# Crypto Market Reset: AI Capital Rotation

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-06-04

## Transcript

When stocks go up, Bitcoin goes down a little bit.
When stocks go down, Bitcoin goes down a lot.
That's the world we live in, unfortunately.
On days like today, it's a good idea to remember that Bitcoin has no top because fiat has no bottom.
So just because you're frustrated doesn't mean it's actually over.
Hello and welcome to The Milk Road Show, the podcast that wonders if all of this is just an elaborate plan for Michael Saylor to get all the Bitcoin.
I'm your host, John Gillen.
Today is Thursday, June 4th.
And today we are back with another episode of the Milk Road Pro Analyst Crypto Research Meeting.
Once a week, we huddle up to discuss what's up in crypto.
I always learn a lot from these conversations.
I think our audience likes them a lot too.
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And without further ado, welcome back to another meeting.
Gentlemen, how are we feeling?
It's red in the charts all over the place today.
You know that Bitcoin also doesn't have a floor?
That's what we're trying to find out right now.
I think we're doing some live market research on that.
But it's funny to say that about Sailor because I actually, I don't know why, but I woke up this morning.
My first thought was, imagine that he's faking out the market by doing that 32 Bitcoin sell and just trying to buy it like way lower.
Now, he likes to buy at the very peak and the top, so it's probably not his plan.
But I don't know why, but that was the first thing I thought of this morning.
Yeah, I think there's a non-zero chance.
He was like, you know, if I sell like a couple of Bitcoin here, I could buy many, many more Bitcoin much cheaper.
Martin, how are you feeling today just as a sentiment check?
What's your sentiment on the vibes, on the market, on crypto, on Bitcoin?
How are you feeling?
Man, I'm so excited.
I was calling for the pullback for the weeks now.
And yeah, I'm happy to have.
enough cash so i'm happy to see what's going on i hope it's not just you know one day one day or two days correction i know i hope that we are gonna lower much lower much lower okay well so maybe this is where we should start then where is the bottom what bottom are you looking for um and when do you get interested on this either of you have thoughts on that right now well it depends if we are talking about bitcoin or if we are talking about the rest of crypto or if you are talking about s&p 500.
so um I think crypto was beaten down quite badly over the last few months.
And yet I think there is still a lot of room to fall further.
Where is the bottom for Bitcoin?
I don't really know.
But, you know, we have built internally Bitcoin demand index.
And once I see that there are people interested in buying Bitcoin again, until then I'm not interested either.
And for the rest of the market, Like I would like to see, you know, US indices correction for like, let's say at least 5% or something.
And then, you know, maybe some AI stocks might get repriced and some attractives levels again.
And for the rest of the crypto, I think, you know, hype is down badly today, but I think it will be fine.
Some correction was also inevitable because the recent price performance was just crazy.
Again, as I said yesterday during our AMA, what I'm looking at right now is how the market's feedback is going to be about this pullback.
And what are all the doomers going to say?
Yeah, so I think Bitcoin is going to go lower only because I think over the last night, it went down to what, 61,309.
And the problem was not a ton of volume to back that up.
almost never does Bitcoin bottom unless it has a huge volume spike in the chart and it did not get that yesterday.
And so the only way we can get that is if it goes even lower.
And so and we're already at 61.
So it's definitely going to break through its previous.
Well, I think it's going to break to its previous low, which was what was it?
60,000 paying on pretty much.
So, yeah, I don't know how long that'll take to pan out, but I do think we're going to go lower.
Probably it happens, you know, this week, I would assume.
It doesn't look like there's much strength where we're currently at.
And then I think, you know, why is it happening?
I think, you know, still risk in the war not ending.
Price of oil is still kind of unknown.
Looks like this.
I mean, the stock market's also super red right now.
So maybe Bitcoin is just kind of like front running.
The fear in the market, obviously, we have a rate hike priced in this year now instead of the opposite.
So I just think, you know, macro is a little bit dicey and maybe the market's kind of thinking that.
And so they're selling off.
Obviously, Taylor selling 32 Bitcoin didn't help.
I think that probably made this even exaggerated even further for Bitcoin.
So it's kind of maybe speeding things up.
