The Breakdown

The week's episode, in one convenient file. Also including short clips from CoinShares CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti and SwanBitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten. 

• Monday | Can $700B in Quantitative Easing Calm The Markets? Feat. CoinDesk’s Michael Casey and Noelle Acheson
• Tuesday | Gov't Stimulus Goes BIG and Why Bitcoin Is the Only Truly Free Market, Feat. Dan Tapiero
• Wednesday | Is the COVID19 Fiscal & Monetary Response An Overreaction? Feat. Bruce Fenton
• Thursday | Off
• Friday | State Power & Authoritarianism After Coronavirus featuring Peter McCormack

Peter McCormack is the host of What Bitcoin Did and the Defiance podcast. He recently returned from travel to a number of countries in South America including Venezuela and Colombia as well as the Turkey-Greece border. 

In this off-the-cuff and wide ranging conversation, Peter and @NLW discuss

• Bitcoiner politics and the bitcoin community’s reaction to the potential for increased state power in the wake of Coronavirus
• Which types of state power growth we should be most concerned with 
• How to push governments to retract power growth on the other side of crisis 
• How travel around the world has informed Peter’s perspective on bitcoin and politics
• Why nuance is both disincentivized and sorely needed in times of crisis

In his daily Coronavirus press briefing today, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said “our main scramble now is ventilators.” The state anticipates that within 45 days, it could need 37,000 ventilators. It currently has 3000. 

Bruce Fenton was one of the early crypto community canaries in the coal mine warning of the impending threat of Coronavirus. As the world has caught up to the warning, he has shifted his attention to helping coordinate an open source network that is trying to address that exact problem. 

On this episode of The Breakdown, Bruce joins to discuss:

• Where the US is in its awareness cycle 
• Why bitcoiners are worried about the long-term economic ramifications of massive stimulus
• What a voluntarist alternative to government intervention might look like
• How an open source network is trying to solve the ventilator shortage 
• What regular people can do to contribute to the fight against Coronavirus

President Trump and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced a significant slate of upcoming stimulus measures, including deferred taxes and direct payments to Americans (although those details remain to be seen). 

On this episode of The Breakdown, 10T holdings CEO Dan Tapiero joins to discuss:

• How this forthcoming stimulus might impact the bitcoin narrative
• Why some traditional safe havens like bonds might not fair well in the coming markets while others like gold are poised to thrive 
• Why markets could be positioning for a major bounce back
• Why the Fed has more tools in its toolkit than popular media and opinion are suggesting 
• Why the dollar’s global strength is a major concern 
• Why bitcoin is the only truly free market in the world

Over the weekend, the Fed decided it couldn’t wait for Wednesday’s planned meeting to act, cutting interest rates to nearly 0%. It also announced $700 billion of direct capital injection through the purchase of Treasury securities and mortgage-backed debt. 

The question is whether this action can actually calm markets? So far, it’s not looking great. Within minutes, emergency circuit breakers were triggered again. Markets are down more than 9% on the day. 

In this episode, @NLW chats with CoinDesk’s Chief Content Officer Michael Casey and director of research Noelle Acheson about:

• Why the market isn’t impressed with Fed action
• Why no Fed response will be enough on its own to solve the health crisis and the resulting economic dislocation
• Why we’re going to see more conversations in the coming weeks about UBI, MMT and other direct citizen stimulus