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, nexo.io, and all nodes.

And produced and distributed by CoinDesk.

What's going on, guys? It is Saturday, December 5th, and that means it's time for the weekly

recap. So, Bitcoin years plus 2020 years combined means that it feels like about

100 years since Bitcoin punched above all-time

highs at the beginning of the week. Then again, this could also be because the real psychological

barrier is 20,000 no matter what the technical number is. It could also be because, frankly,

after waiting for three years, a whole lot of folks out there want to see

more than just a touch-up to previous highs. They want to see a smash to a whole new dimension.

Whatever the case, however, one thing that is clear is that there has been a consolidating

narrative around this rally. And that narrative is that this time isn't being driven by

wonky retail speculators. Instead, the new market participants are U.S. institutions. And the

narrative for those institutions, the raise on debt for them to be involved, focuses on limited

supply in the face of unlimited printing.

To get a sense of just how clear this is, Reuters yesterday published a piece called

How American Investors are gobbling up booming Bitcoin. Bitcoin has grabbed headlines this

week with its dizzying ascent to an all-time high. Yet under the radar, a trend has been playing out that

could change the face of the cryptocurrency market, a massive flow of coin to North America

from East Asia. It is North American investors who have been the bigger winners in the 165% rally

this year. Weekly net inflows of Bitcoin, a proxy for new buyers to platform serving mostly North

...