But I don't think selling 32 Bitcoin was that big of a deal.
owns, I don't know, 850,000 of it.
So it's not that big of a deal.
We'll see if he continues to buy, like if he can use the sell story or if he ends up buying this week, I think that's going to be a big question.
The market's going to really want to understand that.
So do you think also psychological?
Oh, sorry.
Go ahead.
yeah i was gonna say in terms of psychological i think stretch is down at i didn't look what the price is but i know it's it's well below its 100 par uh that it's supposed to be at so um that could be another thing that's kind of scaring the market what is that I think it's a closable gap.
It's not like catastrophic because it's done this before.
But I do think that like the psychological impact and the sentiment impact from him selling even just a little Bitcoin has kind of like really tested the resolve of a lot of investors.
And, you know, it's just it's in a bear market.
Right.
So the sentiment was already pretty bad.
So I think that there's been like a much bigger impact than he was even expecting.
Probably.
And I do think it was a good thing for him to kind of shake that off.
It's like the market.
we needed to get this at some point because like the goal of I think the thing that most people are getting wrong about this because he's getting absolutely ridiculed on Twitter right now.
And I think his goal is to improve the Bitcoin per share of MicroStrategy, right?
Like that's that's his entire goal.
He said it all along.
And sometimes to do that, you need to also sell Bitcoin, which I think for some people is like, I don't understand it.
But because he has other products like Stretch, which also acquire Bitcoin.
to improve his Bitcoin per share.
Sometimes you can sell Bitcoin at certain times and then buy Bitcoin at certain times.
And as a result, that allows you to make more Bitcoin per the share price of MSTR.
And so that's ultimately his goal.
And that's what he's trying to do.
I think he needed to do this one.
And this is why he did.
32Bitcoin didn't make any difference in his business whatsoever.
It's $2.5 million.
Who cares?
It was more just like, hey, market, I am going to sell at some point and it's not a bad deal.
So I'm just going to do it.
And I think he knew this was going to happen.
My guess, my hope, but also my guess is that he's going to buy a bunch right now because he knew that this was going to happen.
And he kind of did it to just signal the market, hey.
I'm going to also sell sometimes and that's okay.
So we'll see.
We'll see what happens.
But either way, I still think we're going to go lower.
So you are saying that Sailor is the reason why the market is dipping today?
No, no, I think it's macro and like other things.
I just think that exaggerated it, right?
Like Bitcoin went down way harder than like a lot of like even more than ETH for a little bit there.
I think ETH.
puked last night.
So maybe now ETH is down more.
I'm not sure.
But there was a little bit there where it looked like Bitcoin dominance was going down while Bitcoin is going down.
That doesn't happen very often.
I think that was just an accelerated or exaggerated move because of seller selling.
Now it looks like the rest of crypto is catching up, like hype's down like 10% this morning.
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The US Secretary of the Treasury said this week that the Treasury Department is working with, quote, all deliberate speed towards a national Bitcoin strategic reserve.
This has been teased for months and months here.
Do you see that as a potential positive catalyst to sort of like...
re-bolster strength in the market?
Or do you see anything that might get people interested in Bitcoin or crypto again that's like on the near horizon that might be some hopium here in the short term?
I mean, if they come up with some incredible thing, but I don't think they're going...
Every time they announce anything about Bitcoin, it's always...
Everyone's like, oh, that was way worse than what we thought.
So...
And then I think Jordy Visser always talks about this.
He's like, the administration is very...
They don't keep a lot of secrets.
And so whenever something they're going to do is going to happen, there's a lot of people that get into the trade before it happens.
And that's obviously not happening with Bitcoin.
So I can only imagine that they are not doing anything that crazy.
But I mean, if they did do something really cool and somehow kept it a secret, sure, that would be nice.
But I don't know.
I think we'd rather just the government can stay away from it.
We haven't done a lot of help.
I don't see any catalysts, to be honest, for Bitcoin in the next few months.
I think, again, all the markets are just, you know, a market for capital and attention.
And that's right now in AI and it's soon going to be in IPOs.
And so like what makes Bitcoin attractive?
Why I should be bidding Bitcoin here instead of, you know, waiting for IPOs or just buying, I don't know, Micron or some of the high trades.
Yeah.
I mean, Saylor said this morning.
