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, May 13th, and today we are talking about Crypto's continued political conversation.

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.

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Well, friends, you know the story of last week. Last Wednesday, former President Donald Trump

firmly positioned himself as the pro-crypto candidate for this election cycle. While Trump's speech

was low on policy specifics, the main point, in his words, was, the Democrats are very much

against it. If you're in favor of crypto, you better vote for Trump.

In the immediate aftermath, it was very difficult to find a single take pushing back on this

point. It wasn't so much that everyone in crypto was excited to throw their lot in with Trump.

It was more a clear recognition that this election is between a presidential candidate who

is fine with it and another who is willing to leverage the full force of the U.S. government to snuff out the industry entirely. That position was, of course, reinforced by the

threat of a presidential veto delivered that same day. Over the weekend, a huge amount of ink was

spilled across the op-ed pages, both in industry publications and the mainstream press.

Easily the most controversial was an op-ed that appeared in Blockworks, who is, of course, now the

publisher of the breakdown. The article's title was Only a Fool Would Vote on Crypto alone,

and the article framed single-issue crypto voting as prioritizing, quote, financial interest

over broader societal and ethical concerns. The thesis was that there are a host of other

issues facing voters this election, particularly around women's rights.

Now, what I'm not going to deal with here is any of the controversy around Blockworks actually

printing this piece. I think it's insane that that would be controversial. And any free speech

...