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, March 18th, and today we are talking about, well, a little bit of everything.

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. Doing a daily show for the last,

I don't know, million years at this point, there are some days that are incredibly important.

There are other days where there is shockingly nothing. And then there's a big mess of days where

it's just everything moving forward in ways that are on the surface boring, but if you blur

your eyes, clearly showing trend lines that are

important, and today is one of those middle days. And so we've got a little bit of markets, a little

bit of politics, a little bit of geo-strategy. And we're going to kick it off with that old

classic phrase, Bitcoin is for enemies, because North Korea has overtaken El Salvador and

Bhutan as the third largest Bitcoin holders. After laundering the

proceeds of the buy-bit hack into Bitcoin, North Korea now has the fifth largest Bitcoin

stash among nation states. They have around 13,500 BTC, worth about $1.13 billion. That ranks ahead

of El Salvador and Bhutan, but still, of course, behind the U.S. and China. The money laundering

process appears to have slowed down now that the U.S. and China. The money laundering process appears

to have slowed down now that the funds have been converted into Bitcoin. While it's associated

with hackers, the Lazarus Group are still active, but the velocity of transactions have slowed

down. Hopefully, this is a sign they're struggling to find off-ramps with all eyes still watching

the wallets. But, thinking more broadly, the question is whether this will present an issue

for attempts to pursue a Bitcoin Reserve strategy. The administration is already being criticized

...