If you look, he tweeted out, he said, capital markets are funding the AI build at a historic scale, 400 billion over six months.
Bitcoin ETFs have seen 4 billion of outflows since May 14th, pressuring Bitcoin.
This is a capital rotation, not a Bitcoin impairment.
And he says volatility creates opportunity.
But I mean, I said this on the AI show yesterday or two days ago, whenever it was, which is there is a new store of value in town and it is compute.
It is not Bitcoin.
And corporations understand that and they're buying it because not only is it a scarce asset, but it's a productive asset.
I can buy compute and I can make my business worth a lot more or I can rent out that compute.
I can monetize that compute and also store my value in it.
And that's what.
you know, every hyperscaler in the world is doing.
Google selling $80 billion of their stock to go buy more of this stuff.
SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI are about to IPO and raise, you know, $100 billion each to go buy more compute.
And it's because it's a scarce and productive asset, whereas Bitcoin is just a scarce asset.
And so I think Bitcoin is kind of losing the store value race right now.
I don't think that that happens forever.
At some point, you know, Bitcoin will become the de facto store value thing again.
I just...
And it's hard to see that happening when there's just so much demand for compute.
Okay, so this is a question I've been having myself, which is that what you guys are describing is like the long term thesis on Bitcoin maybe still holds, but all the attention and capital is elsewhere.
Do you have a plan in mind for an accumulation strategy?
Is that something you think about later this summer?
Is it something you're starting to get curious about now?
Or like, how are you thinking about getting into this asset at this like fire sale opportunity here?
I'm not really thinking about getting into it.
I think if it goes down into like the low 50s, I would buy some more.
um which i actually now i do think it's going to get there um i'm more trying to figure out how can i get more capital into ai stocks and the ai infrastructure build out where it's not too overbought so i'm i'm more eyeing um the pullback in stocks than i am the pullback in bitcoin to be completely honest now that's because i like i have a long-term bag of bitcoin that i've held since 2020 and it just sits there and it's like i don't really care if i have more um i don't really care to sell it it just kind of sits there so i'm just not really bothered but i'm also not really trying to accumulate a ton more um if it went really low then maybe i would but i don't have like a real strategy i would say i don't know martin are you eyeing it up or is there a strategy you have i have sort of similar view i think i i just want to make sure that my portfolio is diversified so i'm not like all in crypto like i was a year ago uh it was a huge mistake obviously um but yeah like I think if Bitcoin really goes into low 50s, it's going to get oversold.
And like, I'm not going to be a crazy buyer there, but I might add some Bitcoin for sure.
And it's not just sale that's sold, right?
You had like Pomp's ProShare, ProCap or whatever it's called.
They sold again, this is not large amounts, like 300, I think, was it Marathon or Hive?
I don't know, one of the other.
like accumulators of Bitcoin also sold some.
So I saw at least three of these like treasury companies that sold Bitcoin basically all last week.
I don't know if they like all plan to do that or what.
But, you know, it's there's a there's a trend here, I guess.
So we'll see if that continues.
So a lot of people have been talking about this dispersion that while Bitcoin was going down, Bitcoin dominance was also going down.
Some of these other alts had been holding up.
And then we got an announcement this morning that Arthur Hayes had sold his hype and his near position.
And that narrative kind of changed quickly.
We got corrections in those as well.
Are you looking at other alts?
This is a question for both of you guys.
Let's start with Martin.
Are you looking at other alts in the space right now and getting curious or interested in those?
Things like hype, perpetuals, or anything in this privacy narrative?
Is there anything else outside of Bitcoin that you're curious about here?
Actually, I was selling hype all the way up.
So I'm now like 40-50% out of my hype position.
And I think it was right call.
Now I'm happy.
I'm almost risk-free position.
So I don't want to say I don't really care.
But, you know, it's a risk trade for me right now.
But besides hype, I know that there is a lot hype going on around.
Zcash and Nier and those kind of, I call them narrative coins because it's all about just narrative, right?
There's nothing else really.
So I know that Arthur Heiss and some other big names are, you know, I feel like they're buying, then they start shilling and then they'll just sell.
So it's sort of, I don't like that kind of.
behavior of those people and who are just shilling something and they know that some people are going to buy their bags and then they are just, you know, sell that, use them as exit liquidity.
