CoinDesk Podcast Network
2,524 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 months ago - ★★★★★ - 39 ratingsThe top stories and best shows in the blockchain world, delivered daily from the team at CoinDesk.
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BREAKDOWN: Money Reimagined... The Global Contenders Trying to Displace the Dollar
May 08, 2020 18:16 - 25 minutes - 23.7 MB“Some of the greatest theorists about money…thought it better to be multiple competing currencies rather than a single global standards, and there were plenty of periods in history where that was the case. Standardization of money came relatively late to the world. One of the lessons of history is that with globalization comes a tendency for a particular currency to become the number one dominant currency for transactions, for trade, for international reserves. A great question to a...
BREAKDOWN: 9 Reasons Why Bitcoin Has Never Been Stronger Going Into a Halving
May 07, 2020 18:40 - 21 minutes - 19.3 MBThis episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund. The bitcoin halving is just a few days away and the growing excitement is palpable. On this episode of The Breakdown, NLW argues that the excitement is also legitimate, and looks at nine reasons why bitcoin has never been stronger going into one of its every-four-year issuance reductions: Price Hash rate Mining competition Accessibility and Services Infrastr...
BREAKDOWN: Surveying the Carnage: How Real Estate, Travel and Music Are Faring During the Crisis
May 06, 2020 19:01 - 25 minutes - 23.3 MBThis episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund. The second order effects of the COVID-19 crisis are here, and they’re painful. In this episode, NLW looks at how COVID is impacting three industries: Travel and tourism 100m lost jobs expected globally $2.7 in lost GDP Airbnb lays of 25% of employees Music & Concerts From a record $12.2B concert year to a loss of $9B Expectations of concert prohibition l...
BREAKDOWN: Why Crypto Matters for Financial Inclusion, Feat. Celo's Marek Olszewski
May 05, 2020 18:23 - 35 minutes - 32.6 MBThis episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund. In a world of centralized mobile money solutions, do decentralized, permissionless currencies matter? Around the world, an estimated 1.7 billion people remain unbanked and lacking access to high quality financial services. Some projects see cryptocurrency as an answer. In this episode of The Breakdown, NLW speaks with Celo co-founder Marek Olszewski about: How...
BREAKDOWN: Why Warren Buffett's Bearishness Should End V-Shaped Recovery Talk
May 04, 2020 18:58 - 16 minutes - 15.1 MBThis episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund. One month after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008, Warren Buffett wrote an Op-Ed saying that he was buying stocks. Yet during the Coronavirus crisis, he is sitting firmly on the sidelines. On Saturday night, the “Oracle of Omaha” spoke for 4.5 hours in the first ever virtual version of the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting - an event which s...
RESEARCH: Bitcoin Halving 2020... How the World's Largest Mining Pool Is Helping Miners 'De-Risk'
May 02, 2020 12:00 - 29 minutes - 26.9 MBF2Pool is the largest bitcoin mining pool in the world controlling 20 percent of the collective computational energy, also called hashrate, on the bitcoin network. On the fifth and final episode of Bitcoin Halving 2020: Miner Perspectives, Heller discussed the economic incentives driving cryptocurrency mining and mining pool operations. This episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund Though miner revenue has d...
BREAKDOWN: Money Reimagined... Why the Dollar Has Never Been Stronger or More Set up to Fail
May 01, 2020 18:22 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MBTwo of CoinDesk’s most popular series, NLW’s The Breakdown podcast and the Money Reimagined newsletter by chief content officer Michael Casey, come together for a special podcast microseries in the run up to Consensus: Distributed, our first virtual big-tent event May 11-15. The Breakdown: Money Reimagined builds on themes Casey explores in his newsletter to tell the story of key arenas in the battle for the future of money -- from the incumbent dollar to the aspirational DCEP to th...
BREAKDOWN: From Corrupt to Broken... An Insider’s Analysis of the Fed, Feat. Danielle Dimartino Booth
April 30, 2020 18:36 - 36 minutes - 33.8 MBDanielle DiMartino Booth is the CEO and Chief Strategist of Quill Intelligence. Before that, however, after correctly predicting the mortgage meltdown, she was called upon to serve and spent 9 years as an advisor to the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. That experience led her to write “Fed Up: An Insider's Take on Why the Federal Reserve is Bad for America.” In this episode, Danielle and NLW discuss: How the Fed went from simply corrupt to corrupt and broken Why w...
