# Institutional Accumulation, Macro Liquidity Shifts, and Digital Asset Strategy

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-05-18

## Transcript

As soon as the market starts to flip bullish, as soon as we start to see confirmation of a breakout, You could see an enormous amount of capital from retail, from institutions from all over the place come into crypto and digital assets in a way that has never been possible.
What's up, everybody?
It's LG Ducet here, and welcome to The Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show that can't decide what it hates more, the price action on Ethereum or the fact that I'm holding tons of it.
Today is May 18th, 2026.
Bitcoin is pulling back, and it turns out many analysts actually called this both internally at Milk Road and on the show last week.
But this may be part of a deeper issue in the economy as bond yields rise and send shockwaves.
through the market, and maybe this time, just maybe, it won't just be crypto going down.
Today's episode is brought to you by CAPE, the privacy-first mobile carrier, Pharos, the layer one built for RealFi, and Nexo, earn interest, borrow, and trade crypto.
John, I didn't even say you were going to be on the show in the intro, but I think people assumed it.
Yeah, well, we started doing this every Monday, so if people are paying attention, they might have caught on to that pattern by now, but it's really good to be with you, LG.
How awesome would it be to do this every day?
Just you and me, just shooting the shit.
Watching the price action on Ethereum.
This is some foreshadowing, but yeah, I think we'll do a little bit more than shooting some shit, but yeah, it's always a good time.
Always a good time, man.
Listen, I have a confession to make to you after I go through this little bit, which is that last week, literally a week ago in the Discord, as we were popping off to like $81,000, $82,000 Bitcoin, you were telling people, in the Milk Road Pro Discord that we were due for a pullback, maybe pulling back to like 70K or so.
And then that sentiment and analysis was also shared by a friend of the podcast, Julio Moreno, who from Curto Quant, who came on for his regularly scheduled bear appearance and told us the same thing.
And this is after he told us back on March 15th that we were going to go up to around the range that we were at the end of last week.
And then last week he told us.
that we were bound back down for 70k through a slew of different metrics that he shared on the show.
But basically, that thesis is playing out.
Yeah, so I think just to give a little bit of context on this, I have had a bullish bias for the last several months here as Bitcoin has been trending up and going higher.
We've been coming up towards this retest of the bear market resistance band.
And I think we've now kind of seen that retest.
And the thing I was watching for was to see whether or not the momentum that we were showing was going to be strong enough to break through that and flip that into support.
and indicate that Bitcoin had moved from a bear market into a bull market and was now going to continue higher.
It seems like what we've seen happen here is that Bitcoin has gone up, tested that resistance, and found some resistance and gotten rejected.
Now, what I'm watching for at the moment...
As I said in the Discord, there's a chance that that means that this is a rejection, that this is a failed rally, and that we're going to continue to see the bear market price action play out.
And that could see us sweep the lows of 70K, maybe lower.
But I don't think that that's like a foregone conclusion because there's also scenarios where we went up to 81, 82K.
tested the resistance and we've come back down.
Now we're holding in the high 70s.
It's not to say that we can't go up and do another retest, right?
Like it's not to say the market has to go to 70k immediately, but I'm starting to lean in that direction for a few reasons that Julio also mentioned.
The biggest one being that a lot of this movement higher we've seen has been on leverage on speculation.
And I think just people just, you know, front running the Clarity Act, other things just expecting Bitcoin to move higher.
But we haven't seen a lot of spot volume come in to support that movement as well.
And so that low spot volume makes things dangerous for a lot of reasons, because it means the order of books are thinner and they can be cleared.
So in the last 24 hours just here, we've seen Bitcoin pull back pretty sharply.
And along with that, we saw, I think, $700 million.
The number is changing pretty.
regularly here, but around $700 million of liquidations in the digital asset space.
Now, a lot of this was actually in altcoins, in Ethereum and in other things.
So that's interesting to me because it means that a lot of the leverage that's speculating is speculating on things outside of Bitcoin, which...
to me would imply that people are speculating on the Clarity Act, right?
So they're thinking, okay, if the Clarity Act gets passed, then that's generally bullish for the altcoin space.
And so they're kind of taking a speculative long on digital assets outside of Bitcoin there.
But we saw these liquidations happen.
We've seen this pullback.
