It's hard not to see how this makes sense. China bans crypto mining. Miners start to figure out

where they're going to pick up and move operations. Some might move to North America. Indeed,

we've seen that happen, but others might be looking for easier overland moves. Boom,

there is Laos bordering to the south.

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. The breakdown is sponsored by Nidig,

and produced and distributed by CoinDesk. What's going on, guys? It is Thursday, September 16th, and as you probably heard, yesterday's show was fiery and focused

on a single big topic with a few little caveats.

But today, we're going to do kind of the opposite type of show.

A grab bag, looking at a variety of topics, things that have maybe

flown under the radar because we're screaming about Gary Gensler and Elizabeth Warren.

Let's start out with the latest out of China. When the history books are written, the actual

factual mining ban in China will be a key part of the crypto story of 2021. Remember, the first rumblings

we got about China targeting crypto in May, we sort of brushed off as more bluster and

reconfirmation of old policies. At first, it was just the banks reinforcing that they weren't

allowed to interact with crypto and so on and so forth, but that

ultimately changed. And when it changed was when the vice premier made a statement saying that they

were going to look into a Bitcoin mining ban. That signaled to all of the local provinces that

this was serious, and it also signaled that to the local mining operations.

That weekend we saw one of our biggest drawdowns coming off of the rally between December and April.

And part of that was that miners were actually liquidating their Bitcoin and Ethereum to try to give themselves mobility to make decisions quickly.

Subsequently, of course, we've seen one of the most significant,

...