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 Wednesday, July 26th, and today is a Fed day.

Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it,

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All right, friends, today is an FOMC day. And frankly, I was thinking about it, we have had so

much going on in crypto with cleanup from last year and new narratives and legal decisions

that we really haven't had as much time to catch up on the macro. Now, in addition to whatever's been going on in the crypto space,

another part of why macro has been perhaps a little quieter,

is one, seasonality, summer is historically a quieter time in markets,

and second, there's been this really interesting dynamic

where markets that otherwise might have looked pretty bad, due to interest

rates, due to geopolitics, have been held up by a particular type of enthusiasm, in this case

the excitement around AI. So, the specific context for today's show is that we've got a rate

hike decision coming up this afternoon. Now likely that has happened

before you're hearing this, but it was recorded before. Now, one super quick note before we get

to the meat of today's episode, you've heard it before, I'll say it again, Wolf in Wolf's

clothing, the accelerator for Bitcoin and Lightning startups is the sponsor of today's show,

and they are right now accepting

applications for their third cohort.

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