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, December 15th, and that means it's time for the Friday

5. 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 at the show notes or go to bit.ly

slash breakdown pod. Hello, friends. Well, because of a

couple unforeseen life things, there is not going to be a weekly recap episode tomorrow on Saturday,

and instead I am moving up that conversation that I have with Scott Melker every Friday morning,

which we call the Friday 5, to today's slot on the breakdown podcast. Before we get into the

conversation, I just want to frame

a little bit about what we're talking about. There are two really big issues that come up in this

show. The first has to do with Ledger and the exploit that happened yesterday, which had a lot of

people, as you'll hear, very, very scared, and for good reason. As we discussed in the show,

I think that the important things to

take away are not just screw ledger, but are a much more nuanced look at all of the challenging

practices around self-custody, and how it can sometimes be at odds with what people want to do

with their crypto assets, especially when they're in defy. There are a lot of very real challenges,

especially as people try to drive some of

these functionalities mainstream, and I don't think it's a conversation that we can run away from.

Secondly, the other big topic of the show is, of course, the Fed Pivot, although Scott, as you'll hear,

is not quite as willing as some mainstream media commentators to call it such. I certainly think

...