BREAKDOWN: The Bitcoin Banking Battle Heats Up
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.8 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 12 December 2020
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Banks are moving into crypto and crypto companies are trying to become banks, so how does it all play out?
This episode is sponsored by Crypto.com, Nexo.io and this week’s special product launch LVL.co.
On this edition of the weekly recap, NLW looks at the brewing battle to be the bitcoin and crypto bank of the future. He looks at three stories reporting banks getting into crypto (BBVA, Standard Chartered and DBS) as well as crypto companies applying to become banks. Finally, he examines why this is happening right now, and what are the true stakes of the game.
This week on The Breakdown:
Monday | China’s Latest Digital Currency Trial Is Its Most Important Yet
Tuesday | A De Facto Bitcoin ETF? MicroStrategy Is Raising $400M to Buy More BTC
Wednesday | The Most Important Trends and People Shaping Crypto 2020, With Ryan Selkis
Thursday | SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce on a Bitcoin ETF, Custody Rules and What’s Next for the SEC
Friday | Why a Massive 169-Year-Old Insurance Company Just Bought $100M in Bitcoin
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. |
| 0:09.2 | It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. |
| 0:14.9 | The breakdown is sponsored by crypto.com, nexo.io, and leveled, and produced and distributed by CoinDesk. What's going on, guys? It is Saturday, |
| 0:25.1 | December 12th, and that means it's time for the weekly recap. And this week, we just have to talk |
| 0:32.4 | about Bitcoin banking and the race around Bitcoin banking that is heating up significantly. |
| 0:39.5 | First, though, let's talk about Michael Saylor, the absolute madman and his team at Micro Strategy. |
| 0:45.3 | The beginning of the week, they announced that they would be offering $400 million in convertible |
| 0:50.2 | debt with an intention to buy more Bitcoin with it. A couple days later, they announced that they |
| 0:55.8 | were increasing that offering to $550 million, and yesterday they announced that they had closed |
| 1:01.4 | with $650 million. For those keeping track at home, that means they will have on their books |
| 1:09.2 | more than a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin. |
| 1:13.2 | If you listen to my episode with SEC Commissioner Hester Purse earlier this week, |
| 1:17.7 | this is the de facto ETF that Hester and I discussed. |
| 1:22.1 | Citibank may have downgraded micro-strategy stock because they didn't like this move, |
| 1:27.4 | but it seems like the |
| 1:28.4 | market does, given that they were able to raise 250 million more than they even thought they |
| 1:33.5 | would. But anyways, what I really want to talk about and what I think was the big overarching |
| 1:38.0 | story of this week was Bitcoin banking and crypto banking and a race that is heating up. So let's go through news |
| 1:46.6 | from this week about banks getting into crypto. First, there was standard chartered bank, a bank |
| 1:52.5 | that has about 720 billion in assets. It is London-based. They have reportedly gathered a group |
| 1:58.7 | of four exchanges and five of the largest OTC traders for a new |
| 2:03.0 | digital asset trading platform that is, of course, tailored to the institutional market. |
... |
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