# Institutional Adoption of Digital Assets and Crypto Market Trends

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-04-13

## Transcript

Bitcoin and Ethereum, in my mind, are two of the best risk reward bets on the market for like the long term in terms of digital assets and just across the board in general.
What's up, everybody?
It's LG Due Set here, and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show that needs this market to get going already, or else we're gonna grab our monocles, our parrots, and we're gonna sail down there ourselves to get this resolved.
Today is April 13th, 2026.
Every Monday, our entire creator team comes together for a little huddle.
It's very early in the morning for me, okay?
It's very early, but I still listen very much.
And sometimes I ask dumb questions.
Today I asked, why is crypto so boring right now?
And John, who's waiting in the back wings here, he's gonna come rip me a new one right now.
He went absolutely nuts on me, even in this creator huddle.
And he said that it's total BS that there's nothing happening.
He said that there's actually players out there buying with bull market size, despite it being a bear market, and we're just all too focused on oil and the whole situation to even notice.
And we're very likely to get shaken out of our coins that what he's really trying to do is accumulate as much Ethereum as possible.
We're gonna talk about that.
We'll talk about the latest on the on the war and its effect on our risk assets, and also just generally what's coming this week in crypto.
Today's episode is brought to you by Bridge, launch your own stable coin in days, some turn crypto tax chaos into confidence, and nexo, earn interest, borrow and trade crypto.
John, go easy on me today, please.
I have never ripped you a new one about anything in my life.
So I don't know.
I'm I'm very docile and friendly, amicable person.
Uh you know, you can you can say dumb things about crypto all you want to, and I'm not gonna ever attack you for it.
Wow.
Wow, don't tempt me, man.
I will uh I I think next week I'll just come with like 10 terrible takes and see see what you say.
And maybe you'll agree with some of them.
Maybe that's the key.
Uh, but John, I did say I I think myself and Chevy, our newsletter writer, um, we did talk.
We're like, listen, this is the same old story every week in in in crypto, and and you're such a great, you know, reminder of all the bold things that are happening.
Um, you reminded us of like the institutional moves.
And again, we talk about this with so many of our guests too.
But it is like, even when you listed off of the few ones, the few of the ones today, like it's so tremendous.
And I think that it's like it's so big that it's that's why it's like hard to even notice because that they're subtle behind the scenes moves, too.
Yeah, and I think that it's something that hasn't really been felt by retail.
And this is why we are continuing to see this huge gulf between this historic institutional bull run in digital assets and the the huge, let's say, uh uh long-standing apocalyptic sentiment among retail investors.
Um, but you know, just a couple of things, right?
So I'll I'll say the the biggest one that sticks out to me is Jamie Diamond made some positive comments on digital assets on crypto, uh, which is one of the first times he's done that publicly.
Um, and I think that the big signal there is, you know, he's obviously the CEO of the largest bank uh in in America.
Uh and that's a big sign to me that some kind of negotiation has been done, a deal has been made, something has been reached um behind the scenes uh around the Clarity Act negotiations and you know, these negotiations over stable coin yield and other things.
So that to me was a positive sign that we might see forward progress on the Clarity Act here sometime soon in the coming weeks, um, which I think is really important to do if we want to get a bill passed through Congress, uh, this this term of Congress, this session of Congress.
So I think that's very positive and constructive.
Beyond that, you've seen Morgan Stanley launch their um first spot crypto ETF products.
They have, I think 16,000 uh wealth advisors that are gonna go out now and sell these things.
They these investment products are not bought, they're sold on Wall Street.
That's how it works.
You have to have people who are going out saying recommending these things to their clients, putting them in front of them and having those conversations.
So Morgan Stanley is getting all in on this and very committed to crypto and to digital assets overall.
And then I think uh Charles Schwab also has, I think somewhere around 12 trillion.
I can't remember exactly.
Um, but they are launching a platform uh Schwab Crypto.
They have a wait list now of their users already lining up to buy spot bitcoin from them and other crypto assets from them.
Uh and then you've also seen last week I spoke about this, but Franklin Templeton made a major purchase and is launching uh uh Franklin Crypto.
Uh so there's a lot of major institutions that are seriously adopting this, devoting a lot of capital to this, offering new products and bringing this to market.
This is to meet demand.
It's not because nobody wants these things, it's because they're realizing that their competitors are offering these products and doing exceptionally well.
BlackRock launched another Bitcoin ETF product just today, I believe.
Um, and you know, so Morgan Stanley launched one to try to compete with BlackRocks because BlackRock has been dominating in the ETF space with their ETP, their iBit ETP.
Uh and now Black BlackRock has launched another one.
So they're bringing a new product to market to continue to stay ahead of their competition as well.
