# Crypto Capital Rotates to AI as Institutional Equities Outperform

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-06-25

## Transcript

The reason that we built DeFi is we basically built a better financial system, right?
And so we need to go use that better financial system for the things that need financing in the world, right?
And right now...
The biggest financing thing we've ever seen in history is compute and AI.
Bitcoin has dipped back below 60k as ETF outflows surge.
Is this the bottom?
Are we about to spend summer in Goblin Town?
Hello and welcome to The Milk Road Show, the podcast that is having Terra Luna flashbacks every time we look at the STRC charts.
I'm your host, John Gillen.
Today is Thursday, June 25th.
And today we are back with another episode of the Milk Road Pro Analyst Crypto Research Meeting.
Once a week, we huddle up to talk about what's up in crypto.
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Without further ado, let's try to save Bitcoin.
Gentlemen, welcome back to the Milk Road Pro Research Meeting.
Bitcoin has lost $58K.
Are you all feeling worried here?
Bullish?
Patient?
What's your outlook on things today?
Kyle, let's start with you.
What are you seeing this morning?
Well, I just noticed that crypto had fell this much this morning just before we clicked record.
I'm bullish because the micron earnings from last night, it has nothing to do with crypto.
Yeah, I think from a bull market perspective in the equity market, I'm extremely bullish, which makes me very bearish on crypto as a result.
Well, Lamarck, it agrees with you.
Martin, how are you feeling this morning about Bitcoin and crypto and what's got your attention today?
I think Bitcoin is getting into very attractive levels.
I think I'm going to start buying some Bitcoin around $55k or so.
So like lately, I was more tactical about my portfolio, but...
There is also some portion which I don't want to be active that much.
And so if I can get more Bitcoin at like, I don't know, 55K, that seems pretty reasonable.
And I would like to add more to my Bitcoin backs at these levels.
And it keeps falling down.
I will be just adding more.
And for some other things, when I'm going to maybe reallocate my capital back into crypto from some...
place like you know uh ai memory chips uh i don't have micron but i have sky hunnix which is uh maybe even better company but anyways the point is that maybe at some point if there is a peak in in that equity market and i don't see a much upside and i might be able to reallocate back but i want to see that there is more people interested in bitcoin rather than just me and you know sailor trying to do his magic and keep bitcoin uh high but it's not happening these days so yeah i think what we need i don't think he cares about keeping bitcoin high i think he's trying to keep stretch collapsing yeah which uh just before we hit record was sitting at 70 what did i say 76 or something it is at open anyway it's back up to almost 79 now so it's getting bought up It went all the way down to 73.
Wow.
But it's now back up to 79.
So interesting to watch that play out.
We'll see if that continues.
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Do you think that he's going to be able to get that to re-peg?
There's been a lot of speculation that he might have to sell.
like three or four billion dollars worth of Bitcoin at a single clip in order to get the market to kind of calm down and kind of get that to re-peg to that $100 par.
Do you think he's going to do that?
Do you think he's going to let it ride and hope the market corrects it on its own?
Or what do you think he's going to do here?
I mean, I don't know.
I don't know why selling billions of Bitcoin would make the market like happier about this.
I think it would probably do the opposite.
I understand the reason is because he would have more cash so he can pay more of the dividends.
But I don't think that that's really going to bring more trust or excitement into just the ecosystem of strategy in general.
I also don't know that the thing I can't really understand is, does it matter that it's this low?
Like, does he need to do anything to fix this?
And I don't.
think that he does.
It's not like this is like a thing that you can use to like go, you need to, you know, has to be at a dollar or a hundred bucks, I guess is their par because it's a payment stable coin or whatever, right?
Like it doesn't.
Like, I just, I don't know that it needs, he needs to do anything.
I think he can just wait and he doesn't have to sell anything.
It's not a stable coin.
That's the thing I think most people are missing.
Again, obviously it sucks that it's down here and it sucks for the people that are holding this.
Now, again, if they don't sell, it doesn't matter.
They're still getting their full dividends.
So the reason they bought it is still the same.
The thing that sucks is they can't exit.
