The Breakdown

Latest Episodes:

Why War Reporting Is the Right Mental Model for Today’s Media, Feat. Jake Hanrahan Jun 09, 2020

Show notes

On today’s episode of The Breakdown, we introduce the Breakdown Brief - a look at three key topics in bitcoin and crypto. Today, the Brief covers:

Brave browsers auto adding ref links to Binance.us
The disconnect between Wall Street and crypto when it comes to inflation expectations
A 2018 Pentagon war game including bitcoin

Our featured interview is with Jake Hanrahan, founder of Popular Front - a podcast and independent media company covering underreported and irregular conflict with “no frills, no elitism.” Jake was previously an embedded reporter with Vice and has covered conflict in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Ukraine and elsewhere.

In this conversation, Jake and NLW discuss:

Why Jake left Vice and decided to build an independent journalism project
Why the mainstream media isn’t bad because of some political conspiracy, but because its business model doesn’t allow it to understand how real people are experiencing issues
How the protests are being (mis)covered around the world
Why American protests are going global
What he learned covering protests in Hong Kong last year
What situations people should be paying attention to around the world that they’re not right now

The Revolution Will Be Retweeted: The Breakdown Weekly Recap Jun 06, 2020

Show notes

The Breakdown Weekly Recap looks at the key themes that shaped the week. On this week’s episode, NLW discusses:

The modern significance of Tiananmen Square, and why this week’s U.S. protests show why the tools of surveillance need to be applied to states, not citizens.
The importance of “narrative violations,” or fighting to see things without falling into popular but often wrong conventional wisdoms
The need to resist attempts from both the left and the right to fit today’s unrest into convenient culture-war frameworks that perpetuate each group’s power.

This week on The Breakdown:

Monday | The Power and Peril of the 'Bitcoin Fixes This' Meme

A look at what role, if any, bitcoin has to play in remaking the world that is being protested around the U.S. (and world) this week.

Tuesday | Bitcoin, Cellphones and the Citizen Tools of Anti-Authoritarianism, Feat. Alex Gladstein

A look at the anti-authoritarian technology stack, including where non-state money like bitcoin fits in.

Wednesday | 5 Numbers That Tell the Story of Markets Right Now

From the number of U.S. flights from Chinese carriers to S&P 500 growth in the tumultuous year of 1968, these (unexpected) numbers tell the story of today’s markets.

Thursday | The Mirage of the Money Printer: Why the Fed Is More PR Than Policy, Feat. Jeffrey P. Snider

An argument that the Fed is actually highly ineffectual due to the presence of the eurodollar shadow-banking system.

Friday | The Biggest Realignment in the US-China Relationship Since Nixon, Feat. Graham Webster

A 101-level primer on the history of the U.S.-China relationship, and why today’s bluster represents a fundamental shift.

Everything You Need To Know About The US & China: The Biggest Realignment Since Nixon, Feat. Graham Webster Jun 06, 2020

Show notes

The U.S.-China relationship has an outsized impact on global economics and politics. As that relationship comes even more into focus in the wake of COVID-19 and a return of trade tensions, this episode provides a historical primer.

Graham Webster is editor-in-chief of the Stanford–New America DigiChina Project at the Stanford University Cyber Policy Center. He’s also a China digital economy fellow at the New America think tank.

In this episode, Webster explains:

Why the relationship with the U.S. has been at the forefront of Chinese policy since the People’s Republic of China was formed, but has flitted in and out of America’s focus.
Why the first most significant period in the U.S.-China relationship came between the late 1960s and 1970s, as the U.S.-China relationship normalized.
How Tiananmen Square undermined but didn’t destroy the relationship.
Why George W. Bush came into office with an intention to focus on China but got distracted in the wake of 9/11.
Why China has spent the last decade becoming increasingly illiberal.
How the rise of social media contributed to the shift.
Why China and U.S. policy is as much a reflection of domestic self-identity in both countries as it is a bilateral political question.
Why China’s human rights abuses present such a challenge.
How COVID-19 changes the relationship.

Find our guest online:

Twitter: gwbstr

Website: DigiChina

The Mirage of the Money Printer: Why the Fed Is More PR Than Policy, Feat. Jeffrey P. Snider Jun 05, 2020

Show notes

The conventional wisdom is that central banks are the most important economic actors in the world. Markets hang on their every word.

Yet, what if that power has less to do with actual monetary policy and more to do with how the performance of that policy creates a self-fulfilling prophecy as market actors respond to media coverage?

Jeff Snider is the head of global research at Alhambra Investments. In this conversation, he and NLW explore:

How the Fed lost the ability to even determine what the money supply is.
How the financialization in the 1980s exacerbated monetary confusion.
Why the most important force in the global economy isn’t central banks but the eurodollar and shadow banking system.
How the eurodollar and shadow banking sector creates a drag on real economic growth.
Why the conventional wisdom and “central bank savior” narrative around 2008 was dead wrong.
The problem with “survivor’s euphoria.”
Why “money printer go brr” is actually a flood myth.