So you're not only seeing institutions coming into the space with size and commitment and offering new products, they're actually trying to compete with each other to launch new things.
Uh, and you know, in your interviews with with the the Bitwise guys, they talk about this huge demand for vaults, um, which is you know another thing that's gonna come to market and bring in more institutional capital to the space.
So the the bull run is very, very strong in institutional demand for digital assets for Ethereum, for Bitcoin, for other things, and that's not slowing down.
It's actually, I think accelerating as they are competing with each other now to bring out new products and to come to market with things that are are in more demand.
Um, so to me, I think that this is just this continuing gulf we've seen between institutions being very bullish and very committed, very active in the space, and retail kind of being checked out, tuned out, and focused on other things that that don't matter so much right now.
Everything you're listening to today is also covered in our daily crypto newsletter.
And on Sundays, we even recap the best parts of the entire week's worth podcast.
So check it out at the link below.
What is Charles Schwab?
It's a name I know, but what is it?
What is how is it different than Franklin Templeton or Morgan Stanley?
Like it listen, uh Wall Street, please explain this to me.
Uh well, so they're all different institutions in different ways, but like you know, uh Charles Schwab actually started as like something similar to Milk Road, is sort of like a subscription service of like um advisory, uh, you know, uh wealth and investment advisory stuff.
And it grew and grew.
It's it's a brokerage service, it's a trading platform, but they offer a lot of different see all these institutions have some similar core products and services, but then they all have like little differences and nuances in terms of how they do these things or what products they specialize in or what they offer.
Um, but it's it's a it's a brokerage firm.
People people trade on Charles Schwab.
And that was one of the ways that they got their their initial um uh their initial entrance into Wall Street was, like I said, through this being the subscription service that catered in focus to primarily retail investors and then grew into a very large and popular retail trading platform.
I'm just reading, I'm just looking pulled up here, what this new BlackRock ETF is.
Um I kind of have a question for you, John, just to understand.
Well, first of all, I just want to understand what this is.
I don't know if you had the chance to read about it, but it's basically bid uh B ITAs, BlackRock's upcoming Bitcoin ETF designed to turn Bitcoin into yield generating asset using a covered call strategy.
What is that?
Do you know what that is?
Uh I haven't looked into the specific this exactly yet.
Yeah.
Um I'm just curious.
But what I guess I mean, I think they're trying to do effectively a similar thing.
Well, not I don't want to say this wrong because I I should look at this before I comment on it, but they're trying to generate yield from Bitcoin's volatility and then pass that along to the holders of this ETP.
Um, so I I think that there's there's uh the existing bitcome Bitcoin income ETFs pay 27 to 41% annually.
Um the launches expected in weeks.
So this is I guess they haven't launched it yet, but they're they're going to be bringing this out.
Um, but yeah, in any event, the point is that these are these are new products to to bring to the market to meet different kinds of demand and different kinds of appetite.
Michael Saylor has talked about this a lot.
Like his uh common stock MSTR is much more volatile and gives a lot of beta to Bitcoin.
But if you want to strip out some of that volatility and still get exposure to the digital asset, he's offering this stretch product, um, which uh pays, I think around 11% right now annually.
Um, but it it strips out a lot of that volatility.
So um there's there's a a big spectrum in the market uh for people who are interested in exposure to digital assets, but want to kind of toggle up and down the volatility and the risk that they're taking with that asset.
And so I think that this is BlackRock's way of like coming to the market with a product that allows some exposure to Bitcoin, but strips out some of the volatility and then monetizes that for investors.
What I guess I guess my question is about all these ETFs and all these funds.
And you know, we have the Bitwise guys on, we hear from them often.
James Safard explaining the ETF kind of flows, a great expert there to kind of explain to us.
Since all these institutions are kind of all launching similar products, and I'm sure to uh I I guess maybe to more sophisticated investors or people that have billions of dollars to invest, then maybe they see the nuances.
But that's actually kind of exactly my question is how do they what is kind of the competitive advantage for BlackRock versus a bitwise or vice versa, or like the differentiation between all these funds and all these products when the end goal for most of them is just a productize way of holding the end asset in a way that you don't end up holding it, which is something that you and I more so believe in of like just buy the asset that's a lot easier.
So I I guess I'm asking you as somebody who you know used to work specifically in that industry, how do they how do they maintain how do they compete with each other?
You know what I mean?
How do they develop products that are better than what the other guys is is rolling out considering that they're all they're all in the same, they're all the same building almost, and they they they're all going for the same kind of market.
So there are some relatively modest nuances for some of these things.
Some of it could be the custody provider, some of it could be the fees that are charged on the the product.
Um so there are some ways of differentiating these things from one another.
