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.

What's going on, guys? It is Wednesday, July 2nd, and today we are doing a mid-year check-in on

Bitcoin. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying the breakdown, please go

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conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link of the show notes or

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Hello, friends. Quick administrative note before we dive in. We, of course, have the July

4th holiday coming up in the U.S. That's happening on Friday, and so we will be off tomorrow,

the third, Friday the 4th, Saturday, just because we are always off on Saturday,

and then we will be back with our normally scheduled Longreed Sunday on Sunday, and then back

to our regular programming next week. Now, it is July 2nd, which means not only are we officially

halfway through the year, we are also now officially closer to 2050 than we are to the year

2000. And so what more appropriate show than to

take a mid-year gut check on the state of Bitcoin and Crypto more broadly? The first half of the

year has been absolutely hectic. We had the first crypto president and all the consequent policy

changes that came along with it. Stable coins took Wall Street by storm. What seems like thousands of

Bitcoin Treasury companies sprang onto the scene. And on the macro side of the house, we've had

trade wars, real wars, and huge fights around the funding of the U.S. government.

Heading into this holiday weekend for the U.S., things are slowing down at least a little.

And so with the sweet allure of barbecue just around the corner, let's take stock of

the major narratives in the cycle and check in on how people are forecasting what's going to

...