The Five Most Important Stories in Crypto Last Week

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, December 12, 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 wanna 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/breakdownpod. Alright, friends. Another solo Friday '5 today because of scheduling issues. We are talking Fed day, market structure bill, Bitcoin treasury companies, a trimming of the bull case, and a sentencing from the 2022 vintage of crypto criminals. Starting with the Fed, the major headline for Fed Day has to be the silent dissenters in the breaking of consensus on the FOMC. All month rate cut odds had been fluctuating with Fed speakers contradicting each other and whipsawing the market. It was clear heading in that there was a power struggle playing between doves and hawks. That battle playing out at headlines isn't new, but the level of dissent that was formalized in the voting was. We had two Fed presidents dissent in favor of holding rates steady. In addition, four non voting members cast their ballot on dot plot penciling in zero cuts for next year. There hasn't been this level of dissent since 2019, and it says a lot about where the Fed is going into 2026. It's pretty clear that Powell's lame duck period started earlier this week. Throughout his tenure, Powell has been seen as a consensus builder. There were several meetings during the hiking cycle and again during the cutting cycle where he implied strong disagreement behind closed doors, but those FOMC meetings never resulted in open dissent. It seemed the FOMC members valued putting up a united front more than taking a stand. That idea is now completely out the window and seems unlikely to return next year. Regardless of who Trump selects as the next Fed chair, we're likely to get even more dissent as the White House tries to ramp through rate cuts. That has a couple of big implications. First, forward guidance is likely going to become unintelligible as the Fed splinters into factions. The market is going to have a very difficult time getting its bearings without clear direction from the Fed. Second, it makes monetary policy outwardly political. There has always been a sense that politics plays a role behind the scenes, but FOMC members at least try to maintain the facade of Fed independence. Now in specific, it makes it impossible to get a good read on where monetary policy is going next year. Right now, the markets are pricing in two rate cuts as the highest probability path for 2026 at 32% odds, but there is a really widespread between zero …