Um but I think you know, for details on that, you really have to kind of go to the people who are offering those products themselves and kind of ask them what their differentiating factor is and and how they couch that themselves.
So without being like an expert on each one of the individual filings off the top of my head, I couldn't tell you specifically.
But a big one I think is just the fees, right?
Like so if you're if you're providing institutional quality custody and you're doing that at a lesser fee, that's gonna be more attractive.
Um but then it also kind of goes back to uh accessibility, availability, where those features and products are offered, which versus where they're not and where that capital is that it's looking for that.
You know, if you're used to investing in uh, you know, uh iShares uh ETFs, ETPs, then maybe you're gonna be more inclined towards the BlackRock one versus you know, if you're more interested in the the Morgan Stanley ones, you're or you're more used to those, then maybe that's where you're you're gonna go.
So the brand recognition goes into this too.
So there's a lot of answers to that question, but I think that the most obvious one is fees and then like actually how they're structuring that product and and what it's offered there.
And they're probably just kind of creating something for their current clients as well.
Right.
Like it's less it's less so that those clients want to, you know, people are coming in and shopping around.
It's more so that all of them already have such a huge base of clients, and um, if they're sitting in cash or whatever over the next couple years, they want to have a product uh to prevent them as well from from kind of you know crossing to a competitor uh and potentially losing the larger business as well.
I guess that that would explain a lot.
Uh John, you also noted this morning that just the another thing that's so under the radar is just the tremendous amount that the leading dats are buying right now, uh, in a way that is like kind of I think I think we are like just completely beaten over the head with this so many times that it's almost like a meme.
It's like Sailor bought another billion dollars of Bitcoin, like who cares?
You know, like I don't it's like is that a headline from this week or the other week?
I don't know, but it's actually you're telling me it's like every you're telling me this happened over the weekend, and also that Tom Lee bought a hundred million of ETH, and we took a look this morning and he still has another 450 million to spend, right?
Which is crazy.
Is this is this something that it's like you know, is this what you meant when you talked about their buying with bull bull market size in the bear market?
So that's exactly what I was talking about.
So I think that the the interesting interesting thing to me about Sailor's purchases of late has been uh the fact that number one in the bull run, he was funding his purchases through sales of MSTR and and through issuances of MSTR.
That was how he was raising capital was by diluting the common stock.
Once the demand for that, once like uh the Bitcoin bull market started to turn bearish and the demand for MSDR started to wane, he came to market with a bunch of preferred equity products, which you know, he has a whole suite of them right now.
But the most interesting one, I think, on the market is ST RC stretch.
Um, and that is the one that's paying 11% and kind of strips out the volatility from Bitcoin.
Um, and uh so but I think what what he's been able to do by offering this product is to continue to raise capital such that he's able to allocate a billion dollars a week almost every week.
Um, he's done this like almost like clockwork for a long, long time now, and he's continued to, it's not always a billion dollars, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less, but he he's allocating with with bull market size of purchases in a bear market for Bitcoin.
Um, and that is think is the thing that stands out to me, right?
Is he he's been able to find demand for Bitcoin in a bear market that allows him to continue the purchases at the levels he was making during the bull run.
So that's a distinguishing thing I think is interesting.
The other thing is of it, he's been able to continue to do this and to maintain this purchasing rate for a very long time.
And at a time when uh you know, retail sentiment and investor sentiment on Bitcoin is not really that strong.
Uh so that's something that's really interesting.
Uh Tom Lee bought 150 million dollars of Ethereum, not 100 million.
Um he still has more cash stockpile to go.
Yeah, I mean, it's a you know, this is that's how much.
Sorry.
Um I forgot the extra 50.
He's he's had a goal of getting to five percent of Ethereum's total supply, and he's getting closer.
He's now over four percent.
Um, and so he's just trying to close in on that target.
But he's been the you know, staggering his purchases after accumulating all of this capital to continue to try to get good entries on Ethereum and and accumulate at these levels.
Uh, I think he's also expecting Ethereum to reprice higher.
Um, and I think there's a lot of reasons to think that might be the case.
Look, we're in a deep bear market, but we've seen five billion dollars of stable coins come into Ethereum recently.
The number of transactions on Ethereum keeps making new highs, the number of new users and new wallets on Ethereum keeps making new highs.
Uh, and then, you know, just the amount of Ethereum that is available on exchanges is is, you know, at historic low levels.
Um, so that there's a lot of of a lot of things you can look at at in the Ethereum ecosystem and in Ethereum itself as an asset that would indicate that the demand for ETH is continuing to increase despite the the middling price action we've seen from Ethereum.
And another thing I would say is that uh the amount of long of the amount of stake to Ethereum, I think is at new new all-time highs, just recently made that.