But I think like hype is certainly a great project.
I think what is happening in crypto is that the whole industry is getting a big reset and like you really need to focus on like why the token should be valued at the current valuation or not.
So Hype or Sky, those are, you know, those are real businesses.
They have real products and make real money.
But I would say like 95% of the rest of the crypto is not doing that.
So it's driven by that speculation and narrative.
And that's something that I don't want to buy and invest.
And because i have no edge there i don't know how to manage those positions uh so yeah i'm probably not gonna add my crypto to my portfolio anytime soon unless i see some some big uh change in the sentiment i do think we are starting to see a bit of a like separation or dispersion in assets and crypto, which we should.
And I think the reason for that is there are a few really good protocols that have found product market fit that their revenues and their volumes and things don't rely on the price of digital assets.
And so they can continue to generate revenue, even if ETH and Bitcoin are doing poorly.
And historically, everything we've ever built in crypto and all DeFi and everything we've done has all been centered around the price of Bitcoin and ETH must go up and or.
the volume of trading of Bitcoin and ETH must go up.
Otherwise, these things don't make money, right?
All of DeFi was built on the backs of Bitcoin and ETH and rehypothecated ETH or SOL if you're in the Solana ecosystem.
And so everything went up and down together because, you know, Bitcoin, ETH and SOL are just a proxy of each other.
And if they go up, then the DeFi products that use those assets, their revenues go up.
And if it goes down, the same thing, right?
And finally, we have a few assets.
And this is why I think Hyperliquid actually will continue to do well here.
And even if Bitcoin goes into this, like, you know, continues to struggle for the next whatever, three, six months, I actually don't think Hyperliquid will because Hyperliquid generates revenues from oil and from silver and from the S&P and from the NASDAQ and from Micron, from the AI trade.
Right.
It's like.
it's found a way to productize things outside of the crypto ecosystem, even though it is part of the crypto ecosystem.
Same with Sky, same with USDA.
There's a few others that are doing this.
You know, prediction markets, right?
Like they profit off of.
political events and sporting events, etc.
They don't profit only off of the price of Bitcoin.
And so those should kind of separate themselves and disconnect from the price of Bitcoin and ETH.
And so obviously not all of them will and not all of them will continue to do well.
But I think those are the assets that I'd be looking at to hopefully they get crushed along with Bitcoin and ETH, but then they can find their way out.
Because even if you look at the last two days, Hyperliquid's at its highest revenues it's had in months.
right now part of that's obviously because of liquidations and things from bitcoin but um there's just a lot more you can do in hyper liquid and so um i don't know that's means their buybacks and their revenues are increasing even though the price of bitcoin is going down so that's a that's a good thing that's what you want to see 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.
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Martin, I want to ask you a question about this.
Kyle talked about the things you can do on Hyperliquid.
One of the things you can do on Hyperliquid is trade pre-IPO shares of a lot of these AI hyperscalers, things like SpaceX.
There's reports out, you know, details this may escape me, but we now can get exposure to SpaceX on Coinbase.
And I know you've been bullish on Coinbase for a long time.
Does that change your thesis on Coinbase?
Are you excited about getting into some crypto stocks at this point, maybe as opposed to digital assets themselves?
What's your outlook on that?
Yeah, I think two points.
One is that what perps are doing pretty well is that they provide access to US stocks to the whole world.
So you can just go and, you know, buy whatever stocks you want on the hyperliquid.
They have listed over hundreds of stocks, so you'll be fine.
And the second thing is that what pushed prices of hyperliquid much higher was that CFTC finally made a clear regulation for perpetuals.
Though it only involves CFTC registered exchanges like Coinbase, so it doesn't include hyperliquid.
But I get it, it validates their thesis that perpetuals are a big thing, but I think for Hyperliquid, they actually lost a certain type of users that might potentially use Hyperliquid because right now they can just stay on Coinbase and trade.
The biggest event that's coming in the next few weeks is SpaceX IPO.
And now, actually today, Coinbase is launching SpaceX Pepper Tools on their exchange.
everyone that has Coinbase account can now get access to SpaceX IPO before it really happened because it's just perpetual contract.