Or if they did, they're down 20% at this point.
So like, I understand that problem, but like, I don't know that he has to do anything irrational to like save this in a day or two days or three days.
I think he can just wait.
So, you know, maybe I'm missing something there, but I don't know.
That's just my initial reaction.
And then, you know, the lower this goes, like I imagine the reason that people bought this at 73 is because now they're getting a, you know, a 27% return on their investment plus whatever it is, 11 and a half or 12% dividend, which is pretty juicy.
But.
Yeah, I still I've never bought or anything in stretch or micro strategy at that.
But I don't know what's going to happen here.
What do you guys think?
I think you're right.
I think he can just let this ride for a while.
But I think it also is something where he doesn't want to have to.
And there's just a lot of speculation because nobody's really had a product like this before that's been in this sort of situation.
And I think that the market is basically saying like, hey, we'd like to see you have more cash on hand to be able to fund these these dividend payments.
But I don't know.
I don't know what he's going to do.
I think that the idea is that if he sells some Bitcoin, he'll recapitalize the company without penalizing his common stockholders of MSTR.
But he also recently sold a bunch of MSTR at the market to raise money to buy 500 more Bitcoin.
So, yeah, it's like I'm not really sure what's going to happen here.
I think it's an interesting thing to watch.
But I think the thing that's interesting to me is that it seems to reveal that people have been.
buying strc with money that it seems like there's just some leverage that's getting washed out basically um and i'm not sure if it's it's on sailors in but it's more on like the people who've been buying this and getting getting levered up to do that it seems like people are taking capital out of the market and like just like pulling back in general on their exposure to bitcoin and crypto here so yeah i think it's one of these things where it's like i agree with you it's not like teraluna it's not quite the same as losing a peg but it's something that the market is like really uh like sending a clear message that they don't feel a lot of confidence in his ability to continue to fund it right now.
So that's what the message that's coming through is.
And, you know, I think that's why people are wondering if he's going to sell Bitcoin to like kind of calm those fears and bring back capital to support it.
But yeah, I don't know.
Martin, do you have any takes on this?
I think it comes down to the question, who are the holders?
Are those like, you know, sophisticated institutional investors who knows the game or are those mainly like retail people who jumped on the train and now they're panicking and selling?
I'm afraid it's a letter.
So what's the other preferred stock that not MicroStrategy's, but the other companies, Strive?
Strava.
Strava?
Is that what it's called?
Sata?
Yeah.
S-A-T-A.
Yeah, right.
Those are different products from Strive.
Yeah, it's also down at 87 at the moment.
So interesting.
They're both kind of falling apart here.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, in terms of a Bitcoin bottom, I think something I've heard people saying is that Bitcoin's over-is realized price.
which is the aggregate cost basis of all the circulating supply is down around 54k 53k somewhere in that area right now.
I've heard this from Michael Nadeau.
I did an interview on this channel a couple days ago with Julio Moreno from CryptoQuant and he was pointing at that and saying that that might mark the floor here.
But I've also heard people calling for Bitcoin at like $40,000 or lower.
Do you guys have any thoughts on that?
Do you think we're getting close to the bottom here or do you think that we might have a pretty significant like room to fall further on bitcoin's price here martin let's start with you what you said you're getting interested in accumulating these levels do you think we're near the bottom i think so definitely closer to the bottom than to the top um yeah i was worried you thought we were at the top here so mathematically we actually are because the top was what 125 and we're sitting below 60 so we are literally closer to zero than we are to 125.
Great.
Well, that makes me feel, but there's strong support at zero.
I've heard that's a lot of buy support there.
Anything else to add on that, Martin?
Or is it you just think we're close to the bottom?
I think the problem of Bitcoin is that there is just better opportunity at this very moment and people are taking advantage of that.
And so it's not like Bitcoin failed or anything like that.
It's just capital moved away and it will flow back eventually.
I don't know when.
but eventually and so like you know when we look like in 10 years when we look back and we will see this you know huge correction it will be like wow that was a great opportunity but people sometimes miss miss the context so like but back then there was ai and you know micron just reported like very very strong results and like it's probably the next earnings are going to be also very impressive.
