The Breakdown
The Breakdown dives into the deepest topics in crypto, blockchain, and the macro forces shaping markets and power structures. Each episode breaks down complex ideas into clear, grounded analysis — separating signal from noise across crypto, finance, and geopolitics.
Hosted by David Canellis, The Breakdown features explainers, interviews, and conversations with the people building, regulating, and challenging the financial system.
A Blockworks podcast.
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1851
Surveying The Carnage: Movies, Sports, and Educ...
This is the second in a series of episodes on how the economic crisis is challenging and transforming different industries. NLW looks at: Movies Direct releases are already making more than box office counterparts AMC is on the verge of...
32 min
1852
A Coming Reckoning: Why The Fed Can't Outspend ...
Two powerful and diametrically opposed forces are shaping the economy. On the one hand is inflationary economic policy, which keeps the price of assets like real estate and stocks rising ever higher, but at the expense of savings as the value of...
68 min
1853
How We Future Now - Live With Kathleen Breitman...
There is a shared sense that the world has shifted. Now begins the messy work of figuring out what it means for the future we’re headed into. This live episode of The Breakdown podcast with NLW features four conversations about how the future...
63 min
1854
The Great Monetary Inflation: Paul Tudor Jones'...
Jones' letter lays out his bitcoin and macro thesis. Last week, investing legend Paul Tudor Jones rocked the world of crypto and traditional markets with his full throated entrance into the bitcoin market via his latest letter to Tudor BVI...
27 min
1855
The Breakdown Weekly Recap | May 9 2020
The week's complete show run in one convenient file. Monday | Why Buffett’s Bearishness Should End V-Shaped Recovery Talk Tuesday | Why Crypto Matters for Financial Inclusion, Feat. Celo's Marek Olszewski Wednesday | Surveying the Carnage:...
131 min
1856
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
1857
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
1858
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
1859
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
1860
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
1861
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
1862
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
1863
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
1864
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
1865
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
1866
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
1867
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
1868
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
1869
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
1870
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
1871
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
1872
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
1873
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
1874
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
1875
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