And I think at the moment, what I'm watching for is to see, do we go back down and where do we find support?
do we see the market come in here and have the bulls find some strength and push back up to retest the top of that range?
But right now I'm kind of leaning more in the direction of we've seen the retest.
We couldn't get the volume, the momentum to break through that.
And so I'm kind of thinking we're going to go down and see if we find support at 75K or 70K.
But I don't think, I think that the...
the strength of this rally and the length of this rally for me, it makes me feel like I don't think we see new lows in this market.
It's possible that we could see a sweep of the lows from February.
Um, but I don't think we'll spend significant amount of time going lower or further like spend a significant amount of time at new lows.
And if we do make new lows, I don't think there'll be very deep ones.
So, um, that's kind of where I am with this right now.
And the outlook for the moment, adding into this, by the way, I'll just say this as well, because we'll probably talk about this later.
But Michael Saylor this morning announced a $2 billion buy of Bitcoin.
So that is like, I think he's kind of like literally almost single handedly holding up the market right now.
Isn't that scary though?
Isn't that, isn't that just tell you something about the market though, that it's like without that, wouldn't we just be at 50K?
You know what I mean?
Like not that, not that he's, he's single handedly has propped up $25,000 worth of per Bitcoin, which would be.
Like, what's the market cap right now for Bitcoin?
$2 trillion?
$1.6 trillion or something like that?
So that means he'd be holding up a third of it, basically, right?
He's holding a lot of Bitcoin's weight right now.
But what I'm saying is, does that not concern you?
That it's just like the only huge part of the demand is just coming from one dude and his idea versus the actual market demanding it?
Is that not of concern to you?
No, because I think that you're seeing this happen in Ethereum.
You're seeing it happen in Bitcoin.
a large DAT strategy that's holding now over 4% of Bitcoin's total supply.
And Bitmine, Tom Lee's firm, is now holding over 4% of the Ethereum total supply.
I think that really what you're seeing is just conviction versus speculation.
Everybody, I think, now agrees and sees the value of digital assets, the long-term value there, the strengthening fundamentals, the growing institutional adoption, many of these metrics that we point to on a regular basis, the growing...
volume of use, of adoption, of engagement of the actual networks and chains themselves and of the assets themselves.
We're just not seeing that reflected in price appreciation or speculation.
And a lot of this has to do with just this exact thing of conviction taking the coins and the assets away from people who are speculators or who have just low conviction, low time preference.
So I think that's a natural function of the markets of transferring assets from weak hands to strong hands and from capital that is seeking shorter term alpha and gains towards capital that is looking for a longer term thesis in that asset and in the market.
So I think it's a normal function of the markets.
It doesn't really concern me.
It's just an indication of kind of where we are in the bear market.
You have the people who are long term convicted investors accumulating aggressively on the things they believe in.
You're seeing this in Bitcoin.
You're seeing it in Ethereum.
You're seeing it in Chainlink and many other assets as well of people who long-term convictions and those things are accumulating and are coming back with size now.
And so that was kind of the story we'd seen up to this point, right?
We'd seen, I think it was a week or two weeks ago, we talked about this, but in the prior one month, prior to that podcast episode, there had been, I think, 290,000 Bitcoins sold by short-term.
holders and then I think around 300, 310,000 Bitcoin purchased by long-term holders and whale accumulators.
So that's that same thing playing out.
And those guys, Tom Lee and Michael Saylor, just get the most attention because they're sort of like the biggest people, the biggest holders in that long-term capital pile right now.
But it doesn't concern me.
I don't think it's presenting any kind of risk to the network or to the long-term health of the assets or the ecosystems that they're in.
It's just sort of like a function of the markets and just a difference of conviction.
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John, you said in your prior answer too that due to the length, and I think you said strength, of this rally, let's say the rally from the low of 60K on February.
third or whatever, second, fifth, that you don't think you think that that may indicate that the 60 K was a bottom for this bear or for cycle or whatever you call it.
What do you mean?
Cause that's not, that's not that much time.
That's only like three months.
That's only three months ago.
Well, I think it depends on where you measure the start of the bear market from.
And, you know, as I've said a couple of times now, I think you can make a case that.
the bear market started much earlier than it did on the price chart, right?
So if you look at other fundamental indicators of network usage, adoption, number of transactions, activated wallets, all these different kinds of things, and then just look at the price action of digital assets outside of just Bitcoin, I think you can make an argument that the bear market started much sooner.
