The Breakdown

Today’s episode is the last episode of The Breakdown with me, NLW. To mark the end of this chapter, this show looks back at the biggest story from each year of the podcast, from the strange early days of 2018 through cycles of collapse, rebuilding, mainstreaming, and normalization, tracing how Bitcoin and crypto evolved alongside the show itself. It’s a reflection on the moments that mattered, the themes that endured, and why the story of power, money, and incentives is far from over, even as my time behind this mic comes to a close.

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Tether has officially launched its US-compliant stablecoin, USAT, a Genius Act–aligned, Treasury-backed token designed to operate squarely inside the American regulatory perimeter, giving the company a powerful hedge as global rules harden and tokenization accelerates. But the bigger story may be what comes next: Tether’s rapid accumulation of gold, now rivaling central banks and openly framed by CEO Paolo Ardoino as preparation for a fractured monetary order where gold-backed alternatives to the dollar emerge. The episode explores why USAT is less about replacing USDT than expanding optionality, how Tether is positioning itself as a quasi-sovereign financial actor straddling competing systems, and why dire warnings about stablecoin yield draining bank deposits look far less destabilizing when set against the scale of the global financial system.

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A crypto-native deep dive into the systems, incentives, and power structures shaping the industry. Hosted by David C.

As Washington digs out from a winter storm, there are signs that the long-stalled crypto market structure bill may be inching forward again, with behind-the-scenes negotiations aiming to revive a bipartisan path in the Senate Agriculture Committee. The episode unpacks the competing narratives around whether talks are truly back on track, the political tradeoffs shaping the next markup, and why stablecoin yield remains the most stubborn blocker. It also looks at how pressure is building from outside Washington, from Coinbase and Bloomberg’s Neil Ferguson pushing back on banking-lobby arguments, to new yield-bearing products from Bitwise and BlackRock that could make parts of the debate obsolete, before closing with a look at how Bitcoin miners’ grid-balancing role showed up during the latest round of extreme winter weather.

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Bitcoin stumbles through another Sunday-night slide as gold rips to historic highs, pulling attention and liquidity away from crypto and fueling talk of a speculative metals mania layered on top of genuine macro fear. This episode digs into why gold’s breakout is happening now, how ETF outflows, loss realization, and shaken conviction are weighing on Bitcoin, and why the growing contrast between physical metal liquidity and Bitcoin’s always-on exit may ultimately reinforce the long-term thesis even as short-term sentiment stays ugly.

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