BREAKDOWN: When Currencies Fail... A Primer on the Dollar Crisis in Lebanon
April 29, 2020 18:22 - 22 minutes - 20.9 MBThe Lebanese pound has lost at least 50% of its value against the dollar since last year. 220,000 people have lost their jobs. Food prices are up 58%. An estimated 75% of the population needs assistance of some kind. And over the last two nights, at least a dozen banks have been torched by protesters. The catalyst? Not coronavirus, but a massive dollar shortage that is destroying an economy that relies on inflows of US dollars to function. In this episode, NLW breaks down how L...
BREAKDOWN: COVID-19 and the Mass Surveillance Machine, Feat. Maya Zehavi
April 28, 2020 18:39 - 45 minutes - 41.6 MBAs the COVID-19 crisis rages, it takes on new economic and political dimensions. The frames for many of the most important questions for the next decade are being set now, in this moment. On this episode of The Breakdown, NLW is joined by Maya Zehavi, a long-time blockchain consultant known for her insightful domain-spanning takes. They discuss: How the COVID-19 health crisis overlapped with a political crisis in Zehavi’s home country of Israel Why governments use times of c...
BREAKDOWN: Bitcoin vs. QE Infinity and the 4 Archetypes of the Halving Debate
April 27, 2020 18:50 - 17 minutes - 15.7 MBThe bitcoin halving is just two weeks away. While the COVID-19 crisis pushed attention off the momentous event for a while, the discussion is coming back fast and strong. Google searches for the bitcoin halving already exceeding the 2016 peak, despite almost no mainstream media coverage. In this episode, NLW breaks down 4 archetypes of people within the larger debates around the bitcoin halving: Speculators - those who flock to Twitter to engage in endless rounds of debate around...
LTB!: Lightning Network Messaging, Political Expediency and What Crisis Has Revealed
April 26, 2020 14:14 - 49 minutes - 45.6 MBOn today's show we've got a pair of interviews for you. First we speak with John Cantrell, the author of Juggernaut, a new messaging layer 3 application being built on top of layer 2 lightning network, which is itself built on top of layer one bitcoin. It's a lot of layers, but as a technological concept currently in beta it's a fascinating project, and we talk about it. (Juggernaut on Github) After the break we're joined again by Alex Gladstein of HRF.org for a discussion on polit...
RESEARCH: Bitcoin Halving 2020 the 'Arms Race' for Miner Efficiency Intensifies
April 25, 2020 12:00 - 39 minutes - 35.7 MBIn this episode of the Bitcoin Halving 2020: Miner Perspective podcast series, we take a trip down memory lane back to the early days of bitcoin when miners first began competing for network rewards. “I think the introduction of [Application Specific Integrated Circuits] was a watershed moment in terms of changing the way bitcoin was mined and secured,” said Galen Moore, senior research analyst for CoinDesk. “If you know that a more powerful machine will get you more reward, make ...
BREAKDOWN: Starting a Bitcoin Startup During the COVID-19 Crisis, Feat. Yan Pritzker
April 24, 2020 18:59 - 52 minutes - 47.7 MBYan Pritzker is the CTO and cofounder of Swan Bitcoin, an automated bitcoin only investing app aiming to be the best onramp to bitcoin. He is also the author of Inventing Bitcoin. On this episode, he and NLW discuss: How immigrating from the Soviet Union taught Yan about capital controls Buying bitcoin at $30 in 2011 Why the type of capital available shapes what type of startups entrepreneurs found Why venture capitals focused investments away from bitcoin The emergence of...
BREAKDOWN: We Don’t Need Big Brother to Beat This Virus
April 23, 2020 18:50 - 19 minutes - 17.7 MBOne of the key aspects of most plans to reopen the economy is digital contact tracing. This would be an apparatus whereby mobile phones kept track of the other mobile phones they had been physically proximate to, so that if someone were diagnosed with COVID-19, the at-risk people they had been in contact with could be notified. Apple and Google have proposed one plan while a European consortium is working on another. At the center of the issue is whether contact tracing can be don...