And then October 10th was sort of like a big kind of like market breaking point.
So yeah, I think you can make arguments about where we are in the bear market here.
And I'm not really looking so much at the calendar because I'm still one of these people who believes that a lot of these things, these cycles and markets are driven by things that are exogenous to just time.
And they're really a function of global liquidity and many other macro cycles that play out in the markets.
So I think what I'm indicating here is that...
The amount of time that Bitcoin spent painting this bear flag, if it does turn out to be a bear flag, was so much longer than historical trends and norms that it would suggest to me that there's enough conviction in the markets here and enough capital, enough bulls in the markets here that we probably won't see enough selling pressure to get us to new lows.
Because we went through like an apocalyptic level sentiment reversal after 1010.
Like there was there were no bulls left.
It was like months we spent in extreme fear.
And I think that that really kind of shook out.
a lot of people who had a short-term thesis and were just in crypto for the speculation and expecting a blow off top.
So now I do think that what's left is convicted capital.
And I do think that presents a greater thesis that we've formed a bottom and a basis to build for the next bull run.
Now, how long that takes to start really showing that in the price action, debatable, but I just don't really see that we're going to find more people who are willing to sell their coins after we've gone through that.
that much fear for that long and find enough coins to sell to get us down below where we've already been.
So I guess, I guess the only thing that would potentially supersede that theory that you're putting forward is, is some kind of black Swan, right?
Like an FTX or something like, no, but I mean, just like an October, like another October 10th.
That's what I'm saying is like in, in a normal stance, perhaps that that is correct.
But if there was another major issue or implosion or.
scandal company, whatever, that something like what you, that would mark a new bottom, probably, maybe.
But if that doesn't happen, then we may have bottomed in that February dip.
basically.
In economics, we like to use the phrase ceteris paribus, which means all else being equal.
So like, assuming the Iran conflict doesn't escalate into nuclear World War Three, you know, etc.
Like all else being equal, it seems like we've established a bottom on Bitcoin and we're trying to build a base for a bull run.
Nuclear.
I can't, I hope this never happens.
And please, nobody be offended by this, be taking this in jest.
But if ever there are, there's a, there are nuclear bombs dropping.
There's no way I'm doing a daily crypto show with you.
Like there's, There's no way that there's been nukes going off that I'm going to show up here on Mondays with John and be like, hey, we're with John Gillen.
John, what's up with Ethereum, man?
Is Tom going to buy more?
Oh, everything where he lived got blown away.
There's no way we're going to keep doing this show if that ever happens.
And it won't.
It really won't.
Okay, so everybody just chill.
I hope not.
If not, well, if not, then we won't be here for it.
Okay, John, while I'm talking, which people love, one thing I wanted to confess to you is that based on your analysis last week, and in Milkware Pro, for anybody who wants it, a dollar for seven days, just throwing it out there.
If you want to talk to John every day, you can, especially Saturday nights.
based on your analysis.
And then also being like, you know what, maybe I should listen to people like Julio who come on and, you know, Julio is an awesome guy just comes on.
He's like, listen, I got all my charts here.
Let's just go through them.
And here's just like all these technicals that, you know, on-chain analysis that you should really listen to.
I took a short position.
last week and I closed it this morning.
Just putting that out there, okay?
The D-Gen is back.
The D-Gen is back in the trenches.
Doesn't matter up or down.
He's here to make money, all right?
So I can take my family to dinner this week, basically, with my profits.
That's a lot of money in Canada these days to take your...
Actually, you know what?
It's probably enough for grocery shopping.
I don't think it's going to be enough to go to dinner anymore.
I think the local local stores are running out of running out of chicken and beef.
So anyways, I'm just saying that I think I felt the courage based on your analysis to actually make some kind of move, some kind of short term degen move.
So thank you, sir.
Despite it being in the opposite direction of what we want.
No comment.
I'll take you to dinner next time I see you.
If I ever see you in real life.
How about that?
We'll put it that way.
Wonderful.
John, let's zoom out in the broader market because I pointed out that if the S&P closes red today, it'll be its second market red day in a row, which actually hasn't happened since the end of April because May has pushed the S&P to levels that seemed unimaginable just a few months ago, up to 7,500 last week.
