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, chain aliasis, and FtX, and produced and distributed by CoinDesk.

What's going on, guys? It is Sunday, July 31st, almost August. And that means it's time for Long

Reads Sunday. 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 dig 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.

For what it's worth, Longread Sunday's posts are some of the best to go debate in the context of a community like

the Breakers Discord. So I hope I see you there. Lastly, a disclosure as always. In addition to them

being a sponsor of the show, I also work with FTX. All right. So to Long Read Sunday and look,

if you are a long-term listener of the show, you will know that there

aren't too many rules when it comes to what I focus on or read for LRS. But one of those

rules is that when Nick Carter writes a new essay, especially a bare market essay, which just has

such a different feel and flavor than the bull market, we read it here. That's a rule.

And so who am I to deny that? Nick published a piece on July 20th on CoinDest called The Credit Crunch

is not the end of crypto lending. Subheader, it is a mistake to view Bitcoin's success as a trade-off against the creation of credit.

Its future depends on it.

With that, intro, let's dive in.

Tell me if you've heard this story before.

A vast new market opens up, and an investment and credit boom soon follows.

Real wealth is created alongside a speculative excess. Banks spring up all over to extend credit to market participants. New financial

instruments are created. Trading firms start trading these instruments on margin. A massive firm blows

...