The Breakdown Newsletter

2025 was far from perfect, but much better than we think it was.

In the 90s, rapt audiences worldwide watched a coffee pot — will that fascination ever turn to crypto?

Some systems improve by failing — and crypto has no choice

Maybe tokenholders don’t need the rights that corporate shareholders have come to expect

Investors are often right about the future, but wrong about the returns

Will mega-unicorns collectively earn the trillions of dollars of revenue required to justify their valuations?

Spoiler alert: talking about crypto to normies is still really hard

When not knowing the odds improves your chances

What Thomas Edison actually invented — and what it tells us about the future of crypto

But who gets a key to the gate?

Throughout its billions of searches, Google’s goal has always been to train and hone its algorithms

It’s getting harder and harder to trade crypto like the good ol’ days

Stablecoins are no substitute for what makes the dollar dominant

Quantum teleportation could make money a physical resource again

And the bear case for bitcoin

Bad math makes headlines: real progress, a history of candlelight, and “the worst poverty analysis…ever seen”

Anthropic researchers report that their AI agents successfully exploited 56% of vulnerable smart contracts

For new growth, crypto may need to shed tired norms like over-raising and the hoarding of investment resources

Futuristic DeFi is stuck inside the computer. An old idea might be its escape hatch

From passageways to penumbras: a history of private life

The AI bubble could pop even if demand for AI is unlimited

Are stablecoins “the most dangerous form of crypto” or a “global public good”?

Randomness is easily mistaken for meaning, especially in markets.

With every generation, new problems arise — usually caused by the previous generation’s solutions