On today’s Long Reads Sunday, NLW reads Niall Ferguson’s latest Op-Ed for Bloomberg: “Bitcoin Is Winning the COVID-19 Monetary Revolution”

In it, Ferguson argues that bitcoin’s sovereignty and “built-in scarcity in a virtual world characterized by boundless abundance” are driving its adoption. 

He also argues that rather than adopt a China-style central bank digital currency, incoming President Joe Biden should look to integrate bitcoin into the U.S. economic system.

On this edition of the weekly recap, NLW looks at the consolidating narrative of a bitcoin rally that is:

• Being driven by institutional investors
• Shifting the center of the industry from East Asia to North America 
• Winning converts from major research houses and institutions 
• Driving the price of bitcoin to new all-time highs

Today on the Brief:

• Payrolls report underperforms expectations
• Spotify looking for crypto director
• Lame-duck crypto legislation on the way? 

Our main discussion: Will we see a “Santa Claus rally” this year? 

This kind of rally refers to the fact that in about two-thirds of years since 1969, late December has seen a stock market rally, averaging a 1.4% gain. 

This year, vaccine optimism combined with new stimulus seems poised to once again jingle Wall Street’s bells. A piece in Bloomberg, however, provides five charts and reasons why this market rally is already overbought and overblown, so this year might be more coal than eggnog. 

On Wednesday, three U.S. congressional Democrats announced the STABLE Act, an 18-page bill that would require, among other things, stablecoin issuers to acquire banking charters, get approval from the Federal Reserve and hold FDIC insurance. 

The bill’s authors claim stablecoins represent a continuation of the shadow banking system that preys on poor communities. The crypto industry argues this overly burdensome would not only stifle innovation but ensure the only players in this new space are the deep-pocketed fintechs with the resources for compliance. 

In today’s episode, NLW argues this is more than just another bill that will go nowhere in Congress, it’s the opening salvo of a new set of arguments that will define the next face of regulatory battles for the entire crypto industry.

Josh Brown is the CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management. He is also the host of “The Halftime Report” on CNBC, author of the “Reformed Broker” blog and host of “The Compound Show” podcast. 

Most recently, he is the author of “How I Invest My Money: Finance Experts Reveal How They Save, Spend, and Invest.”

In this fun and freewheeling conversation, Josh and NLW discuss:

• Why financial advisers give a lot of advice but don’t actually share their personal strategies 
• What’s driving bitcoin’s “respectability rally” (Read more here) 
• Why we should be excited about, rather than worried for, the new generation of Robinhood traders
• Why the Dow Jones Industrial Average is going to 100,000 in our lifetime 

Find our guest online:

Twitter: @reformedbroker 

• Libra is now “Diem” 
• Christine Lagarde comes down on private stablecoins 
• Dow closes its best month in 33 years 

Yesterday, CoinDesk received access to a private client research report from AllianceBernstein, a global investment giant with more than $631 billion in assets. 

In this episode of the Breakdown, NLW reads excerpts from the memo and discusses:

• Why, in discussing supply, it conflates bitcoin and other cryptos but still finds limited supply “for all practical purposes” 
• Why prevailing macro political conditions – particularly the growth of government’s role in business and individual lives – shifted the investment firm’s calculus 
• Why its greatest long-term concern is government banning something that is actively hindering the application of monetary policy

On this historic day, NLW looks at bitcoin’s punching through its previous December 2017 all-time high. Specifically, he looks at:

• How different people benchmark the all-time high 
• What drove the latest price action, including the prospect of new investment from institutional asset management giant Guggenheim 
• Why historian Niall Ferguson is arguing bitcoin has won the COVID-19 monetary revolution 
• Why macro giants including Raoul Pal, George Gammon and Ben Hunt got into disagreements with Bitcoin Twitter about how co-opted by the state and Wall Street bitcoin is likely to become

On this edition of The Breakdown’s Long Reads Sunday, NLW reads a recent piece by Hong Fang, CEO of OKCoin. 

In it, Fang provides a set of valuation models and scenarios that plausibly lead to bitcoin achieving a significant $100,000 value over the course of 2021.

On this edition of The Breakdown weekly recap, NLW looks at what was an absolutely action-packed holiday week. 

He discusses:

One of the most significant macroeconomic questions facing the world is what the future of the global reserve system, dominated for the last 80 years by the U.S. dollar, holds. 

Today’s episode is a replay of NLW’s epic conversation with macro analyst Luke Gromen from April 2020. In it, Luke discusses the entire history of that U.S. dollar system, including:

• Bretton Woods and why the world went on a USD-based system rather than John Maynard Keynes’ idea for a non-sovereign “bancor” world reserve currency
• The move to the petrodollar in the 1970s
• The financialization of commodities that started in the 1980s
• The monetary policy vacuum after the Cold War ended
• How a shift in executive compensation rules led to many of today’s problems with Wall Street
• The export of Treasury bills as a business model
• The economic fallout of 2008 globally and domestically
• The end of Treasury bill buying in 2014
• Why the Federal Reserve is the only sugar daddy left

Find our guest online:Website: fftt-llc.comTwitter: @LukeGromen