And it's not just next few quarters.
It's next few years are going to be very good for Micron.
And it just tells you where the attention and capital is and where it should be.
So it's very well allocated because it just makes sense.
And so again, back to my question, in 10 years, Bitcoin will be much, much higher, maybe close to $1 million.
And like people will forget this moment, but like, you know, if you are a long term holder, you don't need to do any moves and just accumulate more and you'll be fine, I think.
Kyle, what about you?
Are we going to bottom here somewhere in the 50s or do you think we're going to get even lower than this down into the 40s somewhere?
Oh, man.
I have no idea.
Micron earnings, micron earnings, right?
No, I don't know.
It's hard to say.
I think.
I agree that there's just better opportunities out there.
So that's why people are not buying Bitcoin right now.
And I don't know when that stops.
I think many people have been saying that's going to stop every quarter.
And then Micron Earnings comes out and just absolutely blows it out of the water and says that we've got a decade long memory demand cycle because of, you know, additional things like humanoid robots, etc.
And everyone gets super bullish and Micron's up 10%.
And it's, you know, it's a trillion dollar company already.
And so you can just see that the capital is flowing, continuing to flow into the infrastructure build out.
And that's just sucking in all the capital.
And so I just it's so hard for an asset like Bitcoin, which doesn't trade on fundamentals in terms of like revenues and buybacks, things like that.
It's so hard for it to gain any like momentum because that's what it trades on is momentum.
But the momentum is all elsewhere right now.
And I don't know when that stops.
Bitcoin doesn't have a floor like other assets do in terms of, you know, like fundamentals in terms of revenues and buybacks.
It just doesn't have that.
So this thing could go much later.
You know, I have no idea.
I'm still bullish on Bitcoin long term.
Like, I don't think this is just like the new world where we just we only buy compute and Bitcoin's dead.
I don't see that is what's happening.
I just yeah.
In the short term, I just I don't know.
I have no idea how this thing will go.
Yeah.
And it's hard to- A lot of it is going to depend on Sailor right now, I think, right?
Because you can see Bitcoin's kind of moving along with the stretch price.
Yeah, no, I think that that's a big thing that's driving fears.
And I think that because there's this overhang of how is he going to solve this problem, a lot of capital is a little bit hesitant to move with size into Bitcoin until these things sort of re-peg or get resolved in some way.
Personally, I'm in the camp with Martin.
I've got bids at $58K for the culture because that's a little bit of a meme in crypto.
And then $55K because I think we might see that level, $54K, $55K, or the realized price of $53K.
pretty intent on not missing the opportunity to buy that dip.
And so I'm not trying to like get that 53K like peak bottom there.
I'm just going to try to get filled at 55.
And if we go lower than that, I will set some more bids and keep accumulating because I have a long-term view on this.
And just like Kyle and Martin both said, I think the capital will come back.
And when it does, the people who were able to patiently accumulate spot here without leverage will get rewarded really well, I think.
I want to ask you guys about Ethereum.
There has been a lot going on in the Ethereum ecosystem that I think a lot of people are not really paying close attention to.
But the Ethereum Foundation laid off 20% of its work.
workforce this week and announced that they're reducing their budget by 40%.
At the same time, a lot of researchers who have recently left the Ethereum Foundation are forming a new digital asset treasury company backed nonprofit called ETH Labs.
And the idea here is to develop Ethereum, but also kind of be the number go up organization.
I'm curious if you guys are following all this.
Are you bullish or bearish on these changes for Ethereum?
And what would you like to see from this new organization ETH Labs here?
Kyle, let's start with you.
What are your thoughts on ETH and what's been going on here?
I just don't know what these organizations are really going to do to help Ethereum at this point.
Like the world knows about Ethereum.
It's been around long enough.
People are using it.
or not using it.
And I just don't know that a new lab is going to make a huge difference.
Ethereum is so big already.
So like, do we really need another organization?
You know, we had a theory lies and everyone said that was going to change it.
Now we have ETH labs and everyone's like, okay, this is the new thing.
