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
1676
The History of the Dollar System From Bretton W...
QE infinity. Corporate bailouts. Nudging UBI. The incredible economic phenomena going on now didn’t happen out of the blue. They are the byproducts of a key events spread across the 70 year history of the US dollar led global monetary system. ...
76 min
1677
From Proof of Health to UBI: How Everything Cha...
Joe McCann currently works in cloud and AI at Microsoft and has spent decades in tech, crypto, and open source communities. He recently wrote a piece called all about the second and third order effects of Covid-19.  In this conversation, Joe and...
62 min
1678
Bearish or Bullish? What Oil, DeFi Hacks and Ca...
It’s hard to look at recent news from both crypto and traditional markets and not feel like we’re getting pretty mixed signals. Stocks have been recovering, but oil is hitting historic lows. DeFi suffers a major hack over the weekend, but Coinbase...
22 min
1679
The Breakdown Weekly Recap | April 18 2020
The entire week's shows in one convenient episode  Monday | Off Tuesday | The $20,000 Human IPO & 5 Other Stories That Have Nothing to Do With COVID-19 Wednesday | What the Economy Will Look Like 6 Months From Now, Feat. Ryan Selkis Thursday...
135 min
1680
Why Money Is Losing Its Meaning, feat. Jared Di...
Bitcoiners are particularly sensitive to Fed intervention in markets, but the degree to which the Fed is willing to print to backstop basically all risk is drawing the attention of even normal market participants.  On this episode of The...
41 min
1681
Libra vs. China's DCEP? The Battle for the Futu...
This week saw the latest salvos in the battle for the future of money.  Libra announced that it would be moving away from a single currency that was backed by a basket of national currency to a model of numerous individual fiat-pegged currencies....
18 min
1682
What the Economy Will Look Like 6 Months From N...
As week (one million, it seems) of the COVID-19 lockdown plods on, many are wondering what the economy will look like on the other side. Ryan Selkis is the CEO and founder of Messari. He was one of the earliest voices in crypto to sound the alarm on...
49 min
1683
The $20,000 Human IPO & 5 Other Stories That Ha...
Even as the market tries to make sense of everything happen (or ignores it, depending on your perspective), crypto keeps on plugging along.  Today on The Breakdown @NLW looks at 5 recent crypto stories that are representative of larger trends,...
21 min
1684
The Breakdown Weekly Recap | April 11 2020
The full week's episodes in one convenient file: Monday | How Covid-19's Second Order Effects Could Make Humanity Stronger, feat. Emerson Spartz Tuesday | Exit Plans, Premature Rallies and Frontline Heroes feat. Ben Hunt Wednesday | The Questions...
233 min
1685
Quantitative Tightening and 5 Key Questions for...
As we wrap up another crazy week - 6.6m more jobless claims, $2.3T more in stimulus - this episode offers a few key themes and questions for bitcoiners and the crypto-minded to think about over the long Easter weekend: Crypto-dollarization: why money...
16 min
1686
Rebuilding the Resilience Economy feat. Anthony...
As host of the Pomp Podcast, author of the daily Off The Chain newsletter, and founder partner at Morgan Creek Digital Assets, Anthony Pompliano is one of the best known media personalities and investors in the crypto industry.  In this episode,...
53 min
1687
The Questions We're Not Allowed to Ask, Feat. H...
Demetri Kofinas is the host of Hidden Forces, a popular podcast that examines markets through the lens of large patterns of change.    On this episode, Demetri and @NLW discuss: How the politicization of the Coronavirus crisis has...
67 min
1688
Exit Plans, Premature Rallies and Frontline Her...
Epsilon Theory’s Ben Hunt joins for a follow up to our pre-lockdown Covid-19 conversation in early March. In the month since, the markets finally started to take Covid-19 seriously, elected officials stopped calling it just the flu, and big chunks...
36 min
1689
How Covid-19's Second Order Effects Could Make ...
Second order effects are things that happen as unexpected outcomes of something else happening. These effects can create surprising causal chains.  Take this for example: A pandemic makes everyone need to work from home leads to an increase in...
56 min
1690
The Breakdown Weekly Recap | April 4 2020
The full week's episode, in one convenient file. Monday | Bitcoin, Stablecoins, DeFi and Privacy: How COVID-19 is Changing Key Crypto Narratives Tuesday | ‘If You’re Not Radicalized, You’re Not Paying Attention’ Feat. Nic Carter Wednesday |...
177 min
1691
Will DeFi Even Matter In A Post-Corona World? F...
Matt Luongo got his start in bitcoin in 2013. In 2016, he watched a pivotal moment where the sound money, digital gold narrative subsumed the payments use case for bitcoin. While he agreed, ultimately, with the important of bitcoin as a new reserve...
35 min
1692
5 Reasons For Cautious Optimism In Crypto
The economic outlook is grim. The jobless claims keep piling up and even the most intransigent states are shutting down business. There isn’t - yet - a realistic plan - for returning to any sort of economic normalcy.  Yet in this bleak view,...
23 min
1693
How Coronavirus Is Accelerating the End of Glob...
“Some countries just aren’t going to emerge from the Coronavirus.” Peter Zeihan is one of the world’s foremost geopolitical experts. In his new book “Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World,” Zeihan argues that...
50 min
1694
‘If You’re Not Radicalized, You’re Not Paying A...
In this wide-ranging discussion, Castle Island Ventures founding partner and Coin Metrics co-founder Nic Carter joins @NLW to discuss: Why corporations weren’t adequately prepared for any serious economic trouble, much less a global pandemic ...
42 min
1695
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
1696
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
1697
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
1698
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
1699
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
1700
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