So that's a vote of confidence from the network and the users themselves that they believe in the long-term value of ETH and they want to be secure in the network for the long term.
So there's just a lot of things you can look at in both Bitcoin and Ethereum right now to say that despite the the bearish sentiment and the middling price action we've seen, it's been like chop from both ETH and Bitcoin for basically a little bit over two months now.
But there's still a lot of strengthening fundamentals behind both of them.
And once the market, you know, sentiment turns, I think the market will aggressively reprice both of them in the positive direction.
So I'm I'm just very bullish, and uh, I think both D and Michael Saylor are too.
Stable coins are reshaping the financial order, but most companies don't have the opportunity to participate in the rewards they generate.
Plus, launching a stable coin means wrestling with complex regulations, building bespoke infrastructure, and burning endless developer hours.
Enter bridge and its new product, open issuance.
Bridge lets companies send, store, accept, and even launch their own stable coins instantly.
Seamless fiat to stable coin flows, control over reserves and rewards, and full interoperability across every bridge issued token.
No more patching payment rails, no more months-long launches.
Visit milkroad.com/slash bridge to see how it works.
Crypto taxes are a nightmare.
You've got trades across 15 exchanges, DeFi positions you forgot about, NFT flips, staking rewards, airdrops, and somehow you're supposed to report all of this to the IRS.
Good luck.
Cue the solution, Sum.
You may know it by its old name, Crypto Tax Calculator.
The SUM platform connects to over 3,500 exchanges, wallets, and crypto projects, including full support for DeFi NFT staking and airdrops.
It finds deductions you'd miss, reconciles massive transaction histories without losing track, and generates IRS ready reports that will help you pay the least tax possible.
Oh, some is also the official tax partner of Coinbase and MetaMask, rated 4.6 out of 5 on Trustpilot.
Turn crypto tax chaos into confidence.
Get started for free at milkroad.com slash sum.
That's su double m.com.
Milkroad listeners can also unlock 20% off their first year subscription with code MilkRoad20.
Does this benefit like this type of stuff?
I guess uh you know, obviously, right now I gotta fish with you with some like, you know, things turn really positive.
Alpha, right?
Um, where I think a lot of people right now maybe are trying to decide on an alternative Ethereum bet that would potentially outsize uh Ethereum's return, which is something I know you're not gonna believe it, but I'm just gonna throw it out there that a lot of people are like, okay, ETH is at $2200 now.
If I think whether it's uh you're gonna go back to all-time highs this year, uh, or or that you gotta wait two, three years to have, you know, the four-year cycle, or whatever you think that whatever all these moves are going to bear fruit at some point, and you think that ETH, let's just say Etho go to an all-time high of 5k, right?
So let's just let's just say it'll it'll pump, you know, 130% or whatever that would be.
Um 150%, 150%.
Let's just give it a round number.
I think a lot of people are probably looking at that and with Bitcoin as well, and they're looking at something like strategy or a bit mine or Sharplink or one of these companies as like, okay, will that produce a higher return than 1.5x, right?
And also um looking potentially, you know, you're talking about stake teeth as well.
Would would companies like Lido, like some of the actual like DeFi companies also like the all that have altcoins, not stocks, would they also represent a massive multiple?
Because something like Lido, if that if Lido went back to its all-time high from here, Lido, sorry, Leto, whatever.
It's we're can't can't we pronounce everything different.
Um Lido, thanks for correcting me.
I used to do this on my NBA Topshot show, even though I knew how to pronounce the names, I'd say them wrong anyways.
It was an idiot.
It's just so stupid.
Um, but somebody like Lido, um, you know, hitting it that that going back to all time high is like a 20x.
You know what I mean?
So I I think what people are trying to, I think maybe perhaps the and I'm speaking for myself here too, but going forward, and I know that you were gonna say that it's like you're just holding the hard assets and that that's best for you.
What is kind of your your view on these more like derivative almost assets?
I know you call them derivatives, but these kind of alternate assets that are either holding a lot or facilitating, um, you know, because saying there's more stake than ever, you'd think that that would benefit the stakers as well.
So, John, it's kind of a jumbled question there, but how do you how do you approach uh you know portfolio building in a situation like this where you know you know you spent 15 minutes telling us why it's like listen, the future is very green for all this stuff.
So I think that a lot of this comes down to risk appetite and risk tolerance, and then the risk reward of holding the different assets because you know, I think that Ethereum is the I've I've kind of said this for a long time.
Bitcoin and Ethereum, in my mind, are two of the best risk reward bets on the market for like the long term in terms of digital assets and just across the board in general.