Well, then we had like sharp link and bit mine and everyone said, okay, that's going to change it.
And now we have ETH labs and it's like, I don't know.
I'm still.
I don't really see how it's going to make a big difference for Ethereum.
I think what makes a big difference for crypto and why I think the better place to be holding your capital within the crypto ecosystem is things like Robinhood or Coinbase or Galaxy, because I think these are the companies that are actually making a difference in crypto in terms of building real products and bringing that to real customers.
Otherwise, I don't think the Ethereum Foundation, the ETH Labs, I don't know.
I just don't really see what the difference it's going to make anytime soon.
Martin, what about you?
What are you seeing in all of this?
And do you think that there's going to be something that moves the needle that comes out of this new organization?
Well, obviously, the more BD, the better for any asset, right?
So I think it's positive, but it's not like I agree with Kyle.
I don't think it's going to make a huge difference.
But like for me, I think we were discussing this.
before why are people leaving ef and what's the real reason behind that and i said back then that i i don't really like that because i think when people when investors underwrite some technology it's mostly about the team who is behind that technology and you need to make sure that those are the best people in the industry that's why people you know love elon musk because he is just magnet for the best talent in the world.
And like for Ethereum, when people like very good people, experts in that specific domain are leaving EF to do whatever, it's for me sort of a yellow flag because I don't like it.
Maybe there was a good reason for kind of do another restructure of Ethereum Foundation, but I don't really know.
But overall, I was...
I think it was negative news for the whole community.
I think you, John, disagree with that, but that's okay.
We can all have different opinions.
But for Ethereum, I think they really need to ship much, much quicker.
And because we all understand the end game, it's there.
The roadmap is ambitious enough.
I like that.
But it needs to happen, you know, much sooner, not in 2030 or I don't remember what's the final version of Ethereum.
So, and then again, there is that AI.
But I think once the sentiment changes and people will get more interested in crypto again, I think Ethereum still has a chance to, you know, get new buyers for sure.
And also, last comment here is retail side of crypto might be dead.
but institutional side of crypto has never been better.
So like you can see everyone's building on top of crypto and it just makes sense.
And I'm actually writing a piece about I'm very bullish on all the apps that have very big user bases because there is a lot of question and uncertainty about, you know, all the business models and how.
durable they are in this new AI, H&T economy.
And I think that the apps with huge users distributions, they can not only leverage AI, but they can also at some point start to leverage blockchain.
Because for example, Uber spends billions of dollars just for card payments.
Because if you order some food, then there is always so many intermediaries.
So if you pay 10 bucks, you know, the merchant only get like 97, 96% of that.
And the three, 4% goes to those intermediaries.
So I think like, you know, if these big, these applications can remove these intermediaries and just, you know, provide some blockchain features to keep higher margins for themselves, I think that's, that's the opportunity.
And that institutional crypto adoption is something that I pay.
attention to and i also want to mention figure because i feel like that's what everyone's missing and figure is probably the the highest growing crypto app right now it's not for retail not necessarily it works both ways it's a marketplace for institutions as well so you can issue loans using their figure connect but it's growing like crazy months over months and i think not many people talk about figures Martin, would you like to talk about Figuremore?
We can talk about Figuremore if you'd like to.
When you say it's growing like crazy month over month, do you mean in terms of revenue or users or what exactly is growing?
The product is called Figureconnect and it means that any bank, any financial institutions can go there and launch their own loans or just issue any debt on Figureconnect.
Das is a marketplace essentially.
So like as Uber is a marketplace for, you know, drivers and the people who are looking for a ride, then Figure Connect is the same way but for loans origination.
So some people want to originate loans and then there are some lenders who want to buy these loans.
And so they are growing pretty quickly.
And I think it's pretty interesting story.
So.
Yeah, I pay attention to the growth.
I think they are growing right now 8% month over month.
And like, you know, people say there is crypto, there's bear market in crypto, but it doesn't apply for everyone and especially not for companies who are, I would say, leveraging this technology in a good way to deliver, you know, better, superior products.
Yeah.
So I think my thoughts...
Oh, go ahead.
