# Crypto Market Bottoming Signals and Institutional Ethereum Momentum

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-07-13

## Transcript

This strategy here is to not try to be dogmatic about what must happen, but watch what does happen.
Learn from the market as it's giving you information, not try to force your trades, stay patient with stuff.
But if you pay attention, like I say, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish.
You can capitalize on these opportunities and set yourself up to do very, very well when all of the euphoria, frenzy, speculation comes back.
So now I think is the most important time to stay locked in.
And I'm really enjoying this.
This is just one of the most, this is the best.
value to like risk reward opportunity on digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum that we will ever see.
And so it's just a great time to be in the markets and, you know, just being part of all of this.
What's up, everybody?
It's LG Ducet here and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show that was going to let you escape into the bull market without hearing my voice again.
But I decided to haunt you once a week instead.
Today is July 13th, 2026.
The market is...
unhappy today.
But many were saying, we actually bottomed a few weeks ago, can crypto finally shake off these Iran war blues that we talk about literally every single week and finally break out?
And why is there such low volatility on our dear tokens?
And what does it mean for this fabled return to glory?
This is what we talk about every week on the show.
And today I'm back to grill your favorite crypto podcast host on what kind of week we're about to have and a quick warning if you love what you hear today and you want to see john's portfolio along with all the insane ai calls our guys have made this year that is in milk road pro which is 33 off until the end of the day so run don't walk walk don't crawl to milk road pro in the link below you gotta lock in that discount before it goes away and crypto comes back baby today's episode is brought to you by bit get stocks 2.0 with real liquidity real dividends and securitize the regulated rails for tokenization john Good morning.
Who do you think is crawling to sign up for Milpropomo?
Nobody, because it's such a good discount.
Well, I'm glad you told people to walk and use their legs.
I'm glad they got that reminder.
That's important.
When people hear those kinds of things, and I know you guys are at the gym or on your commute or whatever you're doing, they sometimes are like, okay, I'll do that later.
They make a note of it, but it's like, there's no later.
There's no catch up on it on Friday, okay?
It's like, you have to do it now.
So I just want people to know.
I don't want people to miss out on that.
Well, you're doing a lot of community service and I'm excited for the conversation today.
I'm not picking up trash on the side of the highway, man.
But John, you actually, just to sell a little bit more, because we will talk about all the great news and all that stuff today, but you were on fire last week, posting a lot of updates on assets that you are curious about.
Ones that maybe you're not jumping into yet, but you're writing about Sui.
Others just are just exclusive for pro members.
And it's something, again, people listen to your voice every day now.
But you have a lot of fantastic insight, a lot of different tokens and what's going on.
And you've got your trigger points when you want to buy some of this stuff, whether we bought them again or not.
And people can listen to the episode today to kind of hear about that.
But I think even just having access to you almost 24-7, John, is a great value add.
And then there's four more of you.
There's four other analysts in there that you can chat to about other stuff outside of crypto.
Yeah, I think there have been a lot of really good questions from our community.
One of the things I love about Milk Road is how engaged and well-informed a lot of the members of our community are.
talking about the things I've been writing about, a lot of what I'm writing about is just answering questions from our community and responding to them.
So yeah, it kind of keeps me on my toes because I think, just like you said, they can ask me questions anytime they want to in Discord.
And I think many of them have become aware of this.
And so they started asking a lot more, which is fine.
I love it.
But yeah, so I've been fielding a lot of questions on the Clarity Act, on Bitcoin price levels, on where the bottom is, on things like Swee's unlock schedule and just different things like this.
There's just a lot going on in digital.
assets right now, even though it feels like no one's paying attention, there's a ton that's happening and keeping on top of it all is, you know, it takes a lot of effort.
So I appreciate the questions from my community, because it helps me like, you know, orient and focus myself and like know where to research and things like that.
So yeah, it's a really like mutually beneficial process.
You really champion that narrative and I think it's going to bear fruit very soon.
And I feel like you would, you know, as the tides start to turn here, I feel like you're going to have a lot of great insight, maybe some calls in there as well that people can look at and get excited about, you know, the next cycle or whatever you want to call it.
So again, you guys want to chat with John, Milkrow Pro.
We're a couple of minutes in, so we'll get right to the meat of the episode.
John, listen, I checked in last night.
I was away camping all weekend, man.
I was in the bush.
And the only headlines I saw were like, oh, South Korea market sell off.
Oh, big, big red day coming the next day.
I'm assuming that's kind of what's happened.
Seems like the markets are kind of red unhappy.
John, like just assume I haven't read any headlines.
What's going on?
