The Breakdown - Could This Actually Be An Amazing Setup for Bitcoin?

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

NLW and Scott Melker count down the five most important stories in the crypto week. Enjoying this content? SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast: https://pod.link/1438693620 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBreakdownBW Subscribe to the newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thebreakdown⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join the discussion: https://discord.gg/VrKRrfKCz8 Follow on Twitter: NLW: https://twitter.com/nlw Breakdown: https://twitter.com/BreakdownBW

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 Friday, October 10th, and that means it's time for the Friday 5. 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. All right, friends, welcome back to another Friday 5. this was an interesting one. In the beginning of this episode, I get more surprisingly bullish about Bitcoin price action for the rest of the year than I would have thought. So if you want to see me go down a potentially interesting thought process around what bubble talk means for Bitcoin, while without any further ado, let's dive in. What's happening? You know, man, it's so over. We're so back. It's so over. We're so back. It's so over. We're so back. At 120, we're going to zero. And at 125, we're going to 185. It's science. Indeed, it's the great conundrum of our existence and a thing that gives our day's meaning and purpose to debate.

So what do you make of this price action? Obviously, we did have Bitcoin somewhat sweep the all-time high with a shocking lack of conviction and then dropped back down temporarily below 120,000. Obviously, all the technical analysts and chart guys are screaming that if you want to break out, you want it to look powerful, have a ton of volume, have a ton of follow through. We didn't really see that. So I guess that's where a lot of the concern is coming from past cycle. You know, we saw a 65,000 high and then price briefly hit 69.

and then way back down under 20. So I think it just gives people PATSD. Totally. Yeah. Look, I think that we're in macro world right now, but Bitcoin is being considered at its own terms in that context. So right now, I think you have the idea of a debasement trade has surged this week. Now it had a little bit of a blow off with gold going down a couple percent over the last few days.

But basically, there's now this sort of big conversation of this idea of the debasement trade, which will seem extraordinarily familiar for all of you listeners here who have been in crypto for a long time. It's the type of thing that we've been talking about forever. But it is now kind of a recognized idea. And there are folks who are not just named Larry

or Fink in the TradFi space who are articulating this as well. And so why I say that it's sort of macro, but Bitcoin and crypto have its own stake in that is that I think what's going on are sort of broader wobbles in the larger environment. But Bitcoin has its own story in that narrative, right? It is not sort of just a high beta asset to stocks. That's at least my read

right now. I don't often do this, but I do not think that we are, there is not a cycle end here because the stock cycle is not over. Kind of zooming out of crypto and just looking at the conversation that's happening in major markets. Obviously, AI is and continues to be this huge theme. We had a deal between OpenAI and AMD this week that really, reignited conversations around circularity. We had an information article which suggested that Oracle's profits were thinner than they seemed on their data center or their chip rentals, which wobbled temporarily Oracle's market. And what you have right now is a real difficult challenge for investors on Wall Street where there are all of these sort of bubble

signals for them. But at the same time, it's very hard to see how it stops soon. And so you also have retail and others coming in and sort of saying, like, is it time to liquidate the 401K and go on all in on stocks? You know, like is Open AI now officially too big to fail? And so this is a classic sort of, you know, PTJ, Paul Tudor Jones basically said, I think this was last week, we're all set up for kind of a huge sort of run before it, before it all goes. And it kind of feels like that's the moment that we're in right now. But if anything like that happens, stocks continue to rip in sort of traditional markets,

Bitcoin's not going to stay where it is right now. Yeah, Tudor Jones basically predicting a crackup boom before the doom and gloom inevitably hits. What I find really interesting about this, though, is, A, Bitcoiners have been talking about the debasement trade forever, as you said. And that the fact that you needed to own Bitcoin, that was the main reason. But interestingly, this is the first time that I can really remember where I'm not hearing from major institutions and these huge names that Bitcoin, is going to crash alongside the stock market. You have Paul Tudor Jones saying your hedges are Bitcoin gold and the NASDAQ, right? The others, JPMorgan, Citadel saying some combination of Bitcoin gold, Bitcoin Silvergold.

