A daily analysis of macroeconomics, bitcoin, geopolitics and big picture power shifts, hosted by Nathaniel Whittemore @nlw. The Breakdown is part of Blockworks.
Subscribe to The Breakdown newsletter: https://the-breakdown.carrd.co/
Could These Currencies Be Dollar Killers? Feat....
Libra, the Euro, China's DCEP. Do any of these currencies have a chance at displacing the dollar in the global order? Or is it possible - as Niall Ferguson suggestions on this episode - that we're poised to shift back to a multipollar,...
25 min
1802
9 Reasons Why Bitcoin Has Never Been Stronger G...
The bitcoin halving is just a few days away and the growing excitement is palpable. On this episode of The Breakdown, NLW argues that the excitement is also legitimate, and looks at nine reasons why bitcoin has never been stronger going into one of...
21 min
1803
Surveying the Carnage: How Real Estate, Travel ...
The second order effects of the COVID-19 crisis are here, and they’re painful. In this episode, NLW looks at how COVID is impacting three industries: Travel and tourism 100m lost jobs expected globally $2.7 in lost GDP Airbnb lays of...
25 min
1804
Why Crypto Matters for Financial Inclusion, Fea...
Around the world, an estimated 1.7 billion people remain unbanked and lacking access to high quality financial services. Some projects see cryptocurrency as an answer. In this episode of The Breakdown, NLW speaks with Celo co-founder Marek...
35 min
1805
Why Buffett’s Bearishness Should End V-Shaped R...
One month after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008, Warren Buffett wrote an Op-Ed saying that he was buying stocks. Yet during the Coronavirus crisis, he is sitting firmly on the sidelines. On Saturday night, the “Oracle of Omaha”...
16 min
1806
The Breakdown Weekly Recap | May 2 2020
The week's episodes in one long run. Monday | Bitcoin vs. QE Infinity: The 4 Archetypes Of The Halving Debate Tuesday | The Mass Surveillance Machine, Feat. Maya Zehavi Wednesday | When Currencies Fail: A Primer on the Crisis in Lebanon...
170 min
1807
Why The Dollar Has Never Been Stronger Or More ...
The first of a 4-part docu-style series on the battle for the future of money. In this first episode of Money Reimagined, we look at: Why US markets took so long to react How the stock market became a political utility Why, even before the crisis,...
41 min
1808
From Corrupt To Broken: An Insider’s Analysis O...
Danielle DiMartino Booth is the CEO and Chief Strategist of Quill Intelligence. Before that, however, after correctly predicting the mortgage meltdown, she was called upon to serve and spent 9 years as an advisor to the President of the Federal...
36 min
1809
When Currencies Fail: A Primer on the Crisis in...
The Lebanese pound has lost at least 50% of its value since last year. 220,000 people have lost their jobs. Food prices are up 58%. An estimated 75% of the population needs assistance of some kind. And over the last two nights, at least a dozen banks...
22 min
1810
The Mass Surveillance Machine, Feat. Maya Zehavi
As the COVID-19 crisis rages, it takes on new economic and political dimensions. The frames for many of the most important questions for the next decade are being set now, in this moment. On this episode of The Breakdown, NLW is joined by Maya...
45 min
1811
Bitcoin vs. QE Infinity: The 4 Archetypes Of Th...
The bitcoin halving is just two weeks away. While the COVID-19 crisis pushed attention off the momentous event for a while, the discussion is coming back fast and strong. Google searches for the bitcoin halving already exceeding the 2016 peak, despite...
17 min
1812
The Breakdown Weekly Recap | April 25
The full week's content in a single convenient long-run episode. Monday | Bearish or Bullish? What Oil, DeFi Hacks and Cash Hoarding Tell Us About Markets Tuesday | From Proof of Health to UBI: How Everything Changes Post COVID-19, Feat. Joe McCann...
237 min
1813
Why Bitcoin Is Freedom Money, Feat. Yan Pritzker
Yan Pritzker is the CTO and cofounder of Swan Bitcoin, an automated bitcoin only investing app aiming to be the best onramp to bitcoin. He is also the author of Inventing Bitcoin. On this episode, he and NLW discuss: How immigrating from the...
52 min
1814
We Don’t Need Big Brother To Beat This Virus
One of the key aspects of most plans to reopen the economy is digital contact tracing. This would be an apparatus whereby mobile phones kept track of the other mobile phones they had been physically proximate to, so that if someone were diagnosed with...
19 min
1815
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
1816
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
1817
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
1818
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
1819
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
1820
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
1821
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
1822
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
1823
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
1824
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
1825
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,...