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 nexo.io and produced and distributed by CoinDess.

What's going on, guys? It is Friday, May 21st, and I am excited for this conversation today.

The show is called Why Bitcoiners are rooting for this latest China mining ban to finally

actually be real. And what I want to argue in today's show is that we are in

the midst of a major narrative shift on China and crypto. We have been subject to the whims of

media reporting on China Bitcoin and crypto bans for years, even though it is so often toothless

or just repeating previous policy. It always gets reported

like it's a catastrophe. At the same time, China's involvement in crypto, especially Bitcoin,

is an increasing political and environmental liability. It's an environmental liability because a big

chunk of the quote-unquote dirty, i.e. coal-powered mining, comes from China,

such as Inner Mongolia specifically. It's a political liability, both because the environmental

concerns are a political liability, but also because questions of state control and state

compromisability due to mining. Bitcoiners, frankly, are sick of it,

sick of the albatross of this authoritarian state that is getting

worse, not better when it comes to control over its citizens. One of the things I try to be most

attuned to is shifts in sentiment, shifts in the narrative. And the reaction to this latest round of fud

confirms something I've been noticing. Bitcoiners increasingly hoping that China's mining crackdowns actually do stick.

To get there, though, let's catch up on this week in China FUD. Let's start with the FUD that helped

provide the nudge off the cliff for the Wednesday crash. We saw these big, huffy pieces about how

China had banned financial institutions from dealing with crypto. Meanwhile, people in the

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