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 Tuesday, August 22nd, and today we are talking about updates in the

Circle and Coinbase relationship around USC, followed by a number of macro updates. 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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bit.ly slash breakdown pod. Hello, friends, happy Tuesday. So today we are going big picture,

and we're starting in the cryptosphere with some updates around one of the biggest stable coins

in the space. The TLDR is that Coinbase

and Circle are dissolving their center consortium partnership and restructuring the relationship

between the two firms. The center consortium that governs USDC currently will be wound down,

and Coinbase will take a minority equity stake in Circle. The size of the equity stake was

not disclosed, but one anonymous source said that no cash had changed hands The size of the equity stake was not disclosed,

but one anonymous source said that no cash had changed hands as part of the deal. Coinbase CEO,

Jeremy Aller, said in their joint blog post that, quote, The nature of the investment

means that Coinbase and Circle will now have even greater strategic and economic alignment

on the future of the financial system. So let's take a step back

for a moment. The Center Consortium was founded by Coinbase and Circle in October 2018 to establish

the USDC stablecoin. The effort was originally envisioned as an open standards effort which could

facilitate additional USDA issuers and broader industry participation. That said, since the consortium's

founding, Circle has remained the sole issuer of That said, since the consortium's founding,

Circle has remained the sole issuer of USC, with the Center Consortium acting as a jointly

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