I think Ethereum is the best macro trade uh of the next five to 10 years, and it's the best risk reward trade that's available on the market bar none.
I think that that's just like how I feel about this.
Now, you could say that maybe gold fits that description better, but I don't think gold has the upside potential that Ethereum does.
You see what I'm saying?
So, like it depends on your balance between risk and reward, and everybody's gonna have a different way of assessing those things, and that's fine.
And people can disagree with me, and that's fine too.
But that's just like how I think about this for my capital and for myself.
Your question basically comes down to you know, if you accept that thesis on Bitcoin and Ethereum, you also accept implicitly that there is value outside of that in the digital asset ecosystem.
And won't these smaller cap alts appreciate much more and offer much greater returns?
The answer to that is yes.
However, the market is discounting the fact that there's also a much greater risk associated with all these projects because they are less proven, less adopted, and and you know, there's still an uncertainty about how they play out, how how the market decides who's the winner and loser, whether competition comes in and overtakes them or not, you know, etc.
Right.
So there's there's a lot of unknowns there, and that's why the market is pricing these things accordingly.
Whereas you know, Bitcoin is over a trillion dollar asset, there's less risk reward there because it's kind of already gotten that market adoption and acceptance.
So you know, I'd say, like on some of these other altcoins or uh, you know, buying MSTR or or Bitmine, I think you're going to see stronger.
What I would say is you're gonna see what they call beta, like additional outperformance to Ethereum or Bitcoin from those assets, but only during a bullish period and during a bull run during a bear market, they're gonna sell off a lot more.
So you're gonna see in like higher volatility from MSTR or Bitmine as a as an equity than you are from the underlying assets that those um dats are holding.
Um, but you're also gonna have probably see stronger performance in a bull run.
So this kind of comes down to like again, what your risk appetite is, what your, you know, how much reward you think you can capture.
Um, and then uh it also comes down to timing things carefully to make sure you're not offsides on that because you can buy something that's gonna continue going down.
Can you stomach the volatility once it starts going up?
You know, because you'll probably have several, you know, double-digit percentage drops along the way during whatever bull run does come.
So there's just like a lot that goes into that, and you have to kind of think for yourself about you know whether or not you want to make that investment, and then the other question is what position sizing do you want to make?
What how much of your portfolio do you want to put into these things?
You know, like do you want to have the bulk of your assets and something that's a little less volatile, a little more stable, a little more secure in its thesis, and then you know, with a smaller percentage of your capital, go and explore some of these things.
I might do that myself, by the way.
Like I do have a significant portion of my portfolio in cash, and that's a strategic choice that I'm making because of the indecision in the market here.
If we see new lows, I'll capitalize on that.
However, if we do see a breakout and a new bull run emerge from digital assets, then I'll probably be allocating to some of these uh different things that I'm gonna expect that beta and that outperformance from.
But I'll make those decisions kind of at that time, and I'm having dry powder on the side in the meantime.
But that's kind of how I think about these things.
The other thing I'll say about this is that people always say, you know, it's a cliche talk to a financial advisor.
Everybody's unique specific circumstances, their needs for their capital, their their uh strategy for their capital is all going to be very different and their time horizons are gonna be different too.
So that impacts a lot of these factors as well.
But that's the reason why the market offers so many different products and so many different versions of products on the market, because there's a lot of capital that has an appetite for different flavors of these things that have different balances of that risk reward profile and time horizon and so forth.
So um that that's all things that the market is set up to to accommodate and to sort of suss out and allow investors to think through for themselves.
But that's how I think about it.
The reason I'm so heavily allocated to stake the theorem is because I think it's the best risk reward on the market, and that's where I want to have the bulk of my capital, and that's just how I think about these things.
Why is it pronounced Lido?
Not Lido.
Next question.
Just think about that the whole time.
We gave a wonderful answer, and I was just that's what was dancing in my head the whole time.
It's like, why did I why wait?
Why is my saying wrong?
We had those guys on the show a while back.
I don't think it's tomato, tomato.
It's you know, whatever.
You can pronounce that.
I just think that the common way I've heard it pronounced is Lido, that's all.
So I told you that.
If you don't say Lido, you can't do that.
I'm so bad at this kind of stuff.
I'm so bad at this kind of stuff and saying things the right way.
It's because my first language is actually is actually French.
Nobody knows that, but it's actually so I learn everything totally backwards.
Um, which is probably the best way to that's how you describe that's probably the best description for French.
Um, especially Canadian French.
Um, is everything everyone's trying to walk backwards and read backwards at the same time.
Um, so speaking of uh speaking of feeling like you're you're you're walking backwards, let's talk about the latest on the war, uh, which I teased in the intro about we are gonna go down there and be pirates ourselves, John.
And we got a little update.
