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 Sunday, January 26th, and that means it's time for Long Read 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 dive deeper into the conversation,

come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link of the show notes or go to bit.ly slash

breakdown pod. Well, friends, here we are at the end of the first week post-new Trump administration, post-inaguration.

And as you might imagine, that means that there were lots of choices for Long Read Sunday this week.

We could have discussed a new digital age at the SEC.

We could have talked about meme coins.

We could have talked about things going on with the Ethereum Foundation. But what I chose instead was a piece by Blake Benthal called Ross is free.

Now let's free the internet of money. Blake writes, following Ross Albrecht's part in the Trump

administration must follow through on crypto's potential to spread privacy and financial innovation.

Let's turn it over to the AI version of me from 11 Labs to read the piece,

and then I will come back and finish off with a few thoughts of my own. The release of Ross Ulbricht

and the lifting of sanctions on tornado cashmark pivotal moments for the crypto community,

it's more than symbolic. It's an opportunity to clearly rebrand the U.S. as a safe place to build

the internet of money.

Ross's freedom comes after over a decade of imprisonment, a journey defined by relentless

advocacy, legal battles, and unwavering support from the crypto community.

His release matters deeply to me because over a decade ago, I launched Silk Road 2.0,

his site's successor.

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