David
Gokhshtein.

David Gokhshtein (born November 25, 1981) is an American media entrepreneur from Brooklyn, New York. He is the founder and chief executive officer of Gokhshtein Media, the independent media company he established in 2017, and the host of The Breakdown, a daily show on financial markets, U.S. policy, crypto, AI, and culture.

Gokhshtein worked in traditional finance before entering the digital-asset industry in the mid-2010s, when cryptocurrency was still a fringe conversation. He became one of its most-followed independent voices — named among the Top 25 Cryptocurrency Influencers in 2018 — building an audience by saying plainly what he saw: which projects were real, which weren't, and what the industry needed to grow up. That candor became his signature, and it built a following that today exceeds 1.5 million people across social platforms.

What began in 2017 as a digital magazine covering blockchain and fintech grew into a multi-property media company. Today Gokhshtein Media spans Gokhshtein, an independent newsroom covering politics, markets, crypto, technology, sports, and world news with live market data built in; GMARKETS, an independent crypto market-data and verification platform; Gokhshtein TV, the company's broadcast hub; and Gokhshtein PR, a full-service communications firm for founders, brands, and leaders across sectors.

In November 2019, Gokhshtein announced a Republican campaign for the United States House of Representatives in New York's 1st Congressional District — motivated, as he tells it, by watching Congress question tech executives it plainly didn't understand, and by the conviction that Washington needed people who actually knew how modern money and technology work. The campaign ended as COVID-19 reshaped the 2020 race, but the political thread never left his work: he remains one of the industry's most direct voices on crypto policy, regulation, and the ballot box.

Today Gokhshtein appears on Fox Business and Sky News, among others, and has been quoted by NPR, Business Insider, Forbes, and CBS News. His beat is retail money: what ordinary investors are buying, selling, and arguing about, tracked in the Gokhshtein Retail Money Index and his newsroom’s data. The Breakdown — now past 790 episodes — streams live every weekday on Kick and YouTube, with the audio edition on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and iHeartRadio.