Um, I mean, listen, uh, for every people listening, you know, we're here every Monday.
I wanted to kick off this week with John giving us, you know, reminding us that we're crypto's in a good place and that there are greeny greener days ahead, even if in the short term there's gonna be red days.
Um, and inevitably, you know, all these things are going under the radar because the main story to talk about is one of the biggest stories, uh, hopefully ever, in a sense, uh, economic wise and geopolitical wise, um, is everything that's going on in Iran, uh, Iran and the back and forth, John.
And I feel like every Monday we're not short on new stories to talk about and new things that have happened or been said over the weekend.
Uh, and I always want to gauge from you and our team how they're feeling and our macro team.
Like, what how are we feeling about what's going on?
Do we think that we're actually going to get some relief soon?
Uh JD Vance was down there over the weekend.
You guys already, people listening to this, you already know this news.
It's not why you listen to Milk Road to get this news.
But he was down there, it didn't work out.
Uh, he left very quickly, and Trump got mad and tweeted about it and said they're gonna put up a blockade, which started about three hours ago from when we are recording this.
Um, John, and I believe that Iran has pushed back saying that they're accusing the US that it's uh piracy to do that.
Um, uh, like the the good old pirate days.
And I think people are kind of numb now, John, of just like not really sure how this is gonna resolve.
The market does not seem to really care, as in uh regardless, you know, unlike past weeks where on one tweet, or you know, we're gonna annihilate your whole civilization, that kind of stuff, the market gets pretty unhappy.
Um, I think today the SP is green, uh, crypto is green on the day.
Uh the Mag 7 is just a lag seven, but is not is not dragging like you have predicted uh at some point.
What's your thoughts?
I mean, give give me your thoughts on the whole situation and and uh, you know, how the market is actually what the market's actually telling us uh as these headlines roll in every week.
I think the market is telling us that they want this to be over.
I think everyone is saying that they want this to be over, and I think that this is a strategy to to get that accomplished.
Uh so okay, the ending a civilization threat was going to be targeting the bridges and the power plants in Iran, which would have really drastically impacted their ability to function as a society and probably resulted in a lot of death.
What uh the Trump is going with in this strategy with this blockade is choking Iran economically because 90% of the economic activity that Iran conducts has to flow through the Persian Gulf over over the seaways.
So having the USS Tripoli and other ships in the there um uh uh blockading that and you know threatening to seize and stop um ships that are trying to come in and out of Iran, that is a way of deterring them economically from doing almost any kind of business.
The Trump administration had not done this up until this point because it's a way that can be it's kind of it's dangerous, right?
To seize ships like that, um, and then it can lead to escalation, it can endanger US naval ships that are doing this um in different ways.
Um, but it it's also because they didn't want to choke Iran's economy totally and starve their their people and so forth and and and put that much pressure on Iran.
So now they're doing this.
It's it's kind of a way of forcing Iran back to the table, forcing them to, you know, sharpen their pencils on the negotiations.
And and basically, I think you know what I've heard is rumblings of Iran saying, like, oh, we were so close to a deal in Pakistan, and we're we're still open to talking, and it's normal that the first conversation doesn't lead to a deal, but like let's keep going.
And um, I think basically they're gonna come back to the table and say, okay, we'll give up nuclear weapons.
Because the this is if the United States actually effectively does blockade Iran and like is actually able to accomplish that, it will starve their entire economy in a way that they won't be able to survive longer than a month, basically.
So it's it's turning the screws very tightly on Iran, it's not doing it militarily, which is a creative solution, I think.
Um, so I think it's it's what the market is saying is it seems like a return to the status quo.
Everything was like tilting bullish, wanting to break out on news of peace.
When that didn't come, there was a lot of selling, futures got red, oil got green.
However, once the market opened and the blockade is in place, and you know, Iran is making these grumblings of maybe coming back to the table.
The market is kind of looking through this again and saying, okay, the conflict is still going, but we still think that there's a ceasefire coming.
Both sides, it doesn't look like both sides want to escalate, but it seems like both sides are just trying to pressure the other one into a better deal.
Because Iran knows that they have to squeeze everything they can out of this because this is like their only time they can play this straight of hormoose Trump card, because uh extorting the whole planet like this is really incentivizing people to find other solutions and to divest from their risk and exposure to the Straight of Hormuz.
So they won't really ever be able to do this again this way.
Um, and so and Trump, and so they know that, and they're trying to get everything they can from it because this is they've played the card, they can't really play this again.
Um, and Trump is trying to get them to come to the table and give him assurances and guarantees on things that he wants in terms of like letting the U.S.
extract the enriched uranium that Iran has and uh making sure that they don't you know pursue a nuclear weapon in the future.
