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 nexo.io, Abra, and FtX, and produced and distributed by CoinDesk.

What's going on, guys? It is Sunday, January 16th, and that means it's time for Long Reads Sunday.

Today, we are reading a piece by a former U.S. ambassador to China, a former U.S. senator, Max Baucus.

The piece is called the urgent need for regulatory clarity on stable coins. But before we get into that, if you were enjoying the show, I would love

if you could go subscribe to it, give it a rating or a review, or join us for the conversation

on the Breakers Discord. You can find the link in the show notes, or you can go to bit.ly slash breakdown pod.

Now, as it relates to this piece by Max Baucus, the urgent need for regulatory clarity on stable coins.

We have obviously spent a ton of time over the last year talking about exactly this issue. We've discussed central bank

digital currencies, both what's happening in places like China, as well as the U.S.'s ongoing

debate about whether they should have a U.S. digital dollar, a Fed coin. Just this week,

Congressman Tom Emmer introduced a bill that would prohibit the Fed from issuing a CBDC directly to retail

and tried to make a case for a totally different set of values, cash-type values, Bitcoin-type values, frankly,

to be embedded in any sort of digital dollar that we ever decide to do.

With that setup, let's see what former U.S. ambassador to China and U.S. Senator

Max Baucus thinks. Recently, leaders from six cryptocurrency companies testified before Congress

about the opportunity and promise of digital currencies and also answered lawmakers' questions

about the risks that come with their use. Stablecoins were at the center

of much of the discussion as these fast-growing crypto assets are at the center of a debate

around the regulation of cryptocurrency. Tether, the largest stablecoin issuer, agreeing in October

to pay the Commodity Futures Trading Commission $41 million for misrepresenting the dollar

...