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 Friday, September 12th, and that means it's time for the Friday 5. 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, back with another Friday 5.

Today, I think the big thing is that we are very clearly shifting into another gear when it comes to the cryptoization of the financial system. We have it on display today in comments

from the SEC chair in policy, in new actions from BlackRock and NASDAQ. So lots to discuss.

Let's dive in.

Good morning, everybody. Happy Friday and welcome to the Friday 5. We've got a lot to talk about here.

Not the biggest week, but still, you know, that's all relative because every week we get news

it would blow your mind. Yeah, yeah. I think, I think we are firmly in the transitional period between summer and fall. It's like, you know, I think we talked about this last week. I always expect September 1 hits, you know, our Labor Day is over and we're back, you know, zero to 90 overnight, but it really does take a lot of this month to get rolling. But there's a lot that happened this week that suggests we are rolling right into it.

So lots to talk about.

Absolutely.

Yeah, let's start.

We got SEC chairman Paul Atkins saying crypto's time has come.

It wasn't actually just about crypto.

And since you obviously have both crypto and AI podcast, you're the perfect person

to discuss this because he also really dove into agentic trading and how AI would impact

markets and the technology that we use to run them. So this was really, I guess, a continuation

of things we've heard from the SEC and Paul Atkins before, but really an affirmation that

they're aware of what's coming in the future. Yep. It was also in Europe talking to the European

Union as they were talking about how the European Union could be an important place for markets

in the future. And Atkins was basically like, kicks down the podium and is like, sorry,

America's got this, plants an American flag in the middle of the thing. And Atkins is basically like, kicks down the podium and is like, sorry, America's

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