AFRICA: Fighting Scams and Preaching Bitcoin in Botswana, Feat. Alakani Itireleng
April 23, 2020 13:10 - 45 minutes - 41.5 MBIn this episode Anita speaks with Alakanani Itireleng, who founded the Satoshicentre in Botswana in 2014 and single-handedly built a growing Bitcoin community. She is the heart and center of Bitcoin education there, even the government is relying on her consultancy. This interview was recorded as Anita traveled through southern Africa in February of 2020, just days before the Covid-19 lockdowns went into effect. Her greatest ambition, the organization of a Bitcoin conference in Sout...
BREAKDOWN: The History of the Dollar System From Bretton Woods to QE Infinity, Feat. Luke Gromen
April 22, 2020 18:41 - 1 hour - 69.7 MBQE infinity. Corporate bailouts. Nudgin UBI. The incredible economic phenomena going on now didn’t happen out of the blue. They are the byproducts of a key events spread across the 70 year history of the US dollar led global monetary system. Luke Gromen is the founder of Forest From The Trees, a macro/thematic research firm. In this episode, Luke provides a TL;DR on those key events that got us to where we are today, including: Bretton Woods and why the world went on a USD-based...
BREAKDOWN: From Proof of Health to UBI: How Everything Changes Post COVID-19, Feat. Joe McCann
April 21, 2020 18:49 - 1 hour - 57.4 MBJoe McCann currently works in cloud and AI at Microsoft and has spent decades in tech, crypto, and open source communities. He recently wrote a piece called “A New, New World Order” all about the second and third order effects of Covid-19. In this conversation, Joe and NLW discuss: Localism and the beginning of the end of globalization The return of domestic manufacturing The ‘Roaring 20s’ of Inflation The inevitability of Universal Basic Income in response to inflation QE i...
BREAKDOWN: Bearish or Bullish? What Oil, Defi Hacks and Cash Hoarding Tell Us About Markets
April 20, 2020 18:49 - 22 minutes - 21 MBIt’s hard to look at recent news from both crypto and traditional markets and not feel like we’re getting pretty mixed signals. Stocks have been recovering, but oil is hitting historic lows. DeFi suffers a major hack over the weekend, but Coinbase sees a major spike in $1200 transactions right as $1200 stimulus checks hit. Cash hoarding is giving pretense for eliminating privacy-preserving money, but one of the world’s most successful hedge funds has authorized investment in bitcoin...
LEIGH: BitTorrent Creator Bram Cohen on 'a System That Doesn't Suck'
April 19, 2020 12:00 - 45 minutes - 41.7 MBOn today’s episode CoinDesk reporter Leigh Cuen sits down with Bram Cohen, author of the BitTorrent protocol and CEO of Chia. In this wide ranging interview they talk Bram’s early interest in “hard problems”, his unexpected ascent from sketchy to celebrity and much more. Leigh and Bram discuss: The real promise and strengths of cryptocurrency Really interesting problems in cryptocurrency Getting started in crypto 20 years ago with MojoNation and glorious failure. The origin of ...
RESEARCH: The Market Impacts of a Bitcoin Halving Explained
April 18, 2020 12:00 - 38 minutes - 35.1 MBFor more information about the bitcoin halving, download the free CoinDesk Research explainer report which features over 30 different charts and additional commentary from mining industry experts. “If price performance following the November 2012 and July 2016 halvings are any indicator, bitcoin’s price should increase significantly over the 10 to 12 month period following the [third] halving.” That’s Ciara Sun, head of global business and markets at cryptocurrency exchange Huobi...
BREAKDOWN: Why Money Is Losing Its Meaning, Feat. Jared Dillian
April 17, 2020 18:37 - 41 minutes - 38.1 MBBitcoiners are particularly sensitive to Fed intervention in markets, but the degree to which the Fed is willing to print to backstop basically all risk is drawing the attention of even normal market participants. On this episode of The Breakdown, NLW is joined by Jared Dillian, market analyst, contrarian, and editor of The Daily Dirt Nap. They discuss: What ‘safe haven’ means in today’s climate How Jared became a bitcoin believer after being a skeptic Why in an MMT world, tax...
