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, Abra, and FtX, and produced and distributed by CoinDesk.

What's going on, guys? It is Thursday, January 20th, and today we are talking about the

possibility of a Russian ban on basically everything related to crypto. First up, however,

if you are enjoying the breakdown, go subscribe to the show, leave a rating, leave a review, or if you want to dig deeper into the conversation, join the breakers Discord.

You can find the link in the show notes, or you can go to bit.ly slash breakdown pod.

Finally, the standard disclosure, in addition to them being a sponsor, I also work with

FTX. So right now, as we're recording this, the house hearing on crypto and energy usage is happening.

And originally I was going to do a show all sorts of fud busting around that, but I decided to

combine it into one. I want to give a little time sorts of fud busting around that, but I decided to combine it into one.

I want to give a little time to see people's reflections on the discussions going on in Congress

today and bring it together to you all tomorrow. So look out for that. What I want to focus on today,

then, is a couple other big pieces of news that really hit two very different but important dimensions of the crypto industry

in 2022. On the one hand, a nation state, trying to make a determination about how it's going to

engage with this whole industry, and on the other hand, NFTs and what they might mean for the

future of business, culture, entertainment, etc.

So yesterday on the show, I discussed how 2022 was going to be a year where governments really have their come-to-grip's moment with the crypto space, figuring out where they're

going to fit, how they're going to fit it into public policy frameworks, and in many ways, there are now

two extremes that governments can look at as tent polls. On the positive extreme, there is El Salvador

who has actually made Bitcoin legal tender, the first nation state to do so. There are a lot of

reasons for countries to be compelled by that example.

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