OK, so you're aware of this big thing called artificial intelligence, correct?
yes i happen to do a podcast about it five times a week but yes yeah okay so yeah so what has happened here uh two of the largest uh memory chip manufacturers in the world that particularly make a specific kind of memory called high bandwidth memory that's important for infrastructure to support the data centers and the artificial intelligence systems that we all have gotten so familiar with two of the biggest ones in the world are both based in south korea they account for most of the the cosby which is the name of the south korean the largest exchange there.
They account for most of the market cap of that market, but it's Samsung and SK Hynix.
And a lot of the huge leap in valuation that we've seen in the Korean stock market has come from these two stocks because there's only one other one that like kind of competes with them at scale.
And that's Micron, which is in the United States.
But SK Hynix recently did a listing on US exchanges so that US investors could get direct investment into that.
And I think a lot of investors in South Korea were using this as a sell the news event.
So there is notoriously a lot of traders in South Korea, particularly speculative traders in South Korea.
And they, I think a lot of them have gotten very crowded into these two trades.
And so there's been sort of like a general rotation or like fears of a rotation or not even a rotation, but just like a slowdown in the semiconductor trade.
And so a lot of people were using this listing as an opportunity.
to sort of take some profits.
It's a little bit like the analogy I would give is like a little bit like how when Coinbase finally listed for trading in the United States, that kind of like marked the local top in Bitcoin and digital assets.
So I think that's just what's happening here.
I don't think that this is like a permanent end of the cycle, like a top in memory or in the AI trade by any means.
But I do think it's a moment where a lot of people have gotten really long and gotten a lot of leverage on SK Hynix and Samsung.
And they're taking some of that risk off the table and using this as a moment to, you know.
take some profits basically um but because sk hynex and samsung are so large like i said um i think it was like a 10 to 15 drop something like that in sk hynex and then that led to like a five to nine i think it was nine percent sell-off in the cosby which hit the circuit breakers and they like shut down trading for a little bit because it was so volatile um but yeah so that's kind of what caused that big sell out there like that was today or like earlier yeah that's like what's been i didn't know that playing out here yeah yeah Shit.
So, yeah.
So if you missed that this weekend, that's kind of what's happened.
And I think it's, yeah, it's one of those things when you get this much strength.
in a bullish bull market and a bull run in some of these assets, like these memory conductor or memory stocks, semiconductor stocks.
There's only so many of these companies in the world.
So the concentration is really strong.
The leverage is really strong.
The volatility is elevated as a result.
And so you're going to see, I think, a continuation of this.
There'll probably be another recovery.
They've had to hit the circuit breakers on the Korean exchange many times, and it keeps recovering to new highs because.
For everybody who wants to like deleverage or take some profits or, you know, rotate out of the trade, there's still a whole lot of people are trying to, you know, find an entry point.
And there's just like a lot of capital buying the dips on these things.
So that's a little bit of what's happened there and like kind of like why we're in this sort of environment we're in.
The other thing I think weighing on all of this overall of this is that the Iran conflict has picked up again.
And so I think that there's some fears of geopolitical like tensions rising again.
So I think that that's been one of the things that's contributed to the sell off and just.
timidness, I guess, in the US markets this morning.
So futures opened red and the markets are down.
But I, again, I think that'll still just be a thing where the market buys the dip up.
Like we might end today in the green before all this is over, but that's just where some of this volatility is coming from today.
Got it.
You know, it's amazing to me how sell the news almost never fails, despite what people say.
I mean, SpaceX may be a bit of an exception, although it was more of a pop.
on the day or two after coming out and then return.
But that was one that everybody was watching was like, this is going to totally crater the market, man.
And it didn't really.
Like, it's got things have kind of slowed down overall.
But this is one obviously probably catching a lot of people off guard that don't follow memory stocks and don't follow the Korean stock market.
I guess anybody who follows the American stock market was aware of this last week, right?
Because I think it launched on Friday or Thursday, Friday.
But it's amazing how those.
those types of things, whether it's in stock markets or in crypto as well.
Same kind of thing.
Crypto has the same, like you were saying, the Coinbase example, right?
It's like the same, like you're planning this thing, everybody knows about it.
You're buying the rumor and the buildup to this thing and then time to get out when it finally hits, right?
And it's funny how that plays out so many levels.
Yeah, because it doesn't really have much to do with the assets themselves.
It has much more to do with human psychology, market psychology, market dynamics, trading dynamics, all these things.
And so it's kind of like a repeated phenomenon, let's say.
What happened with Iran?
We're sick of talking about this.
I feel like 90% of my relationship with you on this podcast has been.
you give me updates on which bombs have dropped and it's, and it's sickening really.