BREAKDOWN: Libra vs. DCEP? The Battle for the Future of Money Heats Up
April 16, 2020 18:31 - 18 minutes - 17.4 MBThis week saw the latest salvos in the battle for the future of money. Libra announced that it would be moving away from a single currency that was backed by a basket of national currency to a model of numerous individual fiat-pegged currencies. While the original model was akin to a disruptive implementation of John Maynard Keynes original concept for a global basket currency (which he called a “bancor”), this model seems more to position Libra to help existing central banks digi...
AFRICA: Bitcoin Maximalism, Entrepreneurs and COVID-19 in Zimbabwe (Part 5 of a Six-Part Documentary Podcast Series)
April 16, 2020 12:05 - 39 minutes - 36 MBIn this episode, we'll join Anita Posch in Zimbabwe as she speaks with Tongayi Choto, a software developer, entrepreneur and a bitcoin maximalist. He founded Afriblocks, a Global Pan-African Freelance platform that connects professionals across the world. They talk about the problems young Zimbabweans are facing and Tongayi's approach to make lives better. Later, Anita answers listener questions about the current use of bitcoin, other methods of payment in Zimbabwe and more. Topics...
BREAKDOWN: What the Economy Will Look Like 6 Months From Now, Feat. Ryan Selkis
April 15, 2020 17:24 - 49 minutes - 45.1 MBAs week (one million, it seems) of the COVID-19 lockdown plods on, many are wondering what the economy will look like on the other side. Ryan Selkis is the CEO and founder of Messari. He was one of the earliest voices in crypto to sound the alarm on the potential impact of COVID-19 not only on the health system but on the economy. In this episode of The Breakdown, Ryan joins @NLW to discuss: Why the markets right now represent an economic and psychological relief rally What it ...
BREAKDOWN: The $20,000 Human IPO and 5 Other Crypto Stories That Have Nothing to Do With COVID-19
April 14, 2020 18:45 - 21 minutes - 19.9 MBEven as the market tries to make sense of everything happen (or ignores it, depending on your perspective), crypto keeps on plugging along. Today on The Breakdown @NLW looks at 5 recent crypto stories that are representative of larger trends, including: Coinbase Custody enabling staking for Polkadot DOTs A Telegram-focused exchange shutting down due to regulatory compliance costs A $20k Human IPO on Ethereum Shapeshift acquires Portis & other crypto M&A A G20 report on the t...
ANNA: Making Sense of the SEC's Case Against Telegram
April 12, 2020 13:00 - 45 minutes - 42 MBTelegram, the popular messaging app, has big plans for its blockchain Telegram Open Network, or TON. It also had one of the biggest token sales in history, followed by a huge legal fight over it. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) sued the company to stop its $1.7 billion private token sale, saying the future tokens for TON, called grams, are unregistered securities. Telegram argued grams were a commodity. A federal court judge in New York issued a preliminary in...
RESEARCH: How Miners are Preparing for Lower Block Rewards
April 11, 2020 13:00 - 33 minutes - 30.3 MBHow are bitcoin (BTC) miners strategizing for the upcoming halving event in which block reward subsidies will be cut by 50 percent? On this week’s episode of “Bitcoin Halving 2020: Miner Perspectives,” Kristy-Leigh Minehan and Pavel Moravec give an in-depth explanation of what miners are doing to maximize profits and increase operational efficiency. Since October, Minehan explains, bitcoin mining farms have been getting on “the upgrade train” and purchasing state-of-the-art ASIC m...
BREAKDOWN: Quantitative Tightening and 5 Key Questions for Our Changing World
April 10, 2020 18:00 - 16 minutes - 15.2 MBAs we wrap up another crazy week - 6.6m more jobless claims, $2.3T more in stimulus - this episode offers a few key themes and questions for bitcoiners and the crypto-minded to think about over the long Easter weekend: Crypto-dollarization: why money is pouring into USD stablecoins and how it could create a future onramp to bitcoin ‘Quantitative Tightening’: why a new brand for the bitcoin halving could help us better capture a unique narrative moment What it takes to get the eco...