Yeah, as you say, if there's one thing good about these crypto prices going down, It's that it's making Galaxy a beautiful buy because Galaxy continues to I mean, so Galaxy, you guys know, has the AI side, the data center side, and then it has the crypto side.
And at least our feeling is the data center side is very undervalued because of the drag of crypto.
And yesterday we found out that Galaxy has purchased and got approval, purchased land and got approval for a data center in is it mcgregor texas i believe um and i think it's i don't have the full details maybe another 500 megawatts or something like this and so this is a huge development that we didn't really know that they were going to build outside of helios and now they have a whole different yeah data center that's coming in and so i think the value of galaxy should be much higher but it continues i mean it's down two percent because crypto is down so i guess there's one good thing which is that it keeps undervaluing this company, Galaxy, that you can keep buying into.
And eventually, at some point when crypto decides to relax, Galaxy is going to be repriced much higher, I think.
So Kyle, I wanted to ask you this.
Between these three, right?
Between Galaxy, Coinbase, Robinhood, I know you're bullish on all of these in sort of a longer term way.
Who do you think is winning in the horse race right now?
Which one are you most bullish on at the moment and why?
Well, I think they're very different.
I mean, Galaxy at least is very different from Coinbase and Robinhood.
So I would say Coinbase and Robinhood are very much competitors in the sense that they're trying to be the everything financial app.
I know Galaxy recently launched, what was it, Galaxy, whatever, their own little trading app as well.
But I don't think it's their main focus.
And so their main focus is like, you know.
different products for institutions that are coming into crypto and want to hold or trade or loan and borrow crypto assets.
But Robinhood and Coinbase are definitely converging to be similar, taking a different approach.
Robinhood obviously came from more the equity world.
and then integrating crypto, whereas Coinbase started crypto first.
They're more blockchain and crypto native.
They have different features that Robinhood doesn't have, like integrating Morpho, so you can take loans against your Bitcoin, obviously stablecoin functionality, things like that.
So different approach.
I think Robinhood is the winner right now, just because they have a lot more users and so they can bring in more capital and we'll see if they're able to ship.
at a high level of using blockchain to sort of like hollow out their company and create better profits.
They've slowly done this, but not at the scale that Coinbase has.
Coinbase is doing, so I think Coinbase is losing on that regard of just like being the everything app.
What I think Coinbase is really going after and probably has a lead in and why I like Coinbase is they're going in the direction of instead of humans, they want to bank.
agents, right?
And so they're, you know, that's what their stablecoin ecosystem that they're building is for is really to unlock agents.
They've built wallets for this.
They have the X402 or whatever it is.
So like they're really going in the agentic ecosystem and being like a financial platform for them.
And I do think that they're the leader in that.
And crypto, obviously, and stablecoins is a huge beneficiary of that.
I think Coinbase is, they're starting to do things a little bit differently.
And then Coinbase also has the institutional side, which Robinhood has a lot less of, but more, you know, Galaxy does.
So I just think if you're going to hold crypto, I think you're better to hold Galaxy, Hood, and Coinbase than you are to hold Bitcoin, ETH, and whatever, Hyperliquid or Solana or whatever.
Because you just have, you still have the upside of crypto.
And actually in the bull market, the last three years, Coinbase outperformed all the other assets.
It outperformed Ethereum, it outperformed Bitcoin.
It didn't outperform Sol if you bought Sol at the very, very bottom.
Actually, maybe it did.
I can't remember.
I got to look into that.
But it outperformed most crypto assets in the bull market.
And so.
It's like if you want to get upside to crypto, why not just get upside to a business that actually has diversified revenues and does have a real floor, right?
And same with Robinhood.
It's a lot less crypto upside, but it does grow and its price kind of exceeds what its existing business does when crypto is doing really well, but it has a lot less downside.
And then Galaxy, same thing because the AI side.
So I feel like it's just a more diversified way to get exposure to crypto is to just hold those three.
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So you described a couple of companies here that are, let's say...
crypto native, digital asset native that are moving in the direction of some sort of AI oriented business, you know, Galaxy with their data centers and Coinbase with their agentic focus.
