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 CoinDes.

What's going on, guys? It is Saturday, August 21st, and that means it's time for the weekly recap.

Let's do a good old-fashioned news roundup, and let's start with some exchange news.

First, on Binance. News broke a couple days ago that former Coinbase General

Council and former acting comptroller of the currency, Brian Brooks, was leaving the CEO role of

beleaguered Binance. He tweeted, greetings crypto community, letting you all know that I have resigned

as CEO of Binance US. Despite differences over

strategic direction, I wish my former colleagues much success, exciting new things to come.

Now, a couple weeks later, we're getting a little more inside info about what was going on.

If you'll remember, Brooks had done an interview with Forbes where he won, tried to draw a clear

distinction from

Binance the parent company, saying that Binance US just licensed the name and shared a board

member in CZ, and two, he said that they were in the middle of a big fundraise.

That suddenly, seemingly days later, whoosh.

Now, according to Bloomberg in the New York Times, those strategic differences were about

the inability to complete that raise. Binance U.S. was apparently trying to raise about

$100 million but could not get investors comfortable with legal questions hanging over the

head of Binance. They were worried about current investigations and couldn't get over the fact that CZ had a 90% ownership stake in Binance. They were worried about current investigations and couldn't get over the fact that

CZ had a 90% ownership stake in Binance US. So that's that and the saga continues. Meanwhile,

Binance also just announced yesterday that it would now be switching its model and all users

...