Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big-picture power shifts remaking our world.

The breakdown is sponsored by crypto.com, BitStamp, and nexo.io, and produced and distributed by CoinDesk.

What's going on, guys? It is Friday, August 7th, and today I'm doing something a little bit

different. Over the last three days, I have pummeled you with so many big ideas and questions.

Can social media be redeemed as a force for good in society, or is it just going to tear us apart even further? Is there a big shift

to a new stagflation environment that's going to have major consequences for us? Is there a

possibility of a post-central bank world, or is this the

system forever? These are literally just the questions that we've been talking about for the last

three days. So instead of hitting you with more big thoughts today, I thought I'd hit you with

some numbers. This episode is going to be 11 numbers that I think tell the story

of the world economy right now. You'll notice I'm not doing a brief, and that's because I'm

actually recording this on Thursday, but I think that the 11 numbers should get you through

just fine. Let's start with the first number, which is 2000. That is the magic number psychological barrier

gold price that was breached last week, and since that number was breached, we've had five days

in a row of record highs. Interestingly, and I think really importantly, the narrative at least is

that this is not just the same old gold bugs seeing a little

bit of a bump in their holdings.

This might reflect a different conversation happening at big institutions, particularly with

regard to the question of whether gold can play a role that treasury bonds and other

types of government debt might once have.

We are in a negative real interest rate world, and because of that, some traditionalists are looking around and wondering whether gold can play a similar safe haven role, but with the

...