So yeah, I think it validates the thesis of HypoLiquid that perpetuals are a great thing and people want it, people love their products because perpetuals are much more simpler than options.
But now I think Coinbase is going to eat some of their lunch and I think Robinhood and other apps are going to launch, you know, perpetuals as well.
Yeah.
But the only thing is like, I think there's a place for both of them, right?
Hyperliquid can serve the entire world.
Hyperliquid can't even serve the US right now.
It's literally blocked.
Same with in Ontario where I am.
And so Coinbase can, whereas Hyperliquid can't, but then Hyperliquid can service the rest of the world, whereas Coinbase is not really in the rest of the world right now.
So they, you know, I think...
they're kind of growing the pie of like, like perpetuals is growing as a pie, right?
And so I think they're both growing.
But yes, Coinbase will eat some of that share.
But also Hyperliquid can move a lot faster because it's not regulated, right?
It doesn't fit in the regulations of the US.
And so they can do more things and different things and act a lot faster than something like Coinbase can.
So I think that's their edge that they continue to have, even though the big boys are coming into the market.
So I actually think it's just bull.
But Perpetuals in general, getting adoption is bullish for both the exchanges, Robinhood and Coinbase, and for your hyperliquids or lighters.
So it's just a good thing in general.
Yeah.
Okay.
So the pie is growing.
This is good for all players.
And it's a big enough market to where there's need for a lot of different providers here.
I want to pivot to something.
Before we pivot, just one thing.
Don't forget, the bigger hyperliquid gets, the more revenues Coinbase also makes.
Because Coinbase...
owns all the USDC and their treasury and generates all the revenue from that.
So Coinbase has their hands tied into basically everything that is anything going on in this space.
Somebody needs to buy somebody.
Some rumors that Coinbase joins with some other big names to launch some new stablecoin.
No, I haven't seen that.
What's this?
Well, that would make sense.
Is it a new stablecoin or is it a different, is it a new name of a stablecoin with USDC underneath?
Because they have a stablecoin as a service product.
I don't know.
I just saw that there are rumors that Coinbase with some big banks are in talks to launch a new stablecoin.
I think it's, you know, I feel like a couple of weeks ago we were discussing that what is Circle doing?
It seems like they are right now fighting with Coinbase or like at least fighting for the same kind of users.
And yeah, if these rumors are true, we got a resolution, right?
So.
Coinbase is just, OK, we are going to launch our own stablecoin and with like big partners.
And let's see who's going to win this this war.
Right.
I see the Stripe or Visa, MasterCard, Stripe and Coinbase are reportedly partnering on a new stablecoin platform.
But then I also know that this has a new stablecoin.
So I don't know which one it is, but I mean, it makes sense.
Coinbase is trying to get their hands in absolutely everything.
Right.
Like if you're going to if anything's getting tokenized, if anything's getting put on a blockchain by any institution, Coinbase wants to be there.
They're doing a hell of a job at it, which is why, like, if I'm bullish on anything in crypto, it's still Coinbase.
I know it has not performed well in the last little while.
That's OK.
I bought Coinbase at 35 bucks, so I'm fine where it is today.
But.
I would say like at 165 or whatever is now is still an amazing opportunity.
So there's one thing I'm looking at buying.
It would be Coinbase.
Now I own a lot of it, so I'm not going to buy any more of it right now.
But if you don't own any of it, it's a great entry point, in my opinion.
I love that answer.
He's like, I'm looking at buying this thing that I'm not going to buy because I have a lot of it.
But if I was going to buy it, I would buy it because I've already bought it.
That's great insight.
But no, I agree.
I think this is something people are missing.
There's still tons of value in the digital asset ecosystem.
There's a lot of great businesses here.
And just because the sentiment feels terrible right now doesn't mean that that's all going to zero either.
The thing I was going to bring up was Tom Lee.
who I just think may have the most legendarily bad timing of anybody I've seen in crypto.
Like on the same day that Stretch is like causing people to freak out about Bitcoin, he announced that he's going to be launching a preferred product similar to Stretch that's offering nine and a half percent interest.
I think the difference here from where I'm sitting is that he is he's generating, I think, somewhere around.
$500 million of staking yield a year.