So I don't know.
I think that's what the market is saying.
The market is expecting a resolution, even though we haven't gotten one yet, and it's been frustrating.
But once that resolution comes, I do see a lot of pent-up bullish demand in the markets across a lot of different markets, and I think we will see that kind of like initial breakout, um, show a lot of strength and see a strong rally across markets here.
The thing I'm worried about is that now that this has gone on now for over six weeks at this point, maybe longer.
I'd have to look at a calendar exactly, but the the demand destruction is pretty severe.
We've now crossed 400 million uh 400 million barrels of oil that have not been produced in 2026.
By the time all of this is done, and by the way, if this blockade in Iran continues, Iran themselves is gonna have to do shut in on their oil wells, which will knock out I think another like 10 to 15 million barrels a day.
Uh there's just like a lot of shut-in oil in the Middle East right now, production that's not happening, and it will take a long time to get back up to pre prior levels of production.
I think Oman's or Qatar actually, Qatar's estimate now is around three to five years to get back to pre-conflict levels of of production.
So it's going to take a long time to get back there.
The the total loss of of barrels of oil in 2026 is is over 400 million now.
It'll probably be over a billion before this is done if they started today.
Um, and so that's going to require a lot of demand destruction in in the economy of oil around the world.
That's going to also lead to uh price uh hikes, price shocks, inflation um in everything that has oil as an input on it, and that will have start to hit the economy, I think, in full in six to nine months.
So between now and six to nine months when the economic damage is actually felt in the markets, I think you'll see a a a peer a window where there could be a lot of bullish action and then we'll see how severe that inflation and economic shock actually turns out to be once we get there because there's a lot of improvising that's being done to to get around this right like there's uh news reports now of you know hundreds of tankers of of oil coming to the Gulf of America ironically to get to get oil to take to other parts of the world.
Now obviously this is not enough to like make up for this and if the US sells a ton of oil to these other countries then we are going to have domestic price shocks and etc so we can't like so there's it's not like we can just sell oil to the whole world and have there be no consequences of that but um there's a lot of changes happening to make up for the shortfall rationing is being done there's still you know billions of gallons of oil uh billions of barrels of oil that are held in reserve globally so we'll get through this it's just going to take a lot of paper shuffling to get through it.
But yeah so that's kind of my outlook on this right now.
I think that the market is looking through this, expecting a bullish breakout once it happens.
And hopefully, this won't take long for Iran to come around on this because the blockade is a very severe impact to them economically, and they won't be able to to deal with this for very long.
Is it only the the nuclear facilities that is that the only is like like is that the only thing that is the tipping point at this point for the deal?
It's not the only thing.
I think the US had like a 10-point plan and Iran had a 15-point plan, or the other way around, I can't remember exactly.
And they haven't released a ton of specific details over the negotiations, but the biggest sticking point is the nuclear capabilities.
And they say we have the right to enrich uranium, and we're like, not anymore.
And so yeah, I don't know.
Like, so that that's the biggest sticking point.
And I think that's like one of the the red lines, it's non-negotiable.
Obviously, there's more details to that than just that, but that's the biggest one.
Okay.
Okay.
And when you say we're gonna see we would see like effects of that six to nine months down the road, what do you mean specifically?
Like look, are we talking price inflation?
Like uh what does that actually look like?
Price inflation is definitely going to be one of the biggest impacts, but it's not just price inflation, it's not just gonna be a little inflation.
I think it's gonna be pretty severe and it's gonna be kind of ubiquitous.
Um, because oil or oil derivatives are products that are inputs to almost everything that is done economically speaking.
Um, and then you know, if you're buying a product, a good and service, like it takes energy to get it there, it takes food to feed people.
Um, the the fertilizer shock from Urea is been very severe.
Um, China is hoarding sulfur, which is another kind of uh fertilizer product.
Um, and so the the the two biggest sources of fertilizer in the world are going through price shocks right now because of this, um, and resource hoarding is happening because of this.
So it's not totally clear yet what all those impacts are going to be, but it's gonna be more than just a little inflation, it's gonna be like a noticeable increase in a lot of prices.
Um, or rather, I should say it could be.
Um, that's that's what's expected.
But it's again, until we have more clarity on you know when this ends, how big the hole is, what the loss looks like, we won't know exactly what the actual impact of that is gonna be.
So it's it's still uh uh uh an unknown at this point.
But it looks like it's gonna have some pretty severe economic impacts and like yeah, just demand destruction across the board because prices will rise.
And this is the other thing.
Jim Bianco pointed this out.
If if governments try to subsidize their way out of this, the prices are gonna still have to rise to destroy demand, you know, proportional to the amount of supply that's been lost.
