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, July 26th, and today we are doing an early LRS. Before we get

into that, however, if you are enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating,

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Hello, friends. Welcome to something of a three-day weekend. So many of you are at the Bitcoin

conference this week and I happen to be traveling for something totally unrelated and family

specific. And so there won't be an episode this weekend. And so I wanted to move the

Long Read Sunday up to Friday. We should be back with our normal Friday 5 next week,

but for now, the big theme this week, of course, really the big theme for this summer,

has been the increasing political relevance of Bitcoin and Crypto. In some ways, this

started back around the collapse of FTX, when the response was in part every pro-crypto and neutral

crypto politician getting out of the way of the anti-crypto army and letting them for a time run

roughshot over us. This is Operation Chokepoint 2.0, Gensler's aggressive SEC. And for a while,

it seemed like that would be the story. Things started to shift a little when BlackRock decided

to wave in and plant their flag in the Bitcoin

spot ETF race. Things changed a little more when court decisions went against the SEC and forced

their hand in many ways leading to that spot ETF launch. Things changed even more when former

President Donald Trump shifted his perspective on crypto, waiting into it slowly at first, but then embracing

it fully with both arms. A big question has been whether Democrats would follow suit. There has been a

strong, hope, at least, if nothing else, on the part of the left side of the crypto aisle,

...