All of them have Bitcoin in the conversation. And as far as I can remember, this is the first time we're really seeing the mainstream narrative of Bitcoin not being a risk asset and being a digital gold or a hedge against the basement across the board. It's pretty surreal, actually. It is. I think that what people are finally grocking is, is this thing that to be fair to others who are outside of the space is unintuitive, which is, is Bitcoin a risk on or a risk off asset? The answer is yes. And that's really weird for people. It is very weird for a single asset to have both of those dynamics at

once. But the reality is it just does. Bitcoin, when times are ripping, it looks like a risky asset because there's a huge portion of the world for whom it is the thing that's farthest out on their risk spectrum. And so it is a risk on asset only. But then there's this other increasingly large group of people anchored by all of us, idiots over here, who will never sell at any price for whom it is this risk off asset, the greatest risk off asset that's ever existed. And the more people who fit into that, the more it has this sort of dynamics. And now that people can give it a name and understand its correlation, right,

think about for how many years it's been people trying to even wrap their heads around what digital gold means. I think that the debasement trade, part of why that narrative is resonant and important, is that that's actually what Bitcoiners were trying to say for a very long time. It wasn't just a risk off asset. It was very specifically about a lack of or a reduction of confidence in the monetary system more broadly. And so, you know, look, they're catching up.

They're catching up. And it at least plants the seed in the mind of investors that if you believe a crash is coming, Bitcoin might actually perform well and not be high beta and perform worse. and we've always had the expectation in everyone's mind that Bitcoin crashes harder than stocks. Even more than that, and again, not to get all turbo bull sailor on everyone, but like, so look, here's the thing that's tricky about if you're convinced that AI is a bubble right now. You know, I think everyone at this point realizes that AI has sort of put the entire economy on its back and is just carrying it.

Or at least the, let's call it the expectations and the hopes and dreams of AI, if we're being sort of nuanced about it. It's very hard to see how that would unwind quickly, like from the immediate term, right? There is almost no leverage in that system right now. When people are getting nervous, it's because, Bain Capital Markets put out a report this week that the total cost of the data center buildout by 2030 is going to need to be a couple trillion dollars and we're going to be $800 billion short. That's 2030.

And there's very little debt in the system right now, at least anything other than sort of just corporate bonds. There's no leverage. Most of these companies are still spending their CAPEX off their balance sheets. There's no room for sort of like a massive. leverage unwind in the immediate term. Now, the circularity of revenue with all of these companies means that they are kind of linking themselves up together in a way where if we see, in call it a year, two years, whatever, that demand profile for AI is wildly lower. It's actually

not useful, whatever, a million kind of combination of things. You could see it all come together unwind together quickly, but not in the immediate term. So, okay, coming back to what we were talking about, if you are an investor who is pretty convinced that things are getting crazy out there right now, He was convinced that there are sort of big wobbles in the larger system that are structural, that have nothing to do with just AI and stocks right now. Boy, does Bitcoin look good as something that can ride it all the way up, on the up, and then still have this sort of narrative low end on the other side. You know, it just, it looks extra good right now, I think.

And my guess is that at some point folks are going to grok to this. Totally agree with that. As an aside on my show yesterday afternoon with Mike McClone and Garrett Soloway, and Mike said, I'm going to make a problem. bold statement I've never made before, sell everything. So just putting that out there. He said, sell literally everything by bonds. Legacy internet and infrastructure are brittle, plagued by downtime, coverage gaps, and outdated financing models. Communities and builders are left behind while capital sits locked out. Althea is changing that. Since 2018, their technology has powered

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Next story, Galaxy launches Galaxy 1, bringing institutional quality financial offerings to individual investors. It seems like Galaxy is definitely following through on their intention to be the Goldman Sachs of crypto assets. There's a lot of different products here to unpack 4% yields on cash deposits, over 8% yields for premium, I think is what they call. called it, but obviously institutional level trading and products surrounding the entire crypto ecosystem here. Seems like they're going straight ahead against not only the Schwab's and Morgan Stanley's of the world, but the Coinbase is in Robin Hoods. Yeah, I think one part of this story is everyone competing against everyone to be everything to everyone. It's sort of like, if you need a sort of a

shorthand for people's strategy right now, that's sort of it. The other piece, though, is, I don't know about you, but anytime I start to see yield numbers promise that are out of sync with mainstream financial offerings, that's where my PTSD starts to get a little bit trigger, which is not actually like- Talk about this at length the other day when this announcement dropped. I was like, it just feels wrong. I'm not saying there's anything untoward. I'm sure that there's a way Dave Weisberger actually live on show, like signed up for Galaxy 1 on Monday and read the disclosures. And it's definitely a security. the risks are all there. It's not obfuscated away like a Celsius or a Voyager, but damn, 8%.

