The real gist of this is that decentralized finance would do better if plugged into centralized

financial rails. It seems to me that one of the central categories of inquiry and debate going

forward is going to be around co-option of crypto finance ecosystems by traditional finance.

How much adoption, i.e. assimilation by banks in traditional finance, is good. How much, if any, undermines the

enterprise? I have a feeling this won't be the last report like this, this cycle, and so

understanding where different projects and people stand on those questions is going to become

increasingly important. 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 nexus.io, neared.org, and Genesis Trading, and produced and distributed by CoinDess.

What's going on, guys? It is Thursday, May 6th, and today we are asking whether banks are getting nervous about competition from D5. First up, however, let's do the brief. First on the brief today,

Mercado Libre is the latest company to add Bitcoin to its balance sheet. This is a massive

Latin American e-commerce and fintech company.

You may remember them from being one of the founding members of the Libra Association and then

leaving that association a few months later. It's a company that is based in Argentina, but listed

on NASDAQ. They announced as part of their Q1 reporting that they had added $7.8 million

worth of Bitcoin to their balance sheet.

Now, in some ways, this isn't that surprising.

Mercado Libre has a long history of interaction with Bitcoin.

In 2015, they integrated Bitcoin as a payment option on their Mercado Pago platform.

Just last week, the company announced a real estate platform exclusively for properties

available for sale in Bitcoin, launching with 75 initial properties. Some on Twitter pointed out

that a Latin American company investing in Bitcoin to protect itself from currency devaluation

...