The Breakdown

Today on the Brief:

• FTX launches equities trading 
• Avanti gets Wyoming bank charter
• France locks down and ECB intimates new stimulus

Our main discussion: GDP growth report 

The Department of Commerce released its Q3 GDP numbers. Touted as record growth, this is actually a much more complicated story. In this episode, NLW breaks down what the numbers tell us and what they don’t, and why we should be more focused on understanding long-term consumer behavior shifts than short-term numbers. 

Today on the Brief:

• Section 230 hearing with social media CEOs in Washington D.C.
• Bitwise now has more than $100 million AUM
• Trump website defaced with Monero request

Our main discussion: Markets go risk-off. 

With rising fear of COVID-19 lockdowns, everything from stocks to oil to gold and, yes, even bitcoin is down on the day. The important question is whether this is a short-term volatility phenomenon or part of a larger systemic shift.

Today on the Brief:

• Stocks down; bitcoin up
• Consumer confidence shaky as baking supplies demand grows 3,400%
• Bank for International Settlements and Swiss central bank to test CBDC this year

Our main discussion: JPM Coin. 

Initially announced in February 2019, JPMorgan’s JPM Coin is being launched for commercial use. In this episode, NLW looks at:

• The history of private currencies in the U.S.
• Why Libra was a starting gun for both governments and other private corporations
• How JPMorgan intends to make money from JPM Coin
• Why other investment banks might follow

Today on the Brief:

• Turkey’s real inflation rate 3x official number
• Hot new DeFi protocol Harvest Financial hacked

Our main conversation is about the rise of a new wave of COVID-19 and the economic fallout we’re still trying to address. NLW discusses why we’re starting this next wave more emotionally drained, politically divided and economically fragile than we were in March.

For this week’s Long Reads Sunday, NLW reads two selections from CoinDesk’s op-ed section:

CBDCs Are Evolution, not Revolution - Benoit Coeure 

The US Risks Getting Left Behind on CBDCs - JP Schnapper-Casteras & Misha Guttentag

On this week’s Breakdown weekly recap, NLW looks at:

• The initial price action that started the week
• Debates about whether BTC was thriving at the expense of alts and DeFi
• The PayPal news
• News of more public companies putting treasury reserves into BTC
• Paul Tudor Jones’ optimistic take on the human ingenuity driving bitcoin’s success

Today on the Brief:

• DOJ crypto enforcement a “disaster” for privacy
• Ant’s blockchain tools pre-IPO
• Better news around jobless claims 

Our main discussion: fiat failures, 2020 edition. 

In this episode, NLW looks at a raft of geographies in which bitcoin has recently reached all-time highs, priced in the local currency. The story, he says, is about fiats floundering more than mispriced local bitcoin. 

Special focus on economic happenings in Brazil, Argentina and Turkey.

Matt Stoller works with the American Economic Liberties Project and is the author of “Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy” as well as the popular Substack newsletter “BIG.”

In this conversation, he and NLW discuss the history of American antitrust sentiment and politics including:

• The origins of antitrust sentiment 
• How the “Watergate Babies” generation of Democrats turned away from antitrust sentiment 
• How the 1990s shifted power in favor of corporates and tech 
• Why the 2008-2009 crisis was a seminal moment in our attitudes towards big finance 
• The significance of the new antitrust case against Google 

Find our guest online:

Twitter: @matthewstoller

Web: mattstoller.com

Huge news broke this morning as PayPal announced it would be offering buying, selling and eventually merchant payments for bitcoin and other cryptos across its network. 

In this late-breaking Breakdown episode, NLW explores:

• The specifics of the news
• Why the scale, precedent and normalization are hugely bullish
• What some skeptics are saying
• Why it’s significant PayPal is focused on the coming central bank digital currency era 

Today on the Brief:

• DOJ files biggest antitrust case in two decades against Google 
• Goldman Sachs’ 1MDB settlement 
• LINE’s new CBDC platform 

Our main discussion: bulls vs. bears as bitcoin passes $12K

Someone recently tweeted, “Bitcoin price has never been this high with such bearish sentiment.” 

On this episode, NLW looks at the bullish case (growth in open interest on CME backed by strong macro narrative around stimulus) and bearish case ($12K sell wall and bleeding from alts and DeFi).