Paone, aka Crypto Bobby, got his start as a popular crypto YouTuber and has gone on to help build a number of crypto companies before launching his own technical recruitment firm. Preethi Kasireddy is the founder of the TruStory debate platform....

One of CoinDesk’s ten most influential people of 2019, Melem Demirors is a crypto renaissance woman, known best for investing, operating as CSO of CoinShares, and for explaining ‘shitcoins’ to Congress. In this end of year Breakdown, Meltem...

Peter McCormack is one of the most prominent podcasters in the space. In 2019, he added a new podcast called “Defiance” and focused on the intersection of bitcoin, human rights, and political activism to complement his “What Bitcoin Did”...

One of the most important (yet somehow quiet) narratives of 2019 has been the financialization of bitcoin and the emergence of a robust market for derivative products. That was reinforced today as Binance announced a significant investment in...