And a lot of this, it seems from my chair, and I missed a lot of last week, I was out sick, that a lot of this is kind of tying back.
or a lot of this is also manifesting in bond yields rising, right?
And that that is kind of, and this is more of a macro question for you.
And this could also correlate to Bitcoin taking its dip.
Although again, people like you did predict this, you know, before this started to happen.
But if you could explain that situation to me a little bit more, because I know a lot of people don't always necessarily tune into our macro show, what that means while the, why these yields are going up and why that, that is spelling some potential doom or short-term doom for, for the rest of the, the rest of the show or the economy.
So to keep this kind of succinct, a lot of people have stopped thinking about, caring about, or paying attention to the economic impact of the Strait of Hormuz continuing to being closed because we got a lot of distractions with Trump's trip to China.
buying or selling airplanes and soybeans to the Chinese.
And then we've also seen this enormous bullish reversal in the U S equities markets.
But at the same time, this closure is still going on.
There is still a global energy and food crisis that's brewing.
And there's just a lot of economic impacts of that that are starting to ripple through the economy.
One of the big ones that we saw in, I think it was last week, we saw the consumer inflation data come out, the CPI data come out.
showing that inflation is spiking and the PPI, the producers inflation index, that is also spiking as well, even more so than analyst forecasts.
So everybody was expecting these inflation prints to be hot.
The numbers were even hotter than the expected hot inflation prints.
So the economic impacts of this are starting to play out and to be felt.
And what that means is that oil is still...
pushing back up over $100, it's probably going to keep going higher.
It keeps coming down on speculation that the conflict will end, but it never does.
So that shortage is still there.
The economic impacts are still there.
That's starting to be felt and come through.
And the forecast is it's going to continue to get worse.
Markets are forward-looking.
So the bond markets are saying like, hey, We are skeptical that all of these Western governments are going to be able to fund themselves, pay their debts, and just manage this untenable economic situation.
So it's sort of like in a high inflationary environment, the government has to react one way or another.
They usually do this by printing money.
This makes ripples in the bond market.
And so the bond vigilantes are basically saying, we're expecting you to have to make some sort of paper move to inflate your currency and devalue your bond.
bonds in order to deal with this crisis.
So we're not going to be bringing capital into the bond market right now because we think we're going to get a better deal.
And so that is what the market is kind of sniffing out, feeling and reporting.
And that's what that's what these numbers going higher mean.
So when we quote the bond market, just so people understand, like this pretty basic thing, but it's important to understand when we quote the price of Bitcoin, we do it in dollars.
When we quote the price of stock, we do it in dollars.
When we quote an index, we do it by the number of where it is on that index.
But the bond market, you quote in the bond yield.
So when the bond yields are rising, it means that the bond market is selling off because the market is willing to pay a higher rate of interest for capital to hold those bonds.
And so those numbers going higher across Western economies means that the US, Germany, Japan, across the board.
all markets are investors are saying like we want more compensation to hold these bonds because we think they're going to be worth less because of the the economic and fiscal situation that's being created here so that's what you're seeing playing out and i think that the the big punch line to this to me is that kevin warsh has stepped in as the new chairman of the federal reserve basically being handed a the probably one of the worst setups uh fed chairman is terrible And so he's got to save the day somehow.
I'm not sure what he and Scott Besson are going to do to manage this situation, but I do expect some kind of movement to kind of step in and control these bond yields here because if they let this go, it could get to be a runaway train pretty quickly.
So they really do have to manage the market's expectations and keep these things kind of under control and stable because instability in the bond market is the worst thing you can have for a country and for an economy.
So that's kind of what's happening.
Oh, my God.
So, okay, so let me just – The bond market is anticipating that there will be more money printed.
Is that what you're saying?
Effectively, yeah.
They're basically saying you're going to have to do something to get yourself out of this because you're currently on the untenable track.
Right.
Okay.
Are there any other options besides printing more money again?
Not doing it and letting everything go to a depression.
Any other realistic ones, let's say, because obviously it's not going to happen.
So is it like they won't let that happen?
But yeah, but see, this is the thing that's really interesting about this is that the solutions that are employed by governments to solve these problems are always novel and they're always sort of like learning from the last crisis that they solved.
