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, July 25th, and today we are catching up on a number of

different crypto issues, including further reaction in the world coin launch, some intrigue around

SPF, and discussion of the SEC's potential appeal in the ripple case. 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 go to bit.ly slash breakdown pod. Hello friends, what's going on? We are back with some updates.

As I said, we've got a little bit of SEC appeals in the ripple case,

a potential SBF gag order, please God. But where we'll start is with some further follow-ups

on WorldCoin. As the day went on yesterday, a lot of the first impression themes that we discussed

on the show got really hammered in. An example comes from Airy Paul from Block Tower,

who wrote a highly viral thread

about the market dynamics surrounding a launch like this. He wrote,

Here's the basic crypto market manipulation model that produces the $10 billion plus valuations

for startups. Grant founders and investors the cap table locked, airdrop a tiny percentage of

float to retail, then

give market makers a multiple of that and incentivize them to set a price floor with options.

The result is that retail traders see a price and liquidity on exchange, but that price

reflects less than 5%, often less than 1% of the tokens.

Media breathlessly report on the quote-unquote success, VCs mark their books up and get to

raise new funds on the basis of the fake marks. Then, three to 18 months later, the tokens

...