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 Sunday, July 14th, and that means it's time for Long Reade Sunday.

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 going to bit.ly slash breakdown pod. Hello, friends. We have a Bitcoiny LRS this weekend.

We're actually staying on some of the themes that started with July 4th, and have really followed

through given how political the conversation around Bitcoin has recently become.

We're going to kick off with a piece from Shinobi, the point of which is sort of, I would

say, to remind us that

no matter which politician says they like Bitcoin now, Bitcoin was never about integrating

with the existing system. It was always about forging its own path. The piece is called Liberty

doesn't ask for permission. Bitcoin was founded on the idea of self-sovereignty, self-determination,

and freedom. Bitcoiners should not forget this. Let's turn it over to AI me right now to read

the piece from Shinobi, and then we will be back. Today is America's Independence Day,

a celebration of our freedom from the British Empire and the tyranny of a bureaucracy removed

by thousands of miles

of ocean ruling over our lives. The revolutionary war that won us that freedom is not something

that happened overnight, or something that just sparked due to one event or circumstance in the

short term, it was the result of over a century of an overbearing government influence on the

colonists that resided in North America. In the same way,

Bitcoin was not a thing born out of the singular event of the great financial crisis. Just like

...