BREAKDOWN: Rebuilding the Resilience Economy, Feat. Anthony Pompliano
April 09, 2020 18:21 - 53 minutes - 49 MBAs host of the Pomp Podcast, author of the daily Off The Chain newsletter, and founder partner at Morgan Creek Digital Assets, Anthony Pompliano is one of the best known media personalities and investors in the crypto industry. In this episode, he and @NLW discuss: The Fed’s just announced $2.3 trillion stimulus package - including the authorization to buy junk bonds Why media and trust have desiccated to their lowest levels ever The lack of a plan to restart the economy Wh...
AFRICA: If Bitcoin Works in Zimbabwe, It Works Everywhere (Part 4 of a Six-Part Documentary Podcast Series)
April 09, 2020 13:00 - 1 hour - 55.1 MBIn part 4 of this six-part documentary podcast series about Bitcoin in Africa we'll join Anita as she speaks with a young woman from Harare, Zimbabwe. She calls herself a 'Digipreneur' and also works as a teacher. Working with her organization, they focus on the digitalization of Africa and aim to improve outcomes in Zimbabwe. With the use of Bitcoin outlawed and the state of human rights and free speech being rather poor in Zimbabwe, Anita and the guest agreed to not mention her na...
BREAKDOWN: The Questions We're Not Allowed to Ask, Feat. Hidden Forces' Demetri Kofinas
April 08, 2020 18:26 - 1 hour - 61.6 MBDemetri Kofinas is the host of Hidden Forces, a popular podcast that examines markets through the lens of large patterns of change. On this episode, Demetri and @NLW discuss: How the politicization of the Coronavirus crisis has undermined smart action How media incentivizes extreme opinions regardless of underlying expertise What conversations are we not having around Coronavirus - in particular in terms of second order effects Why we’ve barely begun to discuss the plan for t...
BREAKDOWN: Exit Plans, Premature Rallies and Frontline Heroes, Feat. Ben Hunt
April 07, 2020 18:15 - 36 minutes - 33.1 MBEpsilon Theory’s Ben Hunt joins for a follow up to our pre-lockdown Covid-19 conversation in early March. In the month since, the markets finally started to take Covid-19 seriously, elected officials stopped calling it just the flu, and big chunks of the world economy shut down. Now, as markets rally on early evidence the curve may be flattening, the question is: is this premature? In this episode, Ben & NLW discuss: How the markets have moved from “denial” to “bargaining” Wh...
BREAKDOWN: How Disruption Makes Humanity Stronger, Feat. Emerson Spartz
April 06, 2020 18:50 - 56 minutes - 51.8 MBSecond order effects are things that happen as unexpected outcomes of something else happening. These effects can create surprising causal chains. Take this for example: A pandemic makes everyone need to work from home leads to an increase in video calling leads to Walmart reporting that people are buying more shirts, but not pants. Emerson Spartz is one of the world’s foremost thinkers on virality and the internet. He founded Mugglenet - the world’s biggest Harry Potter fan sit...
LTB!: BitTorrent Creator Bram Cohen on Coronavirus Second Order Effects and Improving on Bitcoin
April 05, 2020 14:42 - 1 hour - 57.8 MBIn Today's discussion we'll briefly talk about some of the knock-on, or second order affects which the coronavirus disruption is having on our world today, and which may continue into the future. Then for the meat of the show we'll dig into specific areas where bitcoin could, or perhaps is being improved with the creator of one of the most impactful peer to peer technologies live in the world today. Shownotes for LTB! #433 Topic 1 - Second Order Impacts of Coronavirus Lockdowns S...
RESEARCH: Miner Perspectives on Bitcoin Halving 2020, Part 1 of a New Podcast Series
April 04, 2020 13:00 - 28 minutes - 25.6 MBIn about 40 days, the world’s first and largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, bitcoin, will undergo a pre-programmed block reward reduction known as the halving. Roughly every 4 years, bitcoin’s block subsidy rewards are cut by 50 percent in order to prevent currency inflation. Recurring halving events also ensure that total supply over time is capped at 21 million coins. It will take an estimated 64 halving events before the last bitcoin is mined. So far, there have on...
