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 Thursday, January 22nd, and today we are talking about Bitcoin at the World Economic Forum. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit.ly slash breakdown pod. Well, friends, Brian Armstrong is on the ground in Davos advocating for Bitcoin in the

crypto industry, but this year's World Economic Forum has been a weird one. Liberal stalwarts like Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney have acknowledged the end of the rules-based order and tried to articulate what might come next. There's a sense that the global elite, for lack of a better word, have visibly lost control of the system and don't have a response for what they see in the world. Now, usually Davos has a big central theme that points to one direction or another. You might remember the 2021 theme, the Great Reset, with the official slogan, you'll own nothing and be happy. This year the theme is the milk toast phrase, a spirit of dialogue. It seems to

say nothing and world leaders are exceedingly unhappy. With all that as background,

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has made multiple appearances articulating a future built around

Bitcoin. In a panel with central bankers to discuss tokenization on Wednesday, Armstrong stood

firm and asserted, were seeing the birth of a new monetary system, the Bitcoin standard.

One notable exchange came when Bank of France, Governor Francois Villarroix de Galhalle said,

I'm a bit skeptical of this idea of the Bitcoin standard. Monetary policy and money is a part of

sovereignty, and we live in democracies. If we lose that, we lose a key part of democracy.

He added, I trust more independent central banks with a democratic mandate than private issuers of Bitcoin.

Armstrong pushed back at that clearly incorrect understanding, commenting,

Bitcoin doesn't have a money printer. The supply is fixed. Bitcoin is a decentralized

protocol. There's actually no issuer of it. In the sense that central banks have

independence, Bitcoin is even more independent. There's no company or country or individual that controls it in the

world. Armstrong continued, I think it's actually a healthy competition. People can decide which

when they trust more. I think it's actually the greatest accountability mechanism on deficit spending.

Now, the line that Bitcoin would compete with central bank issued fiat gathered a laugh from the crowd,

demonstrating the continued skepticism from the Davos set.

Armstrong also used this session to advocate for yield on stable coins, which is the major

sticking point in the debate over the market structure bill.

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