5 Numbers That Tell the Story of Markets Right Now Jun 04, 2020

Show notes

Every day that protests continue and the stock market goes up, more people ask what the disconnect between markets and the real economy is. In this episode of The Breakdown, NLW peels back the story of today’s economy by looking at five numbers:

The growth of the S&P500 since the March 23 low
Current unemployment stats and a Bloomberg Economics estimate of the number of jobs at risk
The performance of the S&P500 in 1968, one of the most tumultuous years in American history
The total percentage of the world’s debt denominated in dollar terms
The number of flights between the US and China by Chinese airlines going forward

Bitcoin, Cellphones and the Citizen Tools of Anti-Authoritarianism, Feat. Alex Gladstein Jun 03, 2020

Show notes

Alex Gladstein is the chief strategy officer of the Human Rights Foundation. He is a powerful voice for the role of bitcoin in combating authoritarianism around the globe.

In today's episode, he and NLW discuss:

What the protests tell us about the state of democracy in the U.S.
The potential impact of protests and COVID-19 on surveillance norms
The potential for a "biological Patriot Act"
The implications of China's push to absorb Hong Kong
The relevance or irrelevance of China's digital currency
The role of bitcoin in promoting freedom

The Power and Peril of the 'Bitcoin Fixes This' Meme Jun 02, 2020

Show notes

Cities around the country have been engulfed in protest in the wake of the murder of 46-year-old black man George Floyd. There is an intense battle for the narrative around the protests. Are they legitimate outcries against institutional racism and police brutality? Is the looting covertly being driven by white supremacists on the one hand or ANTIFA on the other?

In the Bitcoin community, some have plumbed the “Bitcoin Fixes This” meme to argue that the core underlying issue has to do with a monetary system that structurally creates inequality. Others have clapped back against pushing that meme in this moment.

In this episode of The Breakdown, NLW looks at:

What bitcoiners are trying to say when they apply the “Bitcoin Fixes This” meme to this moment.
Why the current system structurally exacerbates inequality.
Why the meme fails to capture additional economic, political and power dimensions of what’s going on.
Why the meme in this moment might feel so out of place as to inspire the opposite of its intended effect: turning people away from bitcoin rather than making them want to learn more.
Why Satoshi’s “If you don’t get it, I don’t have time to explain it to you” quote is the most misused and abused of his sayings.
Why complexity and nuance, not memes, are needed now.

The Breakdown Weekly Recap | May 30 2020 May 30, 2020

Show notes

The week's episodes in one convenient file.

The Battle for the Future of Money, feat. Lawrence Summers, CZ, Michelle Phan, the Winklevoss brothers, The Chainsmokers and more. [Money Reimagined Episode 4] May 30, 2020

Show notes

As the economic dimension of the COVID-19 crisis comes into clearer view, what have we learned about the battle for the future of money? Does the dollar reign supreme? Are within-the-system competitors like the euro or China’s digital yuan gaining ground? Does an outside the system alternative like bitcoin stand a chance?

Over the last month, the “Money Reimagined” series has looked at the battle for the future of money.

Episode 1 focused on the dollar and why it is simultaneously stronger and more set up to fail than ever before.

Catch up: Why the Dollar Has Never Been Stronger or More Set Up to Fail

Episode 2 was all about the obvious contenders to replace the dollar such as the euro or China’s currency, especially as they race towards a digital yuan. It also looked at where Facebook’s Libra might fit in the mix.

Catch up: The Rise of the Dollar Killers

Episode 3 looked at one of the most unique features of this modern currency battle - the fact that there are fundamentally new systems like bitcoin in the running. Can a non-sovereign currency actually be more relevant than global fiats?

Catch up: Where Bitcoin Fits in the New Monetary Order

This final episode of the “Money Reimagined” series checks in on each of the previous episodes but brings a new set of voices to the mix. Between May 11 and May 14, CoinDesk hosted Consensus:Distributed, a virtual summit featuring some of the leading lights in crypto, finance, economics and pop culture. In this episode, we hear from those voices, including:

Lawrence Summers - former U.S. Treasury Secretary
Christopher Giancarlo - former Chairman of the CFTC
Michelle Phan - YouTube innovator and founder of Ipsy
Chaoping Zhao - founder and CEO of Binance
The Winklevoss brothers - founders of Gemini
The Chainsmokers - Grammy-winning artists
Carlota Perez - influential economist

The Geopolitical Implications of a Too-Strong Dollar, Feat. Brent Johnson May 29, 2020

Show notes

You know the meme: Money printer go brrr. It means inflation right?

Not necessarily, says Brent Johnson. Since 2016-2017, Johnson has been arguing the big economic issue of our time isn’t inflation of the U.S. dollar due to excess money printing, but the havoc caused by a global system where the dollar keeps getting stronger and sucks up liquidity from the rest of the world.

As the dollar has strengthened over the COVID-19 crisis, his ideas look more prescient than ever. In this conversation with NLW, Johnson discusses:

What the “Dollar Milkshake Theory” is
Why the implications of the theory stress him out, even though he created it
Why everything is relative and no asset can be analyzed in a vacuum
Why we could see the dollar, bitcoin and gold rise at the same time
Why we can’t discuss macroeconomics without discussing geopolitics and even the military

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