Do you see anything coming in the other direction?
In other words, like AI native or AI focused businesses that are starting to leverage digital assets or come in the direction of crypto?
Or just in general, what do you see happening at that intersection between these two industries that you think is got your attention right now or might be exciting in the future here?
I think the one thing that I've said a lot of, which is like, The reason that we built DeFi is we basically built a better financial system, right?
And so we need to go use that better financial system for the things that need financing in the world, right?
And right now, the biggest financing thing we've ever seen in history is compute and AI.
And so anyone connecting the dots to say, hey, we've got this great financial system.
Let's figure out how to use it for the biggest financing.
build out we've ever had in history makes a lot of sense to me.
One of those is USDAI, right?
I've talked about them quite a bit.
So has Martin.
He's written some stuff on them.
They're literally combining stable coins to help finance compute, right?
Which is perfect.
It's like, you've got the most in-demand asset in the world, which is compute, and then using stable coins to create better financing terms, right?
And a better way to get liquidity and a better way to share that.
revenue and that upside with holders and with those giving liquidity.
And so I think they've created something that is extremely cool.
And that's what I want to see is like, let's use this frontier financial system for frontier technologies and frontier things that exist in the world, right?
And so I think that is one of the things that I think are really cool.
It's kind of what Galaxy has done a little bit, right?
They've moved into this data center world and they've used their crypto assets to allow them to get the funding for that.
And so a little bit different, but similar.
And so I think- I think there's some exciting things there.
The only other thing that might become exciting is with what happened with Fable.
You know, the mythos launch for Claude kind of shows that there's a need for some sort of decentralized AI.
Now, I don't think crypto has solved anything for this.
So everything in the decentralized AI space right now is still mainly garbage, to be completely honest.
But obviously, there is a solution and a need for it in some way.
And so someone needs to build something.
Whether we have it with the Venice or the BitTensors or the, you know, renders or whatever, I don't know.
I don't think so yet, but we're at least experimenting.
So we're ahead of anyone else that's trying to do this.
And so I think there is a solution there somewhere.
I just don't know exactly what it is.
Mainly garbage is a great description.
I like that.
I'm going to add that to my LinkedIn.
Martin, I would like to get your thoughts on this.
So Kyle just talked a lot about this need for decentralized finance and the demand for it.
Standard Charter.
our standard chartered bank came out with a prediction for Aave's price to be $3,500 by 2030.
And a lot of it is due to what Kyle's talking about, this agentic adoption of decentralized finance and the huge demand for that.
What do you think of that?
Aave's trading around $80 last time I looked right now.
What do you think of this price prediction?
What is your outlook for DeFi as we see the rise of agentic finance?
So I remain bullish DeFi tokens, but we just saw a huge drama around Aave.
And so we can see how governance around these crypto projects is still messy.
I'm still not sure that we are completely confident about tokens and value accrual versus equity and what are our token holders' rights.
And if there is a...
bankruptcy or something and so there are still a lot of questions i mean right now it seems like an obvious because you know defy tokens are down pretty badly so now like um it's yeah now you can say that but i think at some point there might be you know a new interest in defy tokens again because i think what ave or sky what they are building makes sense and like again i'm bullish on these products i just think that um we need to hit that massive scale and massive adoption that is still not happening and i'm not even sure that these protocols are able to bring that growth because they are still crypto native but right now when i'm doing some transactions using you know metamask and then ledger the user experience is still so boring so i think other sky they all need to reach out to the consumer apps and just became sort of a infrastructure provider for and like big backend stories because i i agree that if you are a front-facing application you might get higher valuations and that's fine but i'm not sure that sky is able to compete with you know robin hood coinbase and these fintechs that has huge user bases.
So instead, if they would integrate their products and they would all of a sudden have access to millions of users, I think that might be a better play for a place like that.
I think AVA is trying to do that.
They're trying to become a fintech as well so people can...
you know, have savings account and credit cards and they can borrow money and stuff like that.
But I think it's very hard to get a decent traction and get some, you know, a decent penetration because this is very crowded market.
And so, yeah, bullish DeFi products, not necessarily DeFi tokens.
