A daily analysis of macroeconomics, bitcoin, geopolitics and big picture power shifts, hosted by Nathaniel Whittemore @nlw. The Breakdown is part of Blockworks.
The ECB Gets In On Stablecoins, 2017 Token Proj...
European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde’s comments on stable coins flew around crypto Twitter yesterday, as she said projects in the space indicated clear demand (even while slighting bitcoin in the same statement). Meanwhile, two once...
20 min
1777
Regulatory smackdown, DeFi on Bitcoin, and Jack...
The last few days have seen significant regulatory action, from SEC charging Shopin’s CEO with fraud over a $42m ICO to a major coordinated federal action against a $722m crypto Ponzi scheme. Over in the world of decentralized finance, meanwhile, a...
22 min
1778
Narrative Watch: The Tokenization Saga Continues
Three stories about tokenization today: ShapeShift launching FOX (an exchange token); BlockTV launching a token for media contributions; Satoshi's Treasure helping Tezos distribute tokens through games. That's enough to get me curious and thinking...
26 min
1779
Multi-Collateral DAI goes live / Not so privacy...
After a huge amount of work, MakerDAO's multi-collateral DAI is live. Only one new token (Brave's BAT) is in the ecosystem, but it heralds the beginning of a new era. In the world of privacy coins, the MimbleWimble protocol is pushing back against a...
16 min
1780
Why did Satoshi choose Halloween to publish the...
11 years ago today, on Halloween 2008, Satoshi shared the bitcoin whitepaper for the first time. The question is: why choose that date? Satoshi was extremely intentional, so it seems unlikely to be random. In this, we explore multiple explanations,...
11 min
1781
Bitmain power struggle / Russian crypto intrigu...
Today was a quick news briefing: Bitmain power struggles as Jihan Wu pulls a coup to return China bans anti-blockchain sentiment Russian crypto intrigue that could confirm the US' worst fears Coinlist raises $10m from Jack Dorsey (among others)...
15 min
1782
Mass Adoption - But Of What? And At What Cost?
Times, how they've changed. The surge in bitcoin price and the explosion of China into blockchain has heads spinning. Some argue that we should be celebrating mass adoption of any type. In this audio op-ed, however, I argue that there are two key...
15 min
1783
Narrative Watch: The New China Narrative, 2019 ...
China has had an ongoing role in the crypto narrative. For much of the history of the industry, it was about control of mining. Now, something new is happening. As the crypto industry gets caught up in the larger battles to shape the future of the...
17 min
1784
Bitcoin Soars on China President Xi's Blockchai...
On Wednesday, Zuckerberg responded to the largely hostile US Congress by reminding them that, if the US didn't proactively assert leadership around digital currencies, then China would be more than willing to fill the gap. As if they coordinated it,...
Most of the world outside crypto twitter that saw a clip of Mark Zuckerberg's testimony would have no idea that it was, theoretically about Libra. On CT, basically everyone bemoaned the clear lack of giving-a-crap that pretty much any Congressperson...
20 min
1786
SPECIAL EDITION: An Opinionated Recap Of Zucker...
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress today, nominally about Libra but actually about a lot of things. In this (opinionated) recap of the testimony, we look at: What was different vs. the same in FB's narrative What was different vs....
27 min
1787
Narrative Watch: 3 Key Battlelines of the Digit...
The digital currency wars are getting hotter and hotter, but they're not one dimensional. This narrative watch looks at three key battlelines: Nations vs. Private companies - who gets to make digital currencies? Nations vs. Nations...
21 min
1788
Poloniex leaves Circle & the USA / Binance 125x...
Circle is spinning out Poloniex and the exchange's new honors want to build away from the US. Is this more evidence of the "companies leaving US" narrative or just competitive pressure? Speaking of exchanges, Binance hit $1B in cumulative profit this...
17 min
1789
Does Bitcoin Institutionalization Threaten Cyph...
Chainalysis recently helped law enforcement take down a child porn ring by tracking btc addresses. This kicked off a huge conversation about how essential is it to the value proposition of bitcoin for it to be able to used for things that are against...
22 min
1790
Is FinCEN going after Telegram around money lau...
The fallout continues from the crazy last week in Libra, as the Association moves forward without any of its payment partners, all of whom have withdrawn at this point. Still the Association is now officially live and has a board of 5 members, only...
16 min
1791
Narrative Watch: Regulators Get Rowdy (aka Why ...
Last week was apparently "government says get rekt" week in crypto. The SEC kicked things off by disapproving a bitcoin ETF proposal from Bitwise and closed things out by taking emergency action against Telegram's $1.7B ICO. In between, the IRS...
18 min
1792
BREAKING: Is The Libra Dream Dead? Visa, Master...
The title says it all. Visa, Mastercard, eBay, and Stripe have joined PayPal in leaving the Libra Association. Is this the death knell for the project? Will the rest of the organizations follow suit and leave? Or does this provide a chance to Libra to...
9 min
1793
Will there ever be a BTC ETF? / CFTC says ETH a...
The SEC has denied the most recent bitcoin ETF proposal - this time from Bitwise. Some speculate that there simply will not be an ETF on Chairman Clayton's watch. The CFTC chair meanwhile has said that the CFTC considers ETH a commodity and expects...
14 min
1794
IRS Forks Up New Tax Guidance / DevCon Debates ...
The IRS dropped quite the surprise today: their first new tax guidance since 2014. Unfortunately, it seems to indicate that chains forking and airdropping users coins (whether they want them or not) creates a taxable event. Meanwhile, DevCon5 is...
18 min
1795
Narrative Watch | The NBA, Hearthstone & Hong K...
First it was the NBA aggressively distancing itself from comments from Rockets GM Daryl Morey in support of Hong Kong protesters. Then it was Blizzard banning a player from competitive Hearthstone play for making a pro Hong Kong statement live on air....
16 min
1796
Libra's shaky membership FUD / Crypto In A Cong...
Libra is back in the spotlight after the WSJ published reports that Visa, Mastercard and others are getting cold feet after the chilly reception from regulators around the world. David Marcus took to Twitter to defend the project, while simultaneously...
18 min
1797
SEC vs. EOS: Securities! Settlement! Scandal!
The SEC's $24m settlement with EOS has been all anyone has been able to talk about for the last day or so. In this episode, we look at the four camps of reactions: the "they got off easy"; "you're all commies"; "it's about the consistency"; and the...
24 min
1798
Narrative Watch: Time Preference Transformation...
Last week saw a 20% drop in the price of Bitcoin - much of coming in a short, 30 minute span. What it didn't see was the usual hand wringing and frantic explanations. In fact, most of last week's conversation was about totally different topics: Libra,...
16 min
1799
Is bitcoin rogue state money? / The impact of L...
News broke of Venezuela exploring whether they could use bitcoin and ether as reserve assets, prompting questions about what the potential impact of widescale adoption of bitcoin as a tool to evade sanctions might be. Libra continues to spur central...
23 min
1800
What's behind the BTC price crash? / Does WeWor...
Bitcoin (and the rest of the markets) absolutely cratered yesterday, with BTC dropping from nearly $10k to under $8k before resetting a bit. Is it Bakkt backlash? Bitmex margin calls? Or a fat load of who the hell knows? Speaking of crashes, Adam...