A daily analysis of macroeconomics, bitcoin, geopolitics and big picture power shifts, hosted by Nathaniel Whittemore @nlw. The Breakdown is part of Blockworks.
QE is good for Bitcoin / Binance US opens next ...
More qualitative easing out of Europe means more "look at them they're doing it we should be doing it!" from Trump means more "Bitcoin solves this" memes. Binance is geoblocking users but next week opens up Binance.US - a regulated exchange with 6...
16 min
1752
Coinbase exploring IEOs / Trump Tweets For Nega...
At Invest: Asia in Singapore today, Coindesk's heat of institutional sales in Asia hinted that the company is exploring IEOs, but wouldn't comment further. As he is wont to do, Trump got everyone talking by ratcheting up his pressure on the Fed to go...
16 min
1753
Bitcoin bank-ification / Do airdrops work? / Ap...
A new product from Gemini which allows custody customers to trade without moving their coins out of cold storage has sparked discussions about bankification that go all the way back to the beginnings of bitcoin. Meanwhile, Stellar announces a ~$120m...
19 min
1754
Narrative Watch: Impatience, Greed or Fear? Wha...
Despite Bakkt opening warehousing, BTC holding strong around $10k, and many new announcements, it's hard not to view the mood around crypto Twitter as lethargic. Is it simple impatience and the wrong time preference? Is it reflective of a recognition...
15 min
1755
Libra vs. China: The Global Digital Money Wars ...
One of the most important global economic battles of our time is the battle to create new standards for global digital money. While bitcoin has been quietly building its case for the last decade, the story of the last few months has been all about the...
12 min
1756
The Great BTC-Alt Divergence / Epic Rap Battles...
BTC dominance is over 70%, and the gap between its performance and everything else may be accounting for the strange dissonance between 3x BTC price growth in 2019 and the serious gloomy pallor on display on crypto Twitter. We look at that divergence...
16 min
1757
Special Edition: Summer Recap & Fall Prediction...
To celebrate the official end of summer and beginning of fall, I asked 15 top crypto VCs, entrepreneurs and content creators including Jill Carlson, Ari Paul, Kyle Samani, Marty Bent and more 4 questions: What did we learn this Summer? What are your...
19 min
1758
Narrative Watch: The Game of Coins & The Battle...
In the game of coins, you [replace the USD as the world's reserve currency or at least shore up your sovereign currency's position in the new global mix] or you die. Over the last few months, we've seen China accelerate work on its digital...
Libra Association on the verge of losing members? That's the report from FT as members get spooked by EU antitrust proceedings. Over in the trade war, Trump ratchets up the rhetoric against China, and we explore both how it might drive Chinese...
17 min
1760
Terrorism, Sanctions & Global Opioid Rings: The...
What do Palestinian bitcoin brokers, bitcoin rewards via hangover deliveries and a Russian spy scandal have to do with one another? It's all on today's 3@3. First, we look at the return of the crypto crime FUD narrative, with the specter of terrorism...
21 min
1761
EU antitrust action on Libra / SEC dings ICO ra...
Well that didn't take long. The European Union has already started looking into antitrust action on Facebook around Libra. In other regulatory news, US Sec of State Mike Pompeo says crypto should be regulated like SWIFT, India central bank fights for...
19 min
1762
Dovey Wan on Binance's Venus / Snowden on surve...
Binance is pursuing a strategy that is a bottoms-up "belt and road" alternative to Facebook's top down global cryptocurrency Libra. VC Dovey Wan explores that strategy, and why their Chinese announcement was more aggressive than their English. We also...
19 min
1763
Narrative Watch: Binance, Venus and the coming ...
Binance blew open the doors on the global battle for stablecoin supremacy today when they announced Venus - a project that seems to combine some aspects of permissioned corporate chains with central bank digital currencies (aka convenient surveillance...
12 min
1764
The 11 Archetypes Of People You Need To Follow ...
Bitcoin and Crypto Twitter are wild, weird places. On this special "sorry I'm traveling, can't give you the news" edition of 3@3, I provide a guide to 11 key types of people that you should be following for your well-rounded Twitter...
14 min
1765
Ponzi scam selling, Hong Kong protest bank runs...
Why number go down? That's all anyone was asking as BTC plunged below $10k, a line that, according to Hodlonaut, we'd never cross again. Was it Ponzi scam selling in China or something less sinister? Either way, there was a bit of snark about a safe...
17 min
1766
The SEC's ICO cleanup / China's convenient surv...
What is dead may yet still die. At least, that seems to be the case as the SEC goes one by one through its list of unregistered securities offerings and outright scams. This week it was one unregistered SAFT settlement and one emergency lawsuit...
14 min
1767
Crypto Daily 3@3 - 8.13 | Argentina economic tu...
After surprise election results, the Argentine economy tumbled. The stock market fell 48%, and the peso fell some 25-30% against USD. What is the role of crypto in this type of economic black swan event, if any? I asked MakerDAO's Mariano Conti, an...
Bonds. Dollars. Bitcoin. Gold. That's what some are saying pay attention to at the beginning of a global currency crisis? On this week's LRS Top 5, we also look at: news from Binance US about its listing criteria and prospective token listings; KIK's...
20 min
1769
Crypto Daily 3@3 - 8.9 | Travis Kling on how BT...
Travis Kling joins for today's 3@3 to explore how bitcoin might move from a risk asset to a safe haven. This isn't just about narrative, it's about how bets from one group trigger another group, which confirms models, and so on, creating a self...
18 min
1770
Crypto Daily 3@3 - 8.8 | Gaming, Mass Adoption ...
You've heard of the PayPal Mafia, but what about the Magic the Gathering Mafia? Both SkyWeaver and Gods Unchained have serious ex-Wizards of the Coast talent in their ranks. Does this mean blockchain gaming can succeed? Also in the realm of mass...
Katherine Wu joins us as a guest to discuss her full annotation of the 117 page clap back from KIK against the SEC. What's bluster? What's business as usual for lawsuits like this? What are the actual implications for the rest of the industry? We also...
16 min
1772
Crypto Daily 3@3 - 8.6 | China, Stonks and Safe...
First Trump threatened tariffs. Then China devalued the Yuan. Then Trump declared China to be currency manipulators. Then stonks went down while orange coin went up. Then everyone asked: "is Bitcoin the new safe haven asset?" For the last two days,...
A key theme from last week's Senate Banking Committee hearing was the sense that, like it or not, cryptocurrency was an inevitable force. On this top 5 summary of Long Reads Sunday, we look at that plus how the global macro narrative is converging...
19 min
1774
Crypto Daily 3@3 - 8.2 | Q2 Crypto Data Extrava...
The Q2 crypto data reports are in, so on this special edition we’re breaking down the most interesting trends. We cover: asset performance; network activity in Bitcoin and Ethereum; the “non-correlated” narrative in Bitcoin and BTC’s relative...
20 min
1775
Crypto Daily 3@3 - 8.1 | UASF at 2 & power in c...
It was the two year anniversary of UASF (and the BCH chain split from BTC), which marked a significant moment in the history of Bitcoin. In short, the culmination of the block size war demonstrated the relative power of the distributed network of...