Bitcoin is a trillion dollars in crypto capital and trying to turn that into productive capital

so that people can actually deploy it into smart contracts, people can build interesting applications,

use cases, decentralized exchanges, stable coins around Bitcoin. It's like a no-brainer.

At the same time, this is not the Bitcoin narrative that a lot of people grew up with.

Bitcoin is digital gold. It's only meant for like hoddling. And they have spent so much of their time hating all the experiments

that are happening outside of Bitcoin that when they start seeing similar experiments happen

within Bitcoin, there's a natural kind of negative reaction to it.

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 Nidig and produced and distributed by CoinDesk.

What's going on, guys? It is Monday, December 27th, and we are back with another episode of the breakdowns end-of-year extravaganza.

On this episode, I'm joined by Munib Ali. He's the co-founder of the Stax Protocol as well as the CEO of Hero.

Now, Stax is really interesting because it is deeply invested in the Bitcoin ecosystem,

but has a very different take on how to build on Bitcoin and what Bitcoin can be used for and where it fits in this larger system, as opposed to some of the more dominant

views you'll hear on places like crypto Twitter. I think especially in the wake of a year where

we had Taproot go live, and where there's never been a more growing conversation about things like

Defi on Bitcoin, I'm excited to share Muneb's perspective on these and other issues.

All right, Muneb, welcome back to the breakdown.

How are you doing, sir?

I'm doing great.

So, listen, this is, like I was just telling you, one of my favorite series of the year,

really fun chance to think about everything that made 21 so interesting.

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