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 Tuesday, June 10th. And today we are talking about why the head of the SEC

says that the right to self-custody is not just a foundational value for Bitcoiners, but for all of

American society. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying the breakdown,

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All right, friends, really interesting one today that shows a sign of progress and the positive

directionality of a lot that's going on with Bitcoin and Crypto.

Over the years, self-custody has been one of, if not the most fundamental fights in

crypto policy. There have been many different skirmishes along the way, but the view for most

bitcoins has been that if we can defend the right to self-custody, then most everything

else will work itself out. In fact, this was a big part of the origin story

for the crypto lobbying space in the first place. In 2020, during the dying days of the first Trump

administration, then Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin, proposed a rule banning what he called

unhosted wallets. The nascent crypto lobby descended on Washington in response, leading to a letter

from Republican lawmakers

pressuring the administration to put the rule on ice. Variations on this rule and many other

backdoor self-custody bans were proposed in the intervening years. Each time, defensive

self-custody became a rallying cry for the industry. Various factions set aside their differences

to lobby for this fundamental digital right.

In early 2022, as the regulatory threats to the industry ramped up, Alex Thorne of Galaxy

...