Well, and also, and I think I don't want to ever sort of judge people by their past. And, you know, I think that the perception of BlockFi is that it kind of got caught up in things, but the product's being run by Zach Prince, right? So it's, there's even more echoes of the past here that, you know, just trigger, trigger all the fields, you know. Look, if someone's going to do it, Galaxy is, they're live listed on the NASDA, They're like, this is not a Johnny come lately sort of fly-by-night operation. But yeah, I think a few people have had the same reaction of a, I remember 2021 and 2022 with this particular announcement. I mean, but how do you feel about them as a legitimate competitor?

Do you think we're just going to see 50 of these? I mean, I have a feeling everybody who can is going to launch an everything company, right? My guess is that they're going to be table stakes and the question for companies is going to be sort of two parts. One is what can be their anchor sort of differentiating thing, which gets people in the door, which they want to be there for, and then incrementally how much of this other stuff can they carve off? It seems very difficult to go head to head with the other big players on this stuff, just with how much space there is. But, you know, their assessment is some combination of either they think there is a differentiation opportunity that people aren't getting. Maybe they're using that sort of yield as the hook to try to

pull that in. Or they think that just there's going to be so much opportunity in this space that it's just about claiming your little piece of that pie and that little piece of the pie is going to be a big piece. Right. And maybe they don't feel that anybody has quite captured the entirety, certainly on the institutional side of the crypto equity crossover because they're saying you can trade both. Obviously, you can do that on Robin Hood. And that's coming to the Schwabs and the Morgan Stanle's. It's been announced, but maybe they can really thread the needle and find the audience that's dying for that product, you know, and to be able to blend those for securities lending and things like that, which I assume is inevitable. There are brand reasons why you can see Galaxy better

position than Coinbase or Robin Hood for some of this stuff. You know, even if Coinbase has had this robust institutional business for a very long time, they are still broadly from an outside view associated with retail. They're the American kind of retail crypto app. Robin Hood even more so, right? That's just sort of the, you know, the DeDren GameStop app. So, you know, there is probably a narrative slot to play to try to sneak in there. And, you know, the other thing is, too, we may be victims of our limited, limited imaginations of where the market is right now in terms of how much there is to carve up. You zoom out 10 years, and it could be that just planting the flag now means that there's just an enormous opportunity, right? These aren't win-or-take-all markets.

There's so much in the financial space that there's a lot of room to grab some piece of that pie. Speaking of planting your flag for some financial opportunity, our next story, Polymarket founder is youngest self-made billionaire after deal with an IZ owner obviously intercontinental exchange that being ICE I mean this is just wild man two billion dollar strategic investment from ICE putting them at a nine billion post money valuation and this is just absolutely insane to me because they went through so much I mean this kid if you read the article I don't want to call him a kid but obviously Shane I mean was literally taking inventory of the items and his apartment after dropping out of NYU to sell stuff to make rent. He showed pictures of him on a

laptop and a makeship office in his bathroom. And he was raided by the FBI. They paid fines to the CFDC. This was effectively illegal. It's still not even available in the United States. There he is, a billionaire. Yeah. I mean, massive validation of the category. Such a smart, to me, this is such a smart investment for ICE, who, by the way, not for nothing, have tended to to use their full name more recently, I would say. I made a good intercontinent. When I reported this, I was like, not the guys in masks. Yeah.

You know, throwing people out of country. You got to think if you watched what happened around the last, you know, the election at this time last year, it is just so clear that prediction markets have a massive stake in the future. I don't think that anyone knows exactly how they're going to fit in. They really are their new category. In fact, one of the interesting conversations I've seen from a couple folks is that, basically asking, are prediction markets the first sort of crypto primitive after, the next crypto primitive after Stables to really fully infiltrate and influence the sort of broader system? I think it's an interesting question.