So he can fund, fully fund this product with like 10% of his staking yield without having to sell any Ethereum, which sort of validates his thesis that Ethereum might be a better treasury asset for a digital asset treasury company.
What do you guys think?
He would need to sell Etho.
He'd have to sell his staking yield, right?
Sure, but he wouldn't have to sell his principal, but I hear where you're coming from.
Yeah, but what do you think about this product and the timing of the launch of the product?
I mean, I think on the show a month ago or however long it was, we talked about this and we said he's probably going to launch this or at least he should launch this.
And I think it can be a better product because of that 3% or whatever it is yield that you can get on ETH right now.
So I think it's a smart move.
I think it's a terrible timing, as you mentioned.
It's just you couldn't have chosen a worse day, though.
I think they just filed.
Right.
He didn't launch it yet.
He didn't.
It's not like they came out with some big announcement.
They just filed, which then gets public.
And it's not like he was going to delay filing because he wants this to happen sooner than later.
So but yeah, hilarious.
But yeah, I mean, I don't know.
Like, I don't think stretch is going to everyone's comparing stretch to Tara Luna right now on Twitter.
And I don't think it's going to happen.
I think it'll come back to par like it's done many times before.
It's at $96 or $97 right now.
It's gotten worse than that already this year multiple times.
So like, I don't know why everyone's completely freaking out.
So I don't think the stretch in sales situation is as bad as people think it is, which means that I think what Tom Lee is going to do here is probably a net positive thing for Bitmine and for ETH.
We'll see.
It's still kind of early days for stretch.
So, you know, would be crazy if that thing blew up and all of a sudden Tom Lee enters the market.
But it assumes the current ETH prices, right?
So the roadmap or like the runway might, you know, heighten when the prices keep going down.
So I think it's kind of surprising that he's able.
he's trying to raise more money while offering a lower yield than Bitcoin despite that like yes ETH is a productive asset and Bitcoin is not but what are the chances that Bitcoin is not going to be here in 10 years and what are the odds that ETH is not going to be here in 10 years I mean like Bitcoin is it's already past that inflection point it's here it's here to stay and like you know right now the prices are going down but like I'm pretty sure that the prices of Bitcoin are going to be much much higher in five to ten years.
For ETH though, I know that John is very bullish on ETH but that picture, that story is getting more blurry I think and it's not that obvious that ETH is going to be much much higher in five years.
Like the potential is there but is the execution there and Is it going to be reflected in the price of that asset?
Like, there are a couple of questions.
Actually, John has...
What are you?
Is it David Hoffman?
Or is this Martin?
Yeah.
I think that Martin's opinion has become quite popular.
I think that's also driven by sentiment and some of the vibes in the market right now and the price action that we've seen.
But I do think that the fundamentals are still really strong on Ethereum.
And as we see tokenization continue to accelerate...
and the adoption of stable coins, the rise of the authentic economy.
I think that Ethereum's value proposition continues to grow, improve itself, and allows them to continue to gain market share as these assets come on chain.
The other thing I think is that a lot of the...
The contest, the competition, the frustration here is that a lot of L2s or other things are extracting value from Ethereum.
And this is just like a matter of monetary policy, right?
Like putting in dynamic rebalancing of fees from the L2s, pulling that back to the L1s.
That's something that's been proposed, that's been worked on.
So I think that there's a lot of development to sort of like fix some of these valid criticisms and feedback of Ethereum.
But I don't think it diminishes this great on-chain migration and tokenization of the whole financial system.
And I think that Ethereum, the network and the asset both benefit a lot from that over time.
And I think that this is like relatively obvious, but everybody in crypto who's been in crypto for so long are like rage quitting and are just frustrated because it's taken so long.
But everything is, you know, still on track and nothing's derailed that.
I agree that it's gotten blurry in the moment, but I think in another couple of years, it'll be much clearer what's happening.
So I'm very comfortable.
Mr.
Wartime Ethereum, here to protect.
Everyone's beliefs here to protect Ethereum.
I respect John.
I also agree with John more than I agree with Martin or David.
Now I've said I was bearish on ETH, you know, for the last few weeks, short term.
I was like, I don't think it's going to do well.
I just see no reason for it to do well right now.
Again, just because of the compute trade, right?