Kyle, what about you?
Do you agree with that framing?
Do you think that these DeFi tokens are going to see a rise in demand in valuations as we get Agentec Finance start to take off?
Or what's your outlook on that?
The problem with DeFi is because there is no rights to these tokens, the only way people want to hold them is if they have buybacks, right?
Or some sort of staking rewards.
And the problem with that is...
all these DeFi protocols are startups.
And so we are forcing a bunch of startups to instead of retain capital or invest that capital in growing their company, we're saying the only way I'm going to hold your token is if you buy back your token or you give me some sort of yield, which makes no sense in an early stage company.
But they have to do it because we don't have any legal rights to these tokens.
And so if they continue to build their own capital base, we technically have no claims on that.
And so It's kind of this like we're stuck in between a rock and a hard place, right?
Because it's like, hey, I would love for a company to keep building up their capital reserves, except for if I'm going to hold that company, I would like claims on that and I don't.
So instead of building up that capital reserve, I want you to give it to me.
So it just doesn't make a lot of sense.
So we've kind of...
push these DeFi protocols into a bad place.
And I don't know when that, like, hopefully Clarity Act can fix that, but I don't know if it will.
I don't think it will because the whole idea of DeFi is to not be regulated by any jurisdiction because that's just a risk factor that would make it not decentralized.
So...
I don't know the solution to that.
But I think ultimately the solution is these things need to have hyper growth, right?
They need to have just mass amounts of capital where you're like, you know what, I'll take the risk because these things are growing so fast.
And the thing is, we're just nowhere near that today.
We will get there, I think, because I do think the agentic economy will want to use DeFi.
it makes complete sense.
But the problem is, is that we're so far from the agentic economy really using a lot of capital for the global financial world that like, I just think we're still probably years and years out from this, from DeFi really going to some sort of hyper growth stage.
Unless we can really nail agentic capital allocation in the next little while here, which I'm just, I'm not convinced.
Maybe it's a next year thing.
Um, but probably it's, it's even longer.
And so as a result, I just don't see a world where DeFi tokens, unfortunately, cause I used to be very bullish on them where they can, they can grow, um, at accelerated rates, uh, because we just, they're stuck between a rock and hard place.
Yeah.
And I think that hopefully clarity act will help with a lot of problems in this industry that are a lot like what you just described there, right?
Like people are living in this sort of like hybridized world.
And like there are certain things that tokens would like to be able to do, but they can't because of certain things.
And so, yeah, I think a lot of people are hoping for some clarity on that.
One thing I wanted to share about.
is a new essay that I wrote called Wartime Ethereum Situational Awareness.
And in that essay, I kind of outline a lot of things that are going on right now in the markets and in the regulatory landscape that I think people have overlooked or maybe just aren't making it into the headlines.
But I think that are really important to just have the situational awareness of what's going on.
So I want to talk about a little bit of that.
The MECA legislation that went through provides a legislative framework for conducting business and digital assets in the European Union.
Union, that had a grace period for businesses operating in the European Union to come into compliance, which expires on July 1st.
And my understanding of the reporting that I've seen is that something like 85% of the businesses doing business in Europe have not been able to get that licensing, and they're not going to extend that.
So it seems like a large number, like about 80-85% of businesses in the EU are going to have to either wind down or migrate out of the European Union jurisdiction.
J.D.
Pritzker signed a bill in Illinois that puts a transaction tax on crypto and digital assets.
They call it a privilege tax, but basically it's confiscation of property for using these decentralized assets.
So there's still a large and growing opposition to the digital asset industry.
Another thing I wrote about was how the King of England said that he wants his ministers to roll out the introduction of digital ID to modernize how citizens interact with services.
But this is really just a continued imposition of KYC and centralized control.
Same thing you saw with the United States and the export ban on Fable 5.
That's going to end up requiring KYC and more centralized government control.
So there's all these things that are happening all at the same time.
And all in a matter of a couple of weeks, the European Union also voted to move forward with piloting their central bank digital currency.
And they're going to start rolling that out and accelerating those timelines because the...
