In this 1st part of the “Bitcoin in Africa” podcast documentary series, join Anita as she learns about the current living situation of Zimbabweans and the country's political history. Combining on-the-ground recordings, interviews and thoughtful narration, she paints a picture of why things are how they are, as well as the state of human rights and free speech.
Recorded February 2020 in the run-up to the growing quarantine movement and coronavirus travel restrictions Anita travelled to Zimbabwe and Botswana to listen, learned and record about the usage of Bitcoin in these countries. In the world of bitcoin countries like Zimbabwe and Venezuela are frequently mentioned as places where Bitcoin could or perhaps should be making a difference. Where they can really help the people's economic situations.
"I wanted to see by myself, if this is true and in how far Bitcoin is known and used there." said Anita Posch
You can find travel pictures, videos, credits and a full transcript here
In his daily Coronavirus press briefing today, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said “our main scramble now is ventilators.” The state anticipates that within 45 days, it could need 37,000 ventilators. It currently has 3000.
Bruce Fenton was one of the early crypto community canaries in the coal mine warning of the impending threat of Coronavirus. As the world has caught up to the warning, he has shifted his attention to helping coordinate an open source network that is trying to address that exact problem.
On this episode of The Breakdown, Bruce joins to discuss:
Where the US is in its awareness cycle
Why bitcoiners are worried about the long-term economic ramifications of massive stimulus
What a voluntarist alternative to government intervention might look like
How an open source network is trying to solve the ventilator shortage
What regular people can do to contribute to the fight against Coronavirus
President Trump and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced a significant slate of upcoming stimulus measures, including deferred taxes and direct payments to Americans (although those details remain to be seen).
On this episode of The Breakdown, 10T holdings CEO Dan Tapiero joins to discuss:
How this forthcoming stimulus might impact the bitcoin narrative
Why some traditional safe havens like bonds might not fair well in the coming markets while others like gold are poised to thrive
Why markets could be positioning for a major bounce back
Why the Fed has more tools in its toolkit than popular media and opinion are suggesting
Why the dollar’s global strength is a major concern
Why bitcoin is the only truly free market in the world
Over the weekend, the Fed decided it couldn’t wait for Wednesday’s planned meeting to act, cutting interest rates to nearly 0%. It also announced $700 billion of direct capital injection through the purchase of Treasury securities and mortgage-backed debt.
The question is whether this action can actually calm markets? So far, it’s not looking great. Within minutes, emergency circuit breakers were triggered again. Markets are down more than 9% on the day.
In this episode, @NLW chats with CoinDesk’s Chief Content Officer Michael Casey and director of research Noelle Acheson about:
Why the market isn’t impressed with Fed action
Why no Fed response will be enough on its own to solve the health crisis and the resulting economic dislocation
Why we’re going to see more conversations in the coming weeks about UBI, MMT and other direct citizen stimulus
The best Sundays are for long reads and deep conversations. Last week the Let's Talk Bitcoin! Show gathered to discuss a new consensus driven approach to DeFi oracles and to revisit Johnston's Law (anything that can be decentralized will be decentralized) with the man who coined the phrase so many years ago.
The cypherpunk movement has expanded far beyond the 2,000 people who subscribed to mailing lists in the 1990s. In 2018, Entrepreneur reported there are more than 8,000 posts on Bitcointalk every day, while Coinbase garnered millions of user accounts. Such experimental technology is no longer the realm of just a few thousand geeks.
However, across the board, even in 2020 cypherpunk projects rarely exceed a few dozen regular contributors. For example, Exiledsurfer, an event organizer and hacker space co-founder from the Parallele Polis collective, said his space in Vienna was inspired by a collective in Prague that collects roughly $5,000 a month in cryptocurrency from members to share a venue. Likewise, the Vienna chapter accepts dues in DAI, monero and bitcoin, just to name a few.
“We’re a crypto pure organization,” Exiledsurfer said. “This will be an alternative asset class or, in a hundred years, there will by three guys in a garage in Topeka, Kansas, tweaking on a 2020 computer to keep the chain alive, just like people tweak on old cars.”
The cypherpunk movement appears to be growing, albeit slowly.
“I still get people every week, young people and programmers who say they want to give their lives to this thing,” cypherpunk icon Amir Taaki said, underscoring why he believes the movement will only succeed through groups with “structured” training methods.
“There’s a yearning need for this...we can build our own financial networks outside of the control of the state,” Taaki said of the academy he plans to launch in Barcelona.
“How do all of these pieces that we’re working on fit together to serve a higher goal? What’s our narrative?” Taaki said.
Yet, even as a cypherpunk technology aficionado, Wertheimer disagrees with such collectivist views of “our” narrative or “pure” projects.
“I don’t think we need bitcoin evangelists,” Wertheimer said. We’ll talk about why he views the ideological movement as divorced from user groups that may now utilize cypherpunk technology.
Want more? Read my article about how bitcoin compares to the early days of the internet.
Massive and novel government intervention in markets is now a foregone conclusion, but what happens to bitcoin as the dust settles?
Description
Yesterday, the Federal Reserve announced more than a trillion dollars in liquidity injections into the market. In the coming weeks, many observers expect trillions of more in stimulus in a variety of exotic new intervention tactics.
While this will (hopefully) stem the still emerging economic fallout from the pandemic, it creates its own new set of problems. In this episode of The Breakdown, @NLW is joined by “We Study Billionaires” host Preston Pysh to discuss:
How bond markets will react to the wave of stimulus
The challenge of global coordination for a new Bretton Woods
Why in the wake of stimulus some governments might turn to bitcoin
The Coronavirus got really extra real today for markets. A two and a half week selloff was tipped to the next level by a major ratcheting up of action from the US government (which still seemed clearly to be not enough to calm markets).
In bitcoin, this meant a drop from around $8000 yesterday to under $6000 today - a head-spinning dump, especially for those who are more recent to crypto.
Still, in this episode, @NLW argues that there are 7 good reasons to keep calm and HODL on:
It’s not just bitcoin
Correlation means infiltration
Peak fear
Asia on the upswing
Buy order behavior
Bitcoin’s been dead before
And a bonus: this environment is exactly what bitcoin was built for
The week of February 12, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was reaching new all time highs. Meanwhile, China’s quarantine of the 11 million people in Wuhan was three weeks old and expanding to other parts of the country.
While the global equities markets have finally started to catch up to the fear of a global pandemic, the Coronavirus has been one a profound case study in the power of narratives to shape behavior. Even now, those seeking to contain the spread in the US are fighting against narratives from leadership that range from “it’s just the flu” to “it’s a hoax from the media.”
On today’s episode of The Breakdown, NLW speaks with Epsilon Theory co-founder and market theorist Ben Hunt, who makes it his business to understand how narratives are shape and shaped by the world around us.
Since the beginning of the Coronavirus outbreak, Ben has been a clarion voice in the chaos. This episode is no exception.
Whatever you thought of the uncorrelated or safe haven narratives a few weeks ago, it’s hard to deny that bitcoin and crypto are moving in lock step with equities - even mirroring a small bounce in the morning that retreated in the early afternoon.
On this episode of The Breakdown, NLW looks at hot takes on the narrative from Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal and crypto investor Ari David Paul.
Not all the news is bleak, however. Also on this episode, we break down recent financings for
Argent’s de-fi friendly wallet
Horizon Games’ blockchain-based Hearthstone/MtG style game SkyWeaver
Futureswap’s decentralized futures exchange and more