And yeah, I mean, big deal, very, very validating for the category, certainly validating for the company themselves. The Kalshi Polymarket fight is going to be a really fun one. It's going to create a lot of great ad content, if nothing else. And by the way, quietly Robin Hed has prediction markets, publicly available on their site. for all to see. They're not the only two players. And, you know, we're going to see incumbents come in and definitely try to grab a piece of this pie. I don't think the biggest exchanges on the planet are just going to let Kalshi and Polymarket run with this. No, of course not. It's a, it is a massive

growth category for sure. Yeah. Okay. Our final official story of the day, I'm sure there's a thousand more we could have talked about, but Democrats propose a restricted list for DFI protocols and bill that could kill sector. I guess we've taken a hot tub time machine back a few years here to headlines that we would have definitely had in 2023. But it seems that everybody woke up and found a really gross regulation proposal from Democrats that, according to even Uniswap, could completely outlaw defy wallets and crypto develop in the U.S. The industry is obviously freaking out over this. What's going on here? It was always going to be this. It's always some DFI backdoor. It's always some DFI front end regulation. I mean, it's always, this is the fault line. There are two great fault lines historically for the sort of legislative stuff. One is the securities definition. But it's been pretty clear for the last couple of years that we were able to find ways to get over that, you know, figure out some space for things to be a security or commodity or have some in between weight. We got over that one. This is the next one. And this is really the big barrier between us and reasonable, legislation is where the hell DFI

sits in the bank secrecy regime. That's really what it comes down to. I think that the question, which we will have to wait and see on, is to what extent this is, I think that at this point, we no longer can't, we no longer can even consider the idea that Democrats might just not understand the implications of what they're suggesting. I think that they do. We thought that all the way back in the infrastructure bill in like 2021,

the first time this came up. And it wasn't even the reality back then, right? So they know what they're doing. So the question is, how much is this a basically just a line in the sand unwillingness to allow Defi to exist as such in the U.S. versus a negotiation tactic to pull the other sort of parts of the legislation towards more regulatory control in other ways? I don't know the answer, but this was always going to be the third rail, the fault line

that did or did break it. I don't know. Who knows? I don't know if they can get it. there. I just don't know what the state of the debate is. Yeah, this feels like one of those things that won't be talking about again ever in a week because we can't even get the main legislation onto the floor yet. This is like a sidebar to the sidebar of the main legislation. I guess it is a signal that there are still fights

to be at and will be in the future. The highest potential compromise said from an outsider, you know, non-sophisticated understanding of Washington would be, this is, this is, is the type of thing that I can see them agreeing to punt, basically like having some small concessions to Dems for being willing to remove this from main market structure legislation because there are such core things that need to get figured out, like for example, who regulates spot crypto markets in the US, which is still indetermined at this stage, there might be enough momentum and enough sort of bipartisanship and the parts that they have figured out to be willing to agree to leave this a question for another day. And, you know, honestly, at this stage, that might be the only outcome

that we can hope for. But who knows? Maybe there's more room than we think. Yeah, I just very seriously doubt that under this current regime, things like this are going to be a talking point. I guess it's one of those things to, you know, throw it up on your board and wait and see if Democrats come back into power and Elizabeth Warren started screaming about things like this again, if she actually, you know, ends up as the chair of the Senate Banking Committee or something. Yep. But, well, I mean, you know, It depends if it's a big enough deal to Democrats to derail stuff. Like everyone's in a very brinksmanship mood right now.

So I'm certainly not confident enough to say that they're going to figure it out. No, no. I don't think the 70-year-old guys and gals up in the House are going to really understand defy, much less figure out how to reasonably regulate and legislate it. Anyways, that's all we have.

Were there any honorable mentions? I mean, it was kind of a, it's just very steady these weeks. To me, the debasement trade is the really the kicker. I just can't believe we're seeing the Ken Griffin's and JP, you know, it wasn't Jamie Diamond, to be fair, but like Ken Griffin, this like, you know, at this point, it's like, there's the evil emperor and Darth Vader and they're talking about our thing. I think that, you know, listen, in some weeks, market action is just a thing to talk about.

It doesn't really have much meaning. It's just about sort of like broader patterns of liquidity and stuff. I actually think that right now markets are trying to figure out. the balance of where they want to go and what they're going to be concerned about. I think that sort of incremental market movements right now are telling more stories than the average sort of incremental market movements. So, you know, who knows? By next week, we could be in a totally different paradigm and mindset. So that's kind of what I'm watching. Sounds about right. Everybody check out NLW. Of course, check out the breakdown where he dives much

deeper into all of these topics on a daily basis. Incredible listen. That's all we got for you today. Thank you guys. We will see you next week. Bye. Later.