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 produced and distributed by CoinDesk.

What's going on, guys? It is Saturday, February 11th, and that means it's time for the weekly

recap. A quick note before we dive in, there are two ways to listen to the breakdown.

You can hear us on the Coin Desk podcast network feed, which comes out every afternoon,

and also features other great Coin desk shows, or you can listen on the breakdown-only feed,

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All right, so if you've been listening along, the last couple days have been a bit of history

and background trying to set up why things seem so much more antagonistic

right now. And in many ways, what I've been arguing, or at least trying to display, is that there

is some amount of reaction and counter reaction going on as part of this larger shift in tone.

However, as we've been talking about the Pinser movement to cut off bank access for the

crypto industry, a much clearer and louder opponent has also been making waves.

That opponent is, of course, Gary Gensler and the SEC.

And on Wednesday night, that conversation heated up in a big way.

Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, tweeted that evening,

we're hearing rumors that the SEC would like to get rid of crypto staking in the U.S. for retail

customers. I hope that's not the case, as I believe it would be a terrible path for the U.S.

if it was allowed to happen. Staking is a really important innovation in crypto. It allows

users to participate directly in running open crypto networks. Staking brings many positive improvements to the space, including scalability,

...