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 Monday, August 11th, and today, for the first time in a while,

we're asking if China is banning crypto again. 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, we have an old narrative resurfacing here, but before we do,

we got to talk a little bit about the price because while the U.S. was sleeping, Bitcoin was ripping.

On Sunday night at 9 p.m. on the East Coast, Bitcoin took off, gaining 2.3% over 2 hours. The price at midnight

was $122,000 in change, so Bitcoin began the week in striking distance of a new all-time high.

Now, as I record, Bitcoin is trading at around $119,000, so it's backed off a little bit, but

still pretty interesting. The big jump occurred a few hours into the Sunday night

session at the CME, so it looks like institutional investors getting positioned for a big week ahead.

This weekend's price movement has also left a large CME gap between 117,500 and 119,000. Over 90%

of these gaps have been filled, but it doesn't always happen immediately. Reporting from the middle of the night could only really point to Trump's executive order, allowing Bitcoin to be added to 401Ks as the proximate catalyst. Narrative follows price, so I'm sure we'll have additional big brain takes to come, but honestly, it's difficult to find a single, clear reason that Bitcoin was taking off on a Sunday night. The one guess that some people had was

summed up by crypto analyst Noel Adjison, who tweeted, Bitcoin jumped on the Hong Kong open.

Coincidence, perhaps? Which I think perfectly gets us into the question of the moment, which is,

are we getting another crypto ban in China? Last week, the news aggregators went into

overdrive declaring that Beijing was once again

banning crypto. The tweet that echoed across Twitter from investing.com declared in all caps,

China has officially banned cryptocurrency trading, mining, and related services, citing financial

risks, capital flight concerns, and environmental impacts. Now, China has, in fact,

...