But I think that there's a new tariff in place on, or a new, uh, toll now again on the straight of Hormuz.
Like, is that is just some loose headline.
Like what's going on.
The ceasefire is over and hostilities have resumed.
And as far as I know, that's just like what's going on.
I don't know if the United States is going to take control of the strait.
I don't know if they're going to take control of Karg Island.
I don't really know what's going to happen there right now.
But to me, it just seems like for the moment, the ceasefire is over, conflict has resumed, and there's going to be more bombing.
I don't really know beyond that.
Okay.
Okay.
And it doesn't seem like the market is overly concerned about that right now.
I have a question for you.
We haven't chatted in a couple of weeks, at least on this podcast, and talked about crypto prices.
You had a fantastic week on the show last week.
A lot of really great guests.
Some of our best guests came on, as well as Joe Lubin and Joseph Shalom.
And just an amazing week of podcasts last week on this show, if you guys want to rewind and look through that and the Bitwise guys as well.
gracing us with their presence.
What is the general vibe right now?
If you can kind of catch me up, I've been in the AI weeds.
I know we had, I kind of hinted in the intro, we had a bit of a bottoming a couple of weeks ago, or at least it felt like everybody's saying this is kind of the bottom rally kind of slowing down today.
But like you're saying, we might end the day green.
Like what's the current status on the bottoming situation, John?
The current status is that the co-founder of Ethereum, Joe Lubin, came on my podcast and told me that he'd read my wartime Ethereum essay.
And so everybody, everybody, you know, we've all achieved our hopes and dreams and everything is going great.
So there literally could not be any better news than that possible.
No.
So, OK, so here's what happened.
So last week was really great for a number of reasons.
On Monday.
you know, we usually do our episodes on Monday.
We moved that because we got the opportunity to bring on the CEO of Sharplink and the CEO of ConsenSys.
And so the CEO of Sharplink is Joe Shalom.
He's Joseph Shalom, but I know him as Joe Shalom because I worked with him in BlackRock and like everyone just referred to him as one word, Joe Shalom, like Madonna.
It was like Joe Shalom is just what everybody called him.
So I still think of him as Joe Shalom.
Like if he's calling that for six years.
And then Joe Lubin is, like I said, the CEO of ConsenSys.
He's also the chairman of Sharplink.
So both of these Joes work together at Sharplink, which is the second largest Ethereum digital asset treasury company.
And Joe Lubin is also the co-founder of Ethereum.
So both of these guys have been very, very active in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Like, you know, Saylor has been selling MicroStrategy and Bitcoin to raise his USD reserve this week and last week.
Bitmine has been buying Ethereum and Sharplink also started not only buying more Ethereum, but they bought back $10 million of their own shares.
And so then they also have announced in just the last couple of weeks, two new organizations that they're helping to fund and support, which these nonprofit organizations, ETH Labs and Ethereum Institutional.
And so we talked for over an hour about that.
I kept them.
Honestly, LG, I almost got in trouble because I kept them longer than the time.
But I just had so much prepared.
And there's two of them.
There's so many questions asked both of them.
And, you know, they know everything about Ethereum.
So we talked a lot.
There's a ton of alpha in that conversation.
One of the things that stood out to me that I didn't get a chance to, I didn't press Joe Lubin about this because I thought that would be rude.
But he said, like, if you knew what I knew and had the insider alpha that I was picking up at some of these conferences, like he was just at London for an event.
He was like, you'd be wildly bullish.
He's very bullish on the Clarity Act passing, which was, you know, a little bit out of consensus for the markets, but that's positive.
So, yeah, so Joe was Joe Lubin was basically saying that Ethereum is the highest powered money in the world.
People who are laughing at this ultrasound money thesis are going to be proven wrong.
There's way more bullish momentum on the Clarity Act than most people realize or expect.
And there's a lot more happening behind the scenes than can be announced right now.
And Joe Shalom has this like huge pedigree of, you know, experience, executive presence, the best Rolodex on Wall Street, and has been having nonstop conversations about Ethereum and this ecosystem and trying to unlock new points of contact, new conversations and make new introductions across Wall Street.
So it's just like a lot of alpha in there.
And that was really bullish.
There's several other great podcasts we did last week that performed very well.
But the other one that did really great was the one with the Bitwise guys.
that performed well.
People really liked that conversation because we were talking a lot about how Wall Street institutional investors are going to be taking over as the biggest buyer of Bitcoin from Michael Saylor and the digital asset treasury companies that were like kind of the big theme last.
cycle.
Now they're anticipating that the big buyers are just going to be institutions themselves.
And one of the things that we talked about is like a signal of what's to come there is how Vanguard, an $11 trillion asset manager who swore they would never do anything in crypto is now hiring ahead of digital assets.