And then like they try to.
fix whatever caused that last crisis and then a new one comes and they have to come up with a new solution so the innovation around central bank policy and treasury department policy to solve these problems looks different in different economies and it looks different in different circumstances but The thing that's interesting to see, I think, at this point is how Kevin Warsh and Scott Bessent figure out to do this because they've gotten – I think they have a different plan than the old one, which was just have the Federal Reserve buy a bunch of bonds off the open market operations.
Obviously, that's a pretty old tactic.
They've evolved from there too.
But these things aren't static, and the way they go about doing this capital injection or managing these markets or whatever they end up ultimately doing.
That has implications on the rest of the economy.
There are certain winners and losers based on how they apply that.
And so that's the thing that remains to be seen here.
But I'm really curious to see what they do.
Damn.
Okay.
And when would they – what is the timeline on that?
Because I guess Kevin Warsh hasn't even been sworn in.
What happens?
What's the name of the thing that happens to you?
Powell's no longer the chair of the Federal Reserve.
Warsh has gotten through confirmed by the Senate.
So I don't know what timeline to expect on this.
I know that they're next.
What happens next though?
He gets confirmed by the Senate and then what?
What's the name of it?
He just becomes the chairman.
Yeah.
Well, he's been appointed by the president as chairman of the Federal Reserve.
So it's contingent on the advice and consent of the Senate.
So once the Senate gives the consent, then he's just confirmed.
But there's no like coronation or anything like that.
Coronation?
This is American, Jack.
We don't coordinate shit.
The queen is still on my $20 bill, dude, okay?
She hasn't been alive for like two years.
She's still on the bill.
So that's how slow we move here.
Up in the great white north.
Well, listen, what you're talking about is going to affect us too, man.
Like I was saying, I'd try to fill my freezer with beef while I can before the triples in price, man.
So it's going to affect everybody.
And I think that to tie this back to crypto, because this is a crypto show.
This is a really important thing for all markets, but also for the digital asset markets, because historically Bitcoin and crypto have acted like the excess liquidity release valve for the markets.
And so I think that that's something that a lot of people are expecting here is there are huge amounts of liquidity demands that the market is posing this year to fund the bond market, to fund $4 trillion of expected IPOs on the US capital markets, to fund a lot of other things, this AI CapEx that's happening.
So there's trillions of dollars of liquidity that are needed by the markets.
I think that there are a lot of things that this administration has talked about to provide that liquidity in strategic ways.
But regardless, there's a huge amount of growing liquidity needs by the market.
And I think that the national security risks that come from not meeting those needs are unacceptable and intolerable, especially in a midterm election year.
So I do think that the Trump administration, Scott Besant, Kevin Warsh, all these players are going to devise some sort of strategy to meet these capital requirements and liquidity demands that the market is posing.
And the beneficiary of that at some level.
will ultimately be risk assets, and historically, Bitcoin and crypto have done very well in that kind of an environment.
So we'll see what happens.
I don't know.
Look, there's also people now are expecting that maybe we won't get any rate cuts.
Maybe we'll see some rate hikes.
I'm not sure how all these things are going to play out.
The ESLR requirements, the requirements for banks to manage there.
balance sheets have been changed as well so that they can hold a lot more U.S.
treasuries on their balance sheets, which kind of brings back the commercial lending sector that had been sort of shut down because of Dodd-Frank.
So that could be another path for additional liquidity to come in.
Several trillion dollars of U.S.
bonds could be taken off the market that way, which is functionally adding liquidity into the overall marketplace.
Anyway, but we'll see how all these things play out.
But it's important to watch because the results of this, the impacts of this affect everybody, every industry all around the world.
And crypto has historically benefited a lot from these kinds of policy changes.
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Got it.
Yeah.
So kind of a little bit uncertain because typically this will be really bullish for crypto and it also kind of line up like I guess I guess this would I guess the timeline.
on all this is like basically through the summer, right?
Like basically, like, cause we're almost, we're midway through Q2, more than midway through.
So you're looking at like a Q3 rollout, probably going to be some kind of positioning of this stuff happening in a positive way before the midterms.
I would assume if you're, if you're Trump or the Republicans, maybe send everybody a big fat, a new Trump check just before they go vote, you know, that kind of thing.
I think that these things have been happening, will continue to happen and will.
You know what I mean?
It's not like they're going to flip a switch type of thing.
