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 and produced and distributed by coin desk.

What's going on, guys? It is Saturday, January 23rd, and that means it's time for the weekly recap.

Now, of course, from a short-term perspective, the story of this week was the price action. It started nice for the Ethereum folks who finally had their

moment getting up above the widely agreed upon marker of 1420 as the Ethereum all-time high.

They got their moment of celebration before it quickly went back down again, which the Bitcoin

community obviously understands as we had that long two-week

period between 19,000, 674 and 20,000, where we were all debating whether we actually hit

that all-time high or not or if it even mattered. Anyways, by the end of the week, it had gotten

ugly for absolutely everyone, but especially the Bitcoiners. On Thursday, prices dipped all

the way back down under 30,000

before rebounding again on Friday.

Theoretically, this was all about a fud cycle. There was Janet Yellen Fudd when she testified

as part of her confirmation hearings to become Treasury Secretary and said that

crypto was mainly used for illicit

activity. There was the persistence of tether fud, the idea that there's a huge scam waiting to unravel

and it'll take the whole Bitcoin industry down with it because it's the genesis of Bitcoin

success. And then of course there's the double spend fud, which happened on Thursday, and which was really a story of reporting gone wrong.

I explained yesterday why I think those were not actually the cause of this dip, but simply narrative fuel, helping sophisticated buyers take advantage of what was an inevitable correction after such a massive move up.

But if that price was the short-term story,

I think that they're sitting right in front of our faces was also the more significant

...