When there's just a better asset, like money goes to that better asset.
Like 2021, money all went into Bitcoin.
And, but I do think.
you know if you believe in stable coins if you believe in tokenization if you believe in on-chain finance which i think everyone in here does it's pretty crazy to not believe that ethereum is going to be the center of that like it's so far ahead of everything and so like i know a lot of people are you know it's down bad it hasn't gone to new all-time highs and so like everyone's like oh this thing's just useless and it's never going to do anything but like all of its metrics are at all-time highs right now everything tokenization through the roof stable coins through the roof transactions through the roof, like all the things are at all time highs for Ethereum.
So I don't know, hard for me to say that this thing's just not going to make it.
The only way I would see that happening is if blockchains in general just don't make it, which, hey, maybe that's the case.
But that would sound.
Well, blockchains are like, It's really hard to challenge that blockchains are not useful.
They are.
They are much more superior and we are moving towards blockchains.
But what kind of blockchains, right?
So if you look at Canton, I was checking Canton today and they're making amazing partnerships.
Why all these big banks and DTCC and all the institutions are not using Ethereum?
Why they are using Canton?
So I feel like the potential, like, yes, Ethereum, I like the product.
The roadmap is still...
quite far where it needs to be today and they are still not able to you know talk to these institutions to the banks to do like the big boys they are rather you know look at solana like galaxy or figure has their own chain like all the big guys that are using blockchains today not all of them are just using uh blockchains yes like we know that black blackrock branch like they took a nice fund on ethereum yes but they launched it on like so many chains So I think for a good investment, you need a great product.
I think Ethereum is a great product, but it's not at the state where it needs to be.
And because it doesn't justify the timing is right right now.
And the third thing is it needs to be at the right valuation.
So the timing and valuation are open questions for Ethereum.
The product is great and the roadmap is bullish, but we are not there yet.
So the timing and valuation are too big.
Big question for me.
Agreed.
Agreed.
What is the valuation of Ethereum right now?
214 billion.
Yeah, that's tough.
Still quite high.
All right.
Okay, well, I'm glad everybody agrees on this.
Let's move on.
I think that what I'm curious about to kind of like give some forward looking thoughts on what we think for the rest of the year here.
Do you guys think that Bitcoin ends up higher at the end of the year in 2026?
And how much higher?
Right?
Like, what do you think happens?
Do we just chop to the end of the year?
Do we get past midterms and then start to go up?
What do you guys see happening for the rest of 2026 for crypto?
I mean, we talked about what the catalyst is at the beginning and we said there isn't really anything.
To me, it's Clarity Act.
Like, we have to get that.
And if we don't get that, then no, I don't think we're higher.
If we get Clarity Act, that's probably the thing that does allow us, like, that's probably our catalyst.
And I think is what allows a lot of the things we're building to kind of flourish.
I don't know.
I honestly don't know.
Do you mean higher than what it is now or like at all time highs?
You're listening to the Milk Road Show, which means you've got takes.
Strong ones, I bet.
But where do those takes actually go?
Do you tweet them into the void, argue them in the group chat, or do you try to express them by buying a stock?
The thing is, stocks move on like 50 other things at once, and that's where Calci comes in.
It's a CFTC-regulated prediction market where you bet directly on outcomes like Bitcoin hitting 100k, Fed rate cuts, GameStop buying eBay, with a clean yes or no.
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I mean, I think that's an open question, right?
Like, do you think he gets back to 100K?
Do you think new all-time highs?
Do you think we still chop in this range or, you know, whatever you think?
I would say by the end of the year, we're higher than 60,000.
I don't know that we're at 100K though.
That's a very bold prediction.
Thank you, Kyle.
What do you think, Martin?
Where do you think we end up at the end of the year?
I think it's impossible to say, like, is IRN conflict gonna, you know, be resolved in two weeks or is it going to last for next few months?
So that's going to affect Bitcoin and everything else.
So it's really hard to say.
So I don't want to say range for Bitcoin, like, you know, the bottom can be 40K and, you know, upside can be, I don't know, 100K.
So it's a wide range and I don't really know.
I just want to, you know, follow the market, see what is going on.
And when I see that there is something when there is change in sentiment and I see that the situation that Iran is calming down.
