BREAKDOWN: Is Janet Yellen Bitcoin's Biggest Enemy or Greatest Asset? Yes
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.8 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2021
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As a new administration is sworn in, how will one if its most important officials – nominated Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen – impact the digital assets space?
This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io.
Today on the Brief:
- Jack Ma is not dead
- The latest in crypto M&A
- Deutsche Bank survey sites bitcoin as biggest bubble
Our main discussion: Yellen’s impact on bitcoin and digital assets
In this episode, NLW breaks down the cryptocurrency FUD competing to be the “wall of worry” for the new 2021 bull market, including Tether FUD, environmental FUD and the idea that crypto is only used for crime.
The illicit transactions idea was given new oxygen when Janet Yellen repeated it in her Senate confirmation hearing this week. New research from Chainalysis shows, however, that the percentage of crypto volume involved in crime is decreasing.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In 2020, crypto-criminal activity fell to 0.34% or 10 billion in transaction volume. |
| 0:07.6 | Both of these numbers are very small as percentages and very small as total volumes, especially |
| 0:12.4 | in the context of the larger world. This is less volume than an exchange like Binance did yesterday. |
| 0:18.0 | What's more, within this, the amount of crime that is the actual crime that |
| 0:21.7 | Yellen is talking about isn't even close to the biggest category, which are scams. Terrorist |
| 0:26.4 | financing represents almost nothing. Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily |
| 0:34.7 | podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. |
| 0:40.6 | The breakdown is sponsored by nexo.io and produced and distributed by CoinDesk. |
| 0:47.2 | What's going on, guys? It is Wednesday, January 20th, and today we are talking about the new Biden administration and Janet Yellen |
| 0:56.2 | specifically. Is she Bitcoin's biggest enemy or greatest asset? First up, however, let's do the |
| 1:03.1 | brief. First up on the brief today, Jack Ma is not dead. Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, |
| 1:10.3 | has not been seen in public for months. The TLDR is that |
| 1:14.9 | he upset the CCP when he said that the Chinese financial system needed to reform and be |
| 1:20.0 | updated for a new era. This was last November, and a couple of days later, they pulled the |
| 1:25.0 | Ant Financial IPO, which was slated at the time to be the |
| 1:28.2 | biggest IPO in history. It was a power play to show the place of private companies, particularly |
| 1:34.4 | financial companies in the Chinese system. And it's also been rumored that the move had a lot |
| 1:40.0 | to do with the power accruing to these fintech firms specifically that the CCP wants for itself |
| 1:46.2 | as part of the digital yuan. I did a full episode about this if you're interested last week, |
| 1:51.1 | but either way, today he appeared for less than a minute in a live streamed video speaking to a |
| 1:56.3 | group of teachers. Just based on that tiny little nugget of Jack Ma, the value of Alibaba soared |
| 2:02.8 | $58 billion, which is absolutely insane. Analysts say that this likely means the worst-case |
... |
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