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 Wednesday, February 17th, and today is sort of an extended grab bag, brief style episode. We have had so much news coming so fast over the past few weeks

that I haven't had a chance to put together

a collection of some of the individually smaller but still taken as a whole important news.

So that's what we're going to do today.

First on that front, let's do a quick check back in on the Bitcoin price.

Obviously, yesterday's episode was about breaking through that psychological

barrier of 50,000 and asking what it meant in terms of this idea of a Bitcoin super cycle.

Savvy listeners will note that almost as soon as we hit 50,000, we retraced back to the 48s and

49s. However, overnight, we reclaimed new highs and are

currently trading firmly above 51,000. So how are people analyzing this? Well, some are pointing to

the micro strategy announcement saying that it seemed designed to help Bitcoin punch through

this $50,000 mark. For evidence, those people are pointing to the previous micro strategy

bond announcement on December 7th, which helped Bitcoin get above $20,000 at that time.

Others are talking about how things feel like they're getting too heated now. A JPMorgan

research note argues that the Bitcoin market cap has gained $700 billion on the back of only $11 billion

of institutional inflows. It argues that retail traders are seeing this institutional news and

then aping in with leverage in a way

that is disproportionate to what they should. Dovi Wan tweeted something that was at least

a little reminiscent of this saying, Tether is now seeing a positive premium after a long time

...