You should be excited but also skeptical. You should watch what people do rather than what they say.

And you should always try to game out what's being said to understand where the motivations are

and what the potential second order consequences might be.

We're entering into one of the wildest times in the history of Bitcoin and it's only getting started

and it's going to get crazier from here.

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 nexo.io and produced and distributed by CoinDesk.

What's going on, guys? It is Wednesday, February 3rd, and today we're talking about Michael

Sailor's mission to Orange Pill, 1,400 corporations. First up, however, let's do the brief. First on the brief today, an update on

the Ant Jack Ma situation. So quick background, I've discussed this on a couple of shows now,

but last fall, China at the very last minute canceled Ant's IPO after Jack Ma, the founder of that company, made some statements

that they did not like. For the next few months, Jack Ma did not appear in any media. He even

canceled his appearance on a TV show that he had been hosting. People were fearing the

worst. There were all sorts of crazy rumors flying around.

Last week, he resurfaced, much to the delight of markets.

Although, as I mentioned then, in a very minor way, he appeared for less than a minute on a live stream about teachers. But either way, today we got a little bit more information about

the company in question, the Ant Group.

The Ant Group will be combining all business segments, including its blockchain arm, into a

financial holding company which will have bank style capital requirements. This is the agreement

they've come to with the Chinese government. And effectively, what it does is it makes a fintech company

regulated much more like a bank. In other words, the Chinese government gets much more visibility

into their operations. Markets are at least happy or relieved that it looks unlikely that

...