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 Sunday, February 28th, and that means it's time for long reads Sunday. This week, we have a returning guest to the show, although it's not actually

his voice, it's his words through my voice. Today we're going to read,

Can Government Stop Bitcoin by Alex Gladstein that was published last week by Quillette?

This has obviously been a big theme for Alex Gladstein and for the industry as a whole. Alex was on

the show to discuss exactly this point with Ben Hunt a few months ago,

so I'm really excited to get his matured, cogent, written down thoughts, and I know that

you're going to enjoy it too.

Can Governments Stop Bitcoin by Alex Gladstein?

Since its creation more than 12 years ago, Bitcoin is undefeated.

Its price has leapt from 5 to 50 to 500 to

$5,000 to now past $50,000. The number of global users has eclipsed $100 million. The system's

network security, number of developers, and new applications are at all-time highs. Dozens of

companies, including Tesla and Square, have started to add Bitcoin

to their corporate treasuries. This worldwide success doesn't mean that people haven't tried to

stop Bitcoin. The Digital Money Project has, in fact, survived a variety of attacks which in some

cases threatened its existence. There are two main vectors, network attacks on the software

and hardware or infrastructure,

and legal attacks on Bitcoin users. Before we explore them and consider why they failed,

let's start at the beginning. In January 2009, a mysterious coder going by the name of

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