Two things that are interesting here, trends to keep your eye on.

The first is client demand, B2B client demand,

is forcing a company like Visa to stay up and even become a leader in the crypto space.

Visa is clearly making a bet that they can't just wait and absorb.

They're going to have to be proactive and carve out their space in the Web3 era starting now.

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.

The breakdown is sponsored by Nidig and produced and distributed by Coindesk.

What's going on, guys? It is Wednesday, December 8th, and I am recording this show even as the

crypto hearings in the House Financial Services Committee are happening. And I had gone back and

forth about whether I wanted to record this show today about what was going on in

those meetings or wait a day to digest the full tone, tenor, specific quotes, specific questions

of the meaning. And I decided that it was more valuable to get the full take based on everything

that we had seen and all of the reflections and commentary that will come after versus just trying to speed out

half of an analysis. So tomorrow you will have my look at the crypto hearings in Congress right now.

And today, instead, I'm going to go through a bunch of interesting news from yesterday.

First up, Visa is, of course, no stranger to crypto. They have been working on a variety of initiatives

that plug in exchanges and stable coins to their system that position themselves as a leader

in the new central bank digital currency era. They're currently working with something like

60 crypto platforms globally. They have partnerships that allow exchanges to issue cards.

They even this year bought a crypto punk for what was at the

time $150,000. Now, Kai Sheffield, whose Visa's head of crypto at the time, explained what they're

...