BREAKDOWN: Will DeFi Matter in a Post-Coronavirus World? Feat. Matt Luongo
April 03, 2020 17:41 - 35 minutes - 32.6 MBMatt Luongo got his start in bitcoin in 2013. In 2016, he watched a pivotal moment where the sound money, digital gold narrative subsumed the payments use case for bitcoin. While he agreed, ultimately, with the important of bitcoin as a new reserve asset, he still wanted to build and found his way to Ethereum. Now his company is launching tBTC, a trust-minimized bridge between bitcoin and ethereum. Among other uses, it is a new solution to enabling bitcoin to be used as collateral...
BREAKDOWN: 5 Reasons for Cautious Optimism in Crypto
April 02, 2020 18:59 - 23 minutes - 21.2 MBThe economic outlook is grim. The jobless claims keep piling up and even the most intransigent states are shutting down business. There isn’t - yet - a realistic plan - for returning to any sort of economic normalcy. Yet in this bleak view, there are a handful of crypto indicators that suggest for cautious optimism. In this episode, @NLW discusses: The crypto community’s volatility resilience A significant uptick in Stablecoin issuance Proof that bitcoiners have been buying t...
AFRICA: Using Bitcoin in Zimbabwe (Part 3 of a Six-Part Documentary Podcast Series)
April 02, 2020 13:05 - 52 minutes - 47.7 MBAfter three weeks of listening, recording and talking bitcoin (BTC) in Africa, podcaster Anita Posch is back in part 3 of her six-part documentary podcast series. In the first and second part of this six-part series you heard about the difficult living situation, the hyperinflation and about the multi-currency world that Zimbabweans have to live with since many years. In this - the third part - you will hear from two early bitcoin (BTC) adopters based in Harare. We speak about th...
BREAKDOWN: How Coronavirus Is Accelerating the End of Globalism, Feat. Peter Zeihan
April 01, 2020 16:49 - 49 minutes - 45.7 MB“Some countries just aren’t going to emerge from the Coronavirus.” Peter Zeihan is one of the world’s foremost geopolitical experts. In his new book “Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World,” Zeihan argues that we’re at the end of the largest expansionary period in human history. As America withdraws from global leadership, a totally new (and for most parts of the world, more painful) ‘normal’ will emerge. On this episode of The Breakdown, Zeihan joins @N...
BREAKDOWN: ‘If You’re Not Radicalized, You’re Not Paying Attention’ Feat. Nic Carter
March 31, 2020 17:00 - 42 minutes - 39.1 MBIn this wide-ranging discussion, Castle Island Ventures founding partner and Coin Metrics co-founder Nic Carter joins @NLW to discuss: Why corporations weren’t adequately prepared for any serious economic trouble, much less a global pandemic Why government backstopping the corporations leads to inappropriate risk-taking How stock buybacks became a boogeyman of the current crisis Why the crisis is actually four crises in one: health, economic, financial, and geopolitical How ...
BREAKDOWN: Bitcoin, Stablecoins, DeFi and Privacy: How COVID-19 Is Changing Key Crypto Narratives
March 30, 2020 18:37 - 21 minutes - 19.6 MBOn January 28th, Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal tweeted “Notable overlap on here between the most alarmist people tweeting about the virus and those who are obsessed with the size of the Fed balance sheet.” There is no doubt that the bitcoin and crypto community broadly were far earlier in recognizing the potential significance of the Covid-19 crisis than most professional communities. Today , America preps for at least another month of lockdown and social distancing. The markets cont...
LTB!: How MakerDAO's Stablecoin Survived the Crash, Smart Contract Bugs and Full Decentralization
March 29, 2020 14:01 - 48 minutes - 44.4 MBIn the aftermath of the so-called "Black Thursday" crash from several weeks ago, MakerDAO's "DAI" ethereum backed dollar pegged stablecoin came untethered and was, for a time at least, functionally insolvent. In the aftermath, holders of the MKR token which allows holders to participate in governance decisions opted to do a couple of things, including adding the centralized stablecoin USDC to the list of acceptable collateral, which drew both condemnations mostly around centralized ...