But if governments just subsidize that, then those prices will have to rise even more, and it's gonna be like an infinite tail chasing thing.
Uh, so we'll we'll have to see how it plays out because there's there are ways that governments could try to deal with this.
It could actually make the problem worse.
Um shocking thing that governments do sometimes.
But uh yeah, so it's it's still unknown and playing out, but we'll we'll see what happens there.
The way we build wealth is changing.
Stocks, savings accounts, real estate, that playbook is getting rewritten in real time.
Nexo is the platform built for what's next.
It's an all-in-one digital wealth platform where you can earn interest on your crypto, borrow against it without selling, and trade a wide range of assets, all in one place with 24-7 support and institutional great security.
Oh, and by the way, Nexo is back in the US with new US clients getting 30 days of wealth club premier access.
That means elevated interest rates, lower borrowing costs, and crypto cash back on trades.
Benefits usually reserved for loyalty program members.
Get started at milkroad.com/slash Nexo.
Oh man, it's such an unknown future.
Even if the conflict ends now, it feels like that's still we're still you're still going to get these types of effects regardless, right?
Um, similar to even, you know, uh not the exact not at all the same thing.
Very apples to oranges, but even with COVID, it was like you don't see the effects of the printing money right away.
It takes years for that supply chain to change, or it took years for the supply chain to be felt, and then also for the the inflation to really kind of creep in, and it feels like regardless of whether there's a deal today or next month or whatever, we'll have these effects for a long time.
Yeah.
Well, so in monetary policy policy, the Federal Reserve likes to say that monetary policy changes have long and variable lags in terms of their impacts and their effects.
That's one of the difficulties of this, because you can make an argument that because there this price shock is going to lead to a pretty much guaranteed rise in inflation, the Federal Reserve should adjust monetary policy.
Well, it's not clear if it's just uh inflationary shock that they should look through or if it's going to lead to lasting inflation and raising monetary or interest rates, adjusting monetary policy with a rate hike, would just really create more demand destruction and put a further drag on the economy.
It wouldn't actually create any more oil or you know, fix the supply problems.
So you could argue that that would be counterproductive.
So, like a lot of the tools that policymakers have in their toolbox to address economic issues are not really well suited to creating, you know, solving supply crisis problems that we're having, like this.
So I think that governments are you know prone to making mistakes of reaching for policy tools that are not well suited and actually making the problem worse or creating different problems.
So it's a very fraught situation economically speaking.
We don't know what it's going to look like until we get there.
But I think the short term is what we can see, and what you have seen from the markets in a lot of ways is sort of this pent-up bullishness and like this the bulls want to have this euphoric conclusion to this and then to come back into the market with size in a lot of different places.
Um, I think that will happen, but then what happens on the other side of that is still to be determined because it's not clear yet if this impact is going to be able to overwhelm the bull market that we're seeing in other sectors of the economy.
Uh, and that's uh the the big unknown tug of war right now.
But the longer it goes on, the more at risk that overall bull run becomes.
Um, and so we'll have to see what happens there.
But I I feel like I say this every week.
It's like I I can't tell the future, I can just like watch.
But the whole market is like, I have no idea what's going on right now.
So that makes me feel a little bit better.
Um, yeah, that's where we are.
When's the last time something like this happened?
When's the last time?
Like uh not war, but like when's the last time it was like the market has no the entire market has no clue.
Uh COVID.
I I feel like the only thing of this size and scale with this much uncertainty was COVID.
Like I can't really think of anything else in recent memory that compares to this.
Like the tariff shock was nothing compared to this.
It was like a one-day blip, and then you know the market recovered really rapidly after that.
Um, this has been going on for a month and a half, and it's still not clear what the outcome is going to be.
Um, so yeah, I don't know.
It's just this is one of the longest and highest periods of uncertainty and volatility that we've had in the markets in a long time.
Hopefully, there aren't more.
But there could be.
Um, all right, John.
Let's wrap up there.
Thank you for your thoughts as usual.
Um, very helpful, very insightful, even uh, even despite it being relatively not pessimistic, but not great.
You know, as I just it's just, I think, but it's good to get a realist view, and I think it's also nice to kick start with uh bullish long-term, you know, reasons to be bullish long-term on crypto, because I think that also helps us in our crypto show, and that's what we want to talk about.
Um, John, pleasure as always.
Uh, thank you, and for everybody else, have yourselves a great week.
Thanks, LG.
Want insights on what's moving crypto markets and how we're trading each event.
Subscribe to our channel, join the Milk Road Daily and Pro Newsletters, and start investing like the top one percent.
This show is for educational purposes only.
Nothing we say is financial advice.
Investing is risky.
Never invest more than you can afford to lose.