But yes, I do think that they're going to try to keep this going very strongly and make sure the markets are supported in all the ways they can, especially leading up to the midterms.
Okay, okay, okay, okay.
So potentially good news then for crypto, basically, for this to happen.
But bad news for everybody, like if you're trying to buy eggs, you know, like continued bad news for basically anything else.
Maybe.
I don't know that.
Look, I mean, it depends on how they go about solving this and the methods that they implement, like, because it may not be the same impact.
It's not where they go to implement this solution and how they deal with this doesn't have the same impact that prior policy paths have had.
I don't know.
I'm getting kind of lost into what I'm trying to say here, but like the assumption that just because they're going to do something.
It's going to directly benefit crypto, may not hold again this time.
That's what I'm trying to get across here.
They're doing different things that's going to have different impacts, and we're going to have to see what that is because we don't know exactly what they'll do, and we don't know what the impacts of that will be.
Historically, crypto has done well.
I think it will continue to do well regardless of all these things, but it's just another thing in the macro landscape to kind of keep in mind.
I want to kind of, if I could rewind a little bit to when we started discussing this, when I first asked you about bond yields, another thing you pointed out earlier today.
in our creator meeting, which I had to skip, but was you, or maybe you mentioned right before the show was Tom Lee was posting this weekend about inverse correlation, right?
And was tying, was basically compared oil and Ethereum and how they regularly diverge, right?
Which is not uncommon.
I would assume that oil and many other things often diverge in terms of their...
their correlation.
But is that a bit worrisome to you to see Tom Lee be relatively bearish short term here?
I think what he's just describing is sort of what we've talked about a little bit here.
So what Tom Lee posted about was describing the inverse correlation between Ethereum and oil prices has never been this high before, meaning that as oil prices go higher.
Ethereum prices are going lower, and that correlation has never been this high.
They're moving pretty closely with one another.
As oil goes up, it goes down type of thing.
So that is what he was pointing out.
This is like a historical anomaly.
They don't usually move either together or separately.
They kind of vary.
But right now, there's a historical deviance from the trend, which is that that inverse correlation has gotten really strong, and it's not a normal thing to see.
But I think that… He's not saying that ETH and oil are related in any direct way, but he's saying that the market is moving in one way or another here based on a lot of things we talked about.
The economic impacts of the Strait of Hormuz being closed are hitting the markets in different ways.
It's hitting the bond market, it's hitting inflation, it's hitting crypto prices.
That's what he's basically pointing out here.
as this energy crisis continues to get worse and capital starts to react in the markets to that energy crisis and the impact of it, that capital is not going to other places.
One of the other places it seems like it would have been going would be to crypto, digital assets, Ethereum.
And so that's what he's kind of pointing out is this like tug of war over capital and the competing constraints and demands in the market.
Got it.
Okay.
Okay.
John, do you, based on everything you just told me, Do you feel like, on the stock side at least, and I go, again, we're a crypto show, but I think it's been hard to be a crypto show or a crypto person for the last six months as the stock market, not all stocks.
Some of the leading stocks have led the stock market to new all-time highs.
You had also been mentioning that naturally there would be a pullback.
I mean, this is a slight pullback, like I mentioned earlier.
Do you anticipate that to continue down?
Do you think we're due for a relatively major cooling in the general equities market?
I don't think everything goes up in a straight line forever.
Obviously, there's going to be some cooling here, but I don't see any...
I'm not...
I'm not bearish on the stock market at this point.
I think that we're seeing economic reacceleration.
I think the business cycle is picking up.
I think that you're seeing manufacturing hitting, like, you know, the ISM is well above 50.
It's staying above 50.
The Korean stock market is exploding higher.
A lot of things like, you know, the trucking industry is seeing all-time highs in demand there.
So the U.S.
manufacturing industry is picking up a lot from this AI capex stuff.
You're going to see a lot of companies start to apply AI technology to increase their GDP while reducing their costs.
for doing the same amount of business activity.
You'll see businesses scale.
You'll see new businesses launch.
So I think that there's a lot of reasons to stay bullish on the continued growth of the economy, the continued upward trajectory of the overall S&P 500 index, even though there will be a lot of companies in that index that do not benefit from these circumstances or from AI, and they're going to be on the wrong side of this scarcity of compute and of energy situation that we've talked about.
But overall, I think it goes higher.