MICHAEL CASEY: Disruption, Money and a World of Change, Feat. Niall Ferguson
March 28, 2020 14:28 - 39 minutes - 36.1 MB"...I think the right lesson to draw from all of this is that a global order needs to be based on a distributed operating system, not on a centralized architecture. And I think that applies not just in the realm of money but also across the board so that there is a greater capacity for local response than we currently have..." CoinDesk's Michael Casey speaks with author, historian and Hoover Institution senior fellow Niall Ferguson about our disrupted world, inevitable crisis and w...
BREAKDOWN: From Corporate Socialism to Dying for the Dow: 7 Themes That Defined the Week
March 27, 2020 18:58 - 21 minutes - 19.9 MBIn this episode of The Breakdown, @NLW reflects on the themes that defined an absolutely wild week in global markets and society. Those themes include: Unlimited QE - broad new powers (corporate bond buying anyone?) and an unlimited checkbook for the Fed Digital Dollars - a surprise inclusion of a digital dollar in an early Stimulus draft shifts the Overton window Narrative Shift to “Grandma Dies For The Dow” - narrative analysis that suggests that the “just the flu” of two we...
BREAKDOWN: How BlackRock Ended Up on Both Sides of the Bailout, Feat. Meltem Demirors
March 26, 2020 18:40 - 1 hour - 58.7 MBThe Senate passed $2T in Stimulus. That includes a one time $1,200 check to impacted individuals and….you guessed it, billions and billions for corporate relief. Included in that are hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate bond buying programs. The Federal Reserve has recruited asset management giant BlackRock to administer three of those programs. Here’s the kicker. As Bloomberg describes it: “under the arrangement [BlackRock] could buy some of its own funds on behalf of the...
BITCOIN IN AFRICA: Hyperinflation and Zimbabwe's Multi-Currency Reality
March 26, 2020 13:09 - 43 minutes - 39.5 MBIn this second part of the “Bitcoin in Africa” podcast documentary series, join Anita as she learns about Zimbabwe and the country's multiple currencies. Combining on-the-ground recordings, interviews and thoughtful narration, she paints a picture of why things are how they are, as well as the state of human rights and free speech. In the first episode we learned about the current living situation of Zimbabweans and the country's political history. Anita helped us understand why th...
BREAKDOWN: Why the U.S.' $2 Trillion Stimulus, Unlimited QE Will Expose the Monetary System’s Flaws
March 25, 2020 18:38 - 33 minutes - 30.6 MBCoinDesk’s Chief Content Officer Michael Casey and Head of Research Noelle Acheson join for a lively debate about the new $2 trillion stimulus package and era of “unlimited” QE, including: Whether (and on what time scale) fiscal and monetary stimulus might lead to inflation Whether the Fed buying corporate bonds amounts to a nationalization of the bond markets Why the appearance of a ‘digital dollar’ in an earlier stimulus proposal was a huge surprise How a digital dollar in the...
BREAKDOWN: Cronyism, Zombie Companies and the True Cost of the Coronavirus, Feat. Morgan Creek's Mark Yusko
March 24, 2020 18:46 - 1 hour - 58.4 MBMark Yusko is the founder of Morgan Creek Capital Management. In this wide-ranging conversation, he and @NLW discuss: Why bitcoin has fallen with stocks over the last few weeks Why price and value are not the same thing Why stocks have been manipulated An argument for buy backs being illegal Why cronyism is not capitalism Why bailouts and other types of intervention help zombie companies that should perish A debate about whether the “cure is worse than the disease” The c...
BREAKDOWN: Unlimited QE and Why Markets Can't Price in COVID-19
March 23, 2020 18:43 - 17 minutes - 16 MBLast October, Ikigai Asset Management’s Travis Kling predicted that Central Banks would have to “juice QE to infinity” in order to save markets from recession. Yesterday on 60 Minutes, Fed President Neel Kashkari said “there is an infinite amount of cash at the Federal Reserve. We will do whatever we need to do to make sure there is enough cash in the financial system.” This was followed this morning by an announcement that the Fed was giving itself effectively unlimited capacity ...