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, January 6th, and today we are kicking off the true new year of breakdown coverage with a slate of updates around Operation Chokepoint.

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, one more time, happy new year and welcome back to the

2025 edition of The Breakdown. We did one episode last week, but it was really more catch-up

on what was going on at the end of 2024 than anything else.

Today, we are starting to look forward, although in a very the best disinfectant is sunlight kind of way, because Coinbase have received full unredacted documents from the FDIC, demonstrating

exactly what banks were told during Operation Chokepoint 2.0. For several months, of course,

Coinbase has been fighting the banking regulator to force them to comply with freedom of information laws. In particular, Coinbase was

seeking a full record of so-called pause letters, which directed banks to cease offering

crypto products. The FDIC released some of the letters dating all the way back to March 2022.

That was a full year before the shutdown of signature in Silvergate Banks,

and demonstrated that Operation Chokepoint began much earlier than previously believed. However,

these letters were redacted to the point they contained no pertinent information other than

proving that they existed. In mid-December, the judge overseeing the case made it clear her

patience was wearing thin. She warned the FDIC to,

quote, make more thoughtful redactions and be prepared to legally defend each and every one of them.

On Friday, Coinbase received all 25 pause letters sent to banks between March 22 and May

23. They are lightly redacted, only in relation to commercial information that identifies people,

products, and partnerships. But all the relevant details are there, including the precise reasoning

used by the FDIC to put the brakes on the crypto industry during the past three years.

...