The US dollar stablecoins are presenting such a capital flight risk that the European Central Bank thinks that they have to respond.
All of this, for me, comes together with a couple of comments that Avishal Garg and Eric Voorhees said, which Avishal said that Ethereum has this credible, neutral… sort of like a digital state that people can go to with their capital, with their identity, and that it's winning in that category.
And Eric Voorhees, who built this decentralized AI solution of Venice, said that Ethereum was the obvious choice.
And so I think that there is sort of this intangible but growing situation where these centralized players are...
using their authority and clamping down kind of like how the US kicked Russia off the Swiss system.
And once people start to do that, I think capital and people start to see the value and need for these decentralized solutions.
And I think that that is something that is something people aren't really aware of at the moment, but is growing and should be paid attention to.
And it's one of the reasons why I'm so bullish on this new organization from Ethereum is that they want to go out and tell the story and evangelize for people to leverage this technology and show how it can help protect and preserve their rights, their freedom, their capital, and so forth.
So I agree that it still has to prove itself in terms of whether or not it'll be effective or add value, but I'm excited to see that movement because...
I think there's going to be a growing awareness of a need for some alternatives to these things, not just in AI and in crypto, but in a lot of areas of life.
So yeah, I wanted to write an essay kind of exploring some of these things because I feel like there's a lot that's happening in the news right now.
And it kind of gets lost in the price action.
But there's more to this industry than just the momentary sentiment from day to day.
And so I wrote about that this week.
I don't know if either of you have read it, but I recommend you check it out.
We love your wartime Ethereum articles, John.
Please keep the hope of them alive.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, somebody's got to.
Okay, I think we are getting close to time here.
We have payday coming up for our Milkroad Pro Analysts.
If you are not in Milkroad Pro, you can join for just a dollar and see what everybody on our Pro Analyst team is doing in their portfolios.
Have you guys started thinking about this yet?
Any alpha you want to leak here?
Or what are you thinking about doing with your $500 this month?
Kyle, you want to go first?
I made some allocations earlier this week, actually, not in crypto, but in a different sector, actually in biotech and healthcare.
If you check out the Milk Red AI podcast, I think on Tuesday I went on and explained a bit of my thesis on that.
And I may be looking to extend my position in that side of things.
Otherwise, I'm not 100% sure just yet.
I might honestly keep a bit of cash as well.
Gotcha.
Okay.
Martin, what about you?
What are you looking to do?
I think I'm going to add more Galaxy.
Because there are three totalists that are still not priced in.
And they're going to announce next tenant by the end of summer.
So imagine that they will have contracted lease of 1 billion plus per year with another tenant.
Then there is going to be another meeting of Texas Electricity Council called ERCOT.
And they might get...
additional approval of next 800 megawatts and then uh there is a new land that they just bought and they are also being added into a russell 2000 index so there are going to be a passive inflows into that and i think it all fits like in the next two to three months and then i guess in in q3 we are going to finally see the materialized revenues coming from helios on their earnings.
So the next six months for Galaxy are super bullish and the stock is getting punished because of the crypto sort of label that it still has, but it needs to be reprised higher.
So I probably add more Galaxy and yeah, if it keeps falling, I'll be just adding more and more.
If crypto has bottomed or bottoms within the next, let's say three months, and it starts to catch a bid, Martin, then there's another catalyst to add to that stock.
But this would be at some point speculative.
Versus everything else, it's not speculative.
Agreed.
Yeah, and I think I am going to...
Well, I haven't decided for sure, but I think I'm leaning right now towards just stacking the dry powder because I do want to try to have as much ammo in the tank as I can to capitalize on this bottoming process we're seeing in digital assets.
If we get...
If we get a four handle on a Bitcoin price, I'm going to absolutely lose it.
But okay, I think that's where we will wrap it up for today.
Thank you, Kyle, Martin, so much for sharing your thoughts with us.
I know our community always appreciates it and I definitely do as well.
Thank you all for joining us.
We hope you all learned something today.
So until next time, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish, and we will see you all on the next episode of The Milcro Show.
Thanks for being here, everyone.
Bye.
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