I just think that it doesn't go in a straight line.
So that's why I was saying like we're going to see some kind of cooling off.
It's not just going to teleport from 6,400 or wherever we started this rally from straight to 8,000 without any kind of cooling off period, right?
So I'm not trying to call when that is or what that looks like, but I'm just like, hey, a little turnaround here kind of makes some sense.
But we've already recovered.
this morning futures we opened down and then we've covered up to highs again.
So yeah, I just, it's a, it's going to be a volatile year and it's going to be a volatile time, but yeah, I don't know.
It just, it seems like we've seen some cooling in Bitcoin and in risk assets and in the S and P, but I don't think that that means we won't continue.
I'm interested to see how the market reacts to Nvidia's earnings this week on Wednesday, because what we've seen from them in the past is they have really strong early earnings.
Then they sell off.
for whatever reason.
And then they recover really quickly and keep going further.
So yeah, there's just going to be more volatility, directionally higher, but not in a straight line.
And the other thing too, and this is something that I feel is going to be a big factor.
And I don't know if it's really hit everybody yet, is that there's a potential, or I believe it's almost a fish and a SpaceX IPO next month.
And you would be at a historic moment if a company went public at $2 trillion.
which is relatively what, or at least north of a trillion, but even a lot of pre-markets, it's somewhere between one and two, closer to two.
That would be, to me, when there's something like that that happens, there's got to be some kind of consequence or counter effect somewhere.
I don't know whether that's a ton of new capital coming to the market by people finally selling, because there's going to be people that are early investors in SpaceX that are up.
like crazy, I'm sure.
And even probably new relatively new investors as well.
But that there's also rumors of like, would SpaceX and Tesla eventually merge?
There's a lot of people pointing to be like, listen, opening at $2 trillion is actually maybe still massively undervalued for something like SpaceX and its potential.
A lot of stuff that people are talking about data centers and a lot of stuff that we cover on Milk Road AI.
So I think that to me, that is like, right now, It's funny, you brought up Nvidia earnings.
That's usually the thing that every quarter everybody looks to in terms of the stock market.
It'd be like, okay, is it going to be positive or negative?
We're going to take a dip anyways.
Nvidia is going to go down a little bit.
The market gets a little shook up.
To me, a company going out there and opening at $2 trillion in an unprecedented way is another potential top or start of another rip.
You don't know how the...
how anybody how the market will react to that and i don't think any anybody could really tell you so that's something i'm going to be watching and i'm sure we're going to be covering a lot um in milk road pro and on in our milk road ai channel as well melvin vincent i'm sure gonna be all over that one as we get closer but something that's hard to predict or even think about because when's the last time an asset debuted in like the top 10 it's like impossible especially at this historic high Well, this is kind of what I was saying before is that there's enormous amounts of liquidity demands that are in the markets right now.
And it's imperative that the United States finds that liquidity to support those things.
I agree with you.
There'll be some kind of draw, some selling pressure in all other markets as this capital is pulled into SpaceX here.
But overall, though, like the U.S.
can't really sustain.
you know, an economic recession in the middle of this huge economic mobilization to support AI.
So I think that that results in a demand for government policy action to support these things.
We'll see if that's true or not.
And like I said, I don't know what that'll look like or not, but there's a lot that's going to be happening this year.
They're not the only ones going public.
There's a lot of other big ones that are looking at going public or are going to go public.
So yeah, there's just a lot to pay attention to with that, but there's going to be a lot of capital moving around one way or the other.
Oh, yeah, absolutely, man.
That's a good way of putting it.
John, is there anything else on your radar this week besides, I mean, NVIDIA earnings?
It's not really on your radar.
It's not a crypto thing.
But is there anything else you're watching now that Clarity made it through the Senate committee, banking committee?
Sorry.
And is there anything else on the crypto side you're keen to scope out?
Just that I think that the Clarity Act, the Senate banking committee session was surprisingly encouraging.
I think that there were two Democrats that voted in favor of it, which is a bit of a surprise.
And while they, I think, said that just, you know, a vote to advance in the committee does not guarantee a vote to advance on the floor.
It does seem constructive.
It does seem like there's positive momentum and maybe more than people were expecting.
