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, June 13th, and a hell of a Friday the 13th it is. 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, as you will see today, I am not with Scott Melker. Obviously, I am traveling right now, and I think Scott might have been as well. We will be back, I presume, next week with our normal Friday 5, but for now I am going to do my own Friday 5, steal in the format, and we have to kick it off, obviously, with the Tehran strikes from Israel. Now, of course, I will not be getting into the politics or geopolitics of this,

although... And we have to kick it off, obviously, with the Tehran strikes from Israel. Now, of course, I will not be getting into the politics or geopolitics of this, although if anyone wants to have that conversation with me, I would love to as someone who lived in the Middle East for a very long time, but we're going to be coming at it from the standpoint of markets and Bitcoin. In any case, if you, for some reason, haven't been watching, last night saw serious escalation in the Middle

East as Israel launched air strikes on the Iranian capital. Details are still very sparse.

The Israeli defense minister has announced a state of emergency and expects imminent retaliation

after what he characterized as a set of preemptive strikes. There's reports and now Israeli

claims of significant casualties among Iranian military leaders, those details are

still coming out. For now, the big takeaway is that this is a major escalation, and could absolutely

easily and perhaps most likely spiral into a broader regional hot war. The strike comes days

after Trump administration officials were set to meet with Iranian leadership to discuss the

terms of a nuclear deal. We're certainly seeing the Warhawks in Washington chomping at the bit, with Lindsey Graham tweeting, Game on, pray for Israel. Trump's statement about this on truth social reads, I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them in the strongest of words to just do it, but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn't get it done. I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment in the world by far, and that Israel has a lot of it with much more to come, and they know how to use it. Certain Iranian hardliner spoke bravely, but they didn't know what was about to happen. They are all dead now and it will only get worse. There has already been great death and destruction.

There is still time to make this slaughter without... but they didn't know what was about to happen. They are all dead now, and it will only get worse.

There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter with the next already-planned attacks being even more brutal come to an end. Iran must make a deal before there is nothing left to save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction. Just do it before it's too late. God bless you all. So perhaps leaving some room to come back to the table there, even as the entire country of Israel backed by American munitions is the stick to go along with that carrot. Now, as I said, it's far from the most important aspect of this conflict, but this is a Bitcoin and Macro show, and analyzing the impact on financial markets is worth a note. The first response is that crypto assets have been crushed. Bitcoin was down as much as 4.5% overnight, falling below 103,000. Ethereum saw a 10% hit and longer-tail altcoins had an equally

strong response. There's an element of this that's simply about Bitcoin being one of the largest

liquid markets that's open 24-7. The fund managers that need

to get risk off their books overnight can always sell Bitcoin. S&P 500 futures followed a similar

path downwards while gold saw a 1% uptick. Oil is surging higher, now above $70 per barrel for the

first time since April. So for the moment at least, we're seeing Bitcoin perform as a high

volatility risk asset rather than as a safe haven. This was the same that played out last October when Iran launched ballistic missiles on Tel Aviv. That strike saw around a 10% drop in Bitcoin's price across multiple days, so that weekend might have been the last time we'll ever see Bitcoin trading at 60,000, with a huge bounce back over the following weeks. That rally happened out of sync with risk markets, leading many to believe that Bitcoin was performing as a safe haven during global turmoil. For those paying attention inside the crypto sector, however, there were confounding factors. That was the week that Binance began converting billions worth of stablecoins into Bitcoin. What mattered, though, was that the narrative on Wall Street was that Bitcoin was benefiting from a flight to safety on fear of World War III breaking out, which seemed to lend credence to BlackRock's sales pitch that Bitcoin acts as a hedge against geopolitical uncertainty.

We're back in that same position, but BlackRock and other wealth management firms have now authorized their investment advisors to offer Bitcoin exposure to clients.

So how will this play out? Will Bitcoin continue to behave as a risk asset,

or will it shift back into this role as a safe haven? We will know a lot more over the next

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