The Breakdown

Bitcoin’s price has cratered, but it’s nothing compared to the broader market havoc. From the Coronavirus scare to an oil price war, a confluence of factors is aligning to make it a very rough Monday. 

On this episode of The Breakdown, @nlw is joined by Delphi Digital’s Kevin Kelly to discuss:

• Why the stock market is just catching up to what the bond markets have been saying
• Why the bond markets have been a better reflection of potential economic pain 
• Why we need to pay attention to what happens in the credit markets 
• The role of the oil price war in today’s market drop 
• What the declining bitcoin price means for the safe haven and uncorrelated asset narratives
• Which assets are actually acting like safe havens

The full week's episodes in one convenient package

• The View From China: Crypto, Crisis and Digital Currencies Feat. Matthew Graham
• What Us Election Outcome Is Best for Bitcoin?
• Libra Plus? A New Global Digital Currency Strategy For Facebook
• Why Bitcoin Mining Might Be the New Business Model for US Power Plants
• Riccardo 'Fluffypony' Spagni on How Coronavirus Could Impact Privacy

As the Coronavirus took hold in China, officials in the Hubei province tracked potential patients by examining purchase records for cough and flu medicine for the previous month. 

Welcome to the new frontiers of privacy. In this wide-ranging episode, @NLW chats with former lead maintainer of Monero and Tari co-founder Riccardo Spagni - aka @FluffyPony on Twitter - about privacy in the context of:

• The recent arrest of DropBit CEO Larry Harmon surrounding bitcoin mixer technology being used for illicit purposes 
• The US govt’s battle against end-to-end encryption 
• Central bank digital currencies 
• At home devices like Alexa and Google home 
• Clearview AI and facial recognition
• China’s response to Coronavirus 
• Why individual apathy is the greatest threat to privacy in the world

It was another good day for global crypto, as South Korea votes to formally integrate the industry into the existing financial system, opening the market to new players and potentially improving services for crypto companies. 

In New York state, meanwhile, a recently renovated power plant is taking advantage of low cost energy with 7000 bitcoin miners. This is part of a larger trend of US-based mining in 2020. 

In a very different part of the industry, a new partnership between ConsenSys, EY and Microsoft suggests the intranet era of enterprise blockchain might be coming to a close. 

Finally, the new governor of the Bank of England says be prepared to lose money if you buy bitcoin.

Yesterday, The Information reported that Facebook’s Calibra wallet would be abandoning the backed-by-a-basket-of-currencies Libra for a set of fiat-backed digital currencies for different regions. The company quickly amended that while they would be launching those fiat-based digital currencies, they weren’t abandoning Libra. In this episode, @NLW argues that these fiat digital currencies could be more readily adopted initially than Libra among Facebook’s existing user base. 

Also on this episode, huge news out of India, as the Supreme Court reverses a decision by the Reserve Bank of India from 2018 to ban crypto banking. The move could breath life into an industry which has largely shuttered in India since the initial ban. 

Finally, a news roundup including a lawsuit against Twitter around deplatforming and a new router from HTC that can also run a bitcoin full node.