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.

What's going on, guys? It is Tuesday, September 16th, and today we're talking about Coinbase thinking about dropping a token. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit.ly slash breakdown pod. All right, friends, welcome back to another breakdown. Today, like I said, we are going to be talking about Coinbase's new explorations of a potential token. But before we get into that, I wanted to quickly cover what's happening in the lead-up to Fed Day. DLDR, the Senate has confirmed White House advisor Stephen Moran to a position on the Fed Board of Governors. In a Monday night session, the Senate voted along party lines to approve Moran, allowing him to take his seat on the FOMC the following morning. Moran had been the administration's pick to replace Adriana Coogler, who resigned last month. In that seat, Moran will only serve the remainder of Coogler's term, which expires in January. Moran was one of the major architects of Trump's tariff policy and has put forward some pretty unconventional economic views over the past year. Before being appointed to the administration, he sketched out a playbook for rebalancing the global economy, which included the notion that other countries should be paying to maintain the U.S. dollar as a public good. We've done shows on Moran's economic theories before, but his essay from last November called A User's Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System gives a pretty good account of his views. Moran is a bitcoiner and has advocated for both using stablecoins to increase demand for treasuries and a Bitcoin strategic reserve to minimize the harm of a dollar devaluation. However, Moran's credentials as a pro-crypto figure seem like a pretty small part of

the story at the moment. Controversially, Moran won't resign from his position as a White House advisor

while he takes his seat on the Fed board. Instead, he will take leave from that role while he serves out

the term. That choice and the implications it has for Fed independence led Republican Senator

Lisa Murakowski to withhold her vote.

Murkowski said, it's all about appearances. On the Democrat side, the appearances that Trump has

installed a loyal foot soldier in the halls of the Fed. Senator Elizabeth Warren said,

every claim he makes and every vote he takes will be tainted with suspicion that he isn't

an honest broker, but instead is Donald Trump's puppet. In another key

exchange, Moran stood up to Senator Chris Van Hollen stating, what I can tell you is that if I am

confirmed to the Federal Reserve, I will act independently based on my own independent analysis of the

economy and economic policy. Meanwhile, the administration has been stymied in their attempt to remove

Governor Lisa Cook. Last month, the president accused her

of listing two different houses as her primary residence on mortgage documents and purported to fire her for cause. The district court put an injunction in place last week that would allow Cook to attend this week's FOMC meeting while the firing was litigated. The administration has claimed the decision to fire Cook is not subject to judicial review and have filed an appeal. But it seems like the decision will stand at least for this month's meeting.

Now when it comes to... claim the decision to firecook is not subject to judicial review and it filed an appeal.

But it seems like the decision will stand at least for this month's meeting.

Now, when it comes to the rate decision, this probably doesn't really have any effect.

A single rate cut is fully priced in and expected to be delivered on Wednesday.

Bucking the market by refusing to cut would be a historic, arguably extremely dangerous to market stability, so seems highly unlikely.

That doesn't mean the Fed will be able to escape the appearance of bias, with President Trump

...