So I'm now leaning back in favor of the Clarity Act passing, which the market also is leaning in that direction as well, which would be a really interesting opportunity because if we do see Bitcoin continue this correction and this dip goes lower and maybe we do go to 70K or even lower than 70K, then, you know, by July, the clarity act becomes a law, you might get a chance to like really get some good solid accumulation on crypto digital assets here prior to the act passing.
And then yeah.
And so I think that this is like an interesting setup because it seems like now we've gotten some sort of like actual real indication that there's, there's political will to make this bill pass, which would be very bullish for the whole industry.
And at the same time, we're seeing a pullback in markets on digital assets here.
So there could be some good opportunities there.
And I think there's some debate about which digital assets benefit the most from this.
I think they all benefit.
It's just there's going to be a broad-based...
adoption and support and investment and innovation around digital assets now that happens in the United States because of this.
So I think there's an opportunity with that that I'm watching pretty closely.
And then just, yeah, in general, I think it's just a good time to be looking for value in the digital assets industry that is not being properly understood or appraised by the market.
And then take your position for the long view, because this is a good time to take a long view of this asset class.
And that's what Michael Saylor is doing.
That's what Tom Lee is doing.
And I think everybody should figure out what their version of that looks like and come up with.
their strategy for that because this is a great time to do it.
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I love that.
Okay, great.
Well, I mean, you found a way that despite all that to still end us in a bullish kind of rally way.
So not an actual rally, but like a...
get me pumped about crypto kind of way johnny i feel like you're always good for that and a lot of us in milk road appreciate you for that Yeah, absolutely.
While the fear and greed indicator is in this neutral to red zone or yellow zone, this is just like a wonderful opportunity because like I said, like the fundamentals just keep getting better across the board and everybody is speculating on other things in AI and in the equities markets and so forth or in gold or whatever they're doing.
But they're not really watching this as closely as they should be.
And I think it's just like one of the best opportunities in the markets from that perspective, right?
Like if you have that longer term view, it's one of the best opportunities I've ever seen.
Do you think we'll hit all-time highs this year?
I hope so.
I'm not...
certain that that'll happen, but I think that there's enough.
So look, I think that there's a rising amount of capital that's liquid.
Like the hot ball of money that everybody talks about is getting bigger and gaining mass.
And the great thing about that is that because we've seen all these technological innovations, tokenization, so forth, all these different kinds of things that digital assets have unlocked, that hot ball of money is able to move much more quicker, much more quickly rather.
And it's gotten more intelligent.
So we're sharing information.
We're innovating on how we do capital formation and how markets are able to, the rapidity with which markets are able to incorporate new information into price action and to reallocate accordingly.
So I think that presents a lot of situations or like it provides the necessary preconditions for the markets to radically reprice assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum much higher, much more quickly than in the past.
And so that access, the proliferation of new ETF, ETP products for digital assets, all of these things are creating circumstances where as the market starts to flip bullish as soon as we start to see confirmation of a breakout you could see an enormous amount of capital from retail from institutions from all over the place come into crypto and digital assets um in a way that has never been possible before and the the thing i think is also unique about this asset class is that the scarcity of it presents a much higher likelihood of a short squeeze or a supply shock, which could really push the price into overvaluation territories that other assets might not be able to do as well.
So I don't know.
I just think it's a really interesting setup where you can see Bitcoin be languid, bearish for a long time, and then just suddenly be like, yeah, I'm 200K now.
So like that's.
That's a real possibility.
And, you know, we'll see.
I would love to see a new all-time high, though, in 2026, because that would really firmly invalidate this four-year cycle hypothesis.
And everybody would be forced to, like, update how they're thinking.
Update there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
It would be nice to have a new narrative like that.
I do agree with that part.
If anything, that would be the benefit.
I mean, I love all-time highs this year.
Don't get me wrong.
But it's like, I would love to.
there to be, I would love for that four-year cycle thing to be broken after it was so almost firmly validated at this most current, most recent, you know, kick at the can.
So that would be, it would be great.
Yeah, that's, yeah, totally.
But it's still, you know, it's still there one way or another.
So, all right, John, thank you, sir.
Thank you for your thoughts.
We've got a lot of great shows coming up this week on Milk Road and Milk Road Macro and AI.
So make sure you guys check that out.
John, otherwise, a pleasure as always.
Pleasure's all mine, LG.
I'm happy to do it.
I'm looking forward to the next one.
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