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, June 16th, and today we are talking BlackRock

ETFs, Tether Fudd, and whether they are trying to kill crypto to control crypto.

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All right, friends, the news has been coming hard and fast, so let's dive right in.

On Thursday morning, CoinDesks Ian Allison, the same Ian Allison behind the FTX Alameda Research balance sheet scoop dropped another mammoth story, which is

that BlackRock is close to filing a Bitcoin ETF. Eric Valcun is the senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg

writes, holy crap, they did it. BlackRock has officially filed for a spot Bitcoin ETF. Huge.

Coinbase is the custodian. Couple thoughts. One, this is a shocker.

The filing, not the partnership with Coinbase. Two, there's been no signs at all SEC willing to approve,

but BlackRock is very connected, so maybe they know something? Three, could be a big win for

Ark who has live spot filing that's ahead of them in line.

Another intriguing piece to this, Coinbase gets custody win but stands to lose both in clients and with fee pressure on trading costs if a spot ETF is approved. Think about it. Why the

hell would I pay Coinbase 40 to 100 basis points for trade when the ETF is one basis point?

Interesting in the Bitcoin filing where they list all the things

that could adversely affect the price of Bitcoin, and there's many, they list the exchanges,

which are, quote, largely unregulated and may be subject to manipulation, which is, of course,

the SEC's issue with approving ETFs. Jay Trevinsky, the chief policy officer at the Blockchain

...