But there is one more thing, which is midterms are coming and everyone knows that Trump wants stocks to be up.
And so for me, when I know that Trump is sort of, you know, his main goal is just to make sure that stocks are at all time highs when there are midterms.
So he can be like, hey, look at that.
Yes, that's my point.
But when I know that there is tailwind for stocks because of Trump, then why should I move my capital from stocks into Bitcoin?
Right.
Yeah, I agree.
And I think a lot of people are going to think in a similar way.
Agreed.
Generally, you would say that that's a bullish thing for crypto because if stocks go up, crypto will go up too.
But that just is not.
Yeah, that's the problem.
Bitcoin used to front-front stocks, but now it only front-front stocks when it goes down.
But when stocks go up, Bitcoin is flat.
When stocks go up, Bitcoin goes down a little bit.
When stocks go down, Bitcoin goes down a lot.
That's the world we live in, unfortunately.
Are we higher?
Yeah, dude, we're definitely higher.
I don't know if we'll be at all-time highs, but I think we'll definitely turn around.
I think that...
No matter how you look at it, there's going to be a bottom at some point in the summer, in the next few months.
And then towards the end of the year, I think we're going to be higher than we are now.
I don't know how much higher.
I don't know if we'll break 100K again or whatever.
That may be a later thing.
But I think we're in the process of forming and finding a bottom right now on Bitcoin.
And I don't think that takes us another six months to figure out.
It may take three to four.
It may take one to three.
I'm not sure.
There's a lot of still unknowns, as Martin said this year, right, from a macroeconomics perspective, from a policy perspective.
But I think that everything is still fundamentally strong in the asset class.
The acceleration of tokenization, the adoption of the technology isn't slowing down, isn't derailed, and it's not really tethered to sentiment or price.
All that's still happening.
And I think once attention and capital eases off this infinite black hole of artificial intelligence, it's going to be looking for somewhere to go.
Bitcoin is going to be one of the best and cheapest assets.
the market so i think it'll be really attractive to investors at another point this year just not right now by the way do you think there are certain assets that are going to be higher by the end of this year for sure and probably at all-time highs but again it's harder to say with bitcoin because it's not a revenue generating asset whereas i can say with more certainty that things like hyperliquid and sky and usdai their businesses are likely to grow over the year uh and because they drive value back to their token their token is likely to grow by the end of the year so i there's things that i'm bullish on still in crypto it's just harder to be bullish on and harder to be like more because why like with bitcoin and eth we're like we don't know necessarily because it's harder to predict because it's just a sentiment thing.
It's a momentum thing, right?
Do people want to buy this thing or not?
It's not a, is it going to generate more revenue or not?
Is this business going to do better or not?
And thus, is it going to create more profit?
And then thus, is it going to buy back more of its token?
You can say those things and you can understand those things for USDA, for Sky, for Hyperliquid, for Lighter.
You can't really do that.
Well, you can't do that at all for Bitcoin and ETH.
And so it's a totally different way to try to value it.
And so I feel like I can be a lot more certain on the performance of certain assets versus Bitcoin and ETH.
Yeah, we should finally come up with some better differentiation of crypto.
Like we don't say stocks and we don't mean like all the stocks in the world, right?
So like we talk about Magnificent Seven or we talk about Nasdaq or S&P 500.
So it sort of gives you a category that we are talking about.
But for crypto, it involves Bitcoin, ETH, Hyperliquid, meme coins, like everything and all the nonsense included.
So like Yes, and we are still saying crypto and what we really mean.
So yeah, as you said, like, I don't think that if there is next leg up, it's not going to be like all assets will do well, but there will be certain assets that are going to do incredibly well.
All right, that dispersion will continue.
I think Coin and probably Circle will be higher than they are today.
Okay, so I think what I'm hearing is that there is still value being created in digital assets.
There's still opportunity there, but it's going to be different than it has been in past cycles.
And it's a good time to lean in, to stay educated, stay safe, stay bullish.
you know, keep finding opportunities in the markets as we go towards the end of the year here.
Thank you guys.
Great research meeting.
Thank you all to our audience for joining us.
And we'll see you all on the next episode of the Milk Road Show.
Thanks for being here, everyone.
Bye.
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