And Ryan and I joked that Matt was going to apply for the job because he's clearly been reading the job description.
But Matt assured us he's going to stay a bit wise and keep doing our podcast.
But in any event, so that was kind of the things that we talked about a lot last week.
There's just tons of alpha in all these conversations.
And I'm not going to go into a summary of everything that we talked about because there's just so much in there last week.
But yeah, really great conversations.
And I think I feel really fortunate to be able to host this podcast from Milk Road because we get consistently some of the best, most involved, most connected, most, I guess, respectable, credible voices in the digital asset space to come share very candid and sincere takes and a lot of alpha with us and our community and our audience.
So yeah, it was just a really great week on the podcast.
And I'm just, yeah, I'm proud and excited and very bullish.
And you know, your question I think was really about, are we bottoming?
Hold on, wait, hold on, wait, before you, wait, wait, that's a whole new, that's a whole new, that's on a whole new segment, the bottoming part.
You just answered the commentary part that I put, that was the plug for the show.
What, hold on, what is, what's Joe Lubin's alpha?
Where's that?
That's what I want to know, man.
Cause let's, no, no, and I can tell you why, man, cause everybody, including you, like you've got your wartime thing.
like Ethereum is easily the most contentious asset in crypto, like without a doubt, in my opinion, I haven't done this for a long time.
Like there's Bitcoin, which is just Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is crypto in terms of like market capital, like 60, 70%.
And then there's a theorem of like the actual application of crypto.
This is the main thing.
And then there's the rest of the shit.
You know what I mean?
And yeah, there's hyperliquids and Solana's and all the Robinhood chains, all that crap.
But no, but I mean that.
And like the rest, and then, okay, there's a layer of like some good stuff.
And then the rest is just doesn't matter.
And what I'm saying is that Ethereum is, there's more debate about Ethereum, I feel, than about Bitcoin.
You know what I mean?
The Bitcoin debates are black and white, right?
It's just like, oh, can Quantum get it or not?
Who is Satoshi?
Will his tokens unlock?
We don't know.
Will this replace the US dollar?
Like, okay, there's five questions.
You're done.
Sorry, Bitcoin people.
Ethereum is like, oh, bankless guy ditched it.
You debated him.
You have your thing, you know, to the point where it's like, you can still, I think what's amazing about Ethereum is that John, you can go out and write some essays about Ethereum and then the guys literally running the show will read it and be like, yeah, you made some good points.
You know what I mean?
We're still at that point 10 years on where new perspectives can just be added constantly through these contentious times.
So I think that that's very interesting.
What do you think he meant?
What do you think is coming for Ethereum that sounds so exciting?
I don't know for sure, but I do think that that information is going to become public soon.
And I think that that has been something that's encouraging to me is how quickly these things are turning around.
So like ETH Labs and ETH Institutional didn't exist even as like a concept up until I think a couple of weeks before they were publicly announced and publicly like funded basically, right?
So I think, you know, to your point, Ethereum is highly decentralized.
There is nobody who runs Ethereum.
Same thing with Bitcoin.
It is a highly decentralized network, but...
Michael Saylor is kind of the de facto spokesman for the asset and for the network, the ecosystem.
In Ethereum, Vitalik has made it very clear he doesn't want to be the emperor of Ethereum or a dictator.
And so there's a lot of decentralized activity that happens.
And a lot of these things are organically evolving.
It's hard to know exactly what Joe is referring to, but I do think that it will become public sooner than people expect.
And I think that they're not trying to keep these things gatekept.
There's just a certain amount of you can't announce something before it's ready to be announced type of thing like that.
But yeah, so I'm not sure exactly what he meant by that.
I don't know what deals have been reached that he heard about in London that he's talking about with the Clarity Act.
I'm not sure what all that looks like.
But I don't think he's like...
making it up either.
Like, you know, like they told us they were going to try to solve this, like these, these problems with these nonprofits.
And then like two weeks later, boom, here are the nonprofits.
Right.
So like, I think that we'll, we'll find out sooner than later, probably later this summer, or maybe even before the end of the month, but I don't know, we'll see.
But it just like, there's just a lot of bullish moment.
This gets to the whole thing.
I think it's been a major theme for crypto for the last nine months.
The institutional bull run has never been stronger.
The fundamentals have never been stronger.
The capital that is going to carry us into the next bull cycle has never been more determined, more focused and invested.
The momentum has never been stronger.
It's just the sentiment is terrible.
And so as long as the price and the fundamentals are dislodged and dislocated like this, there's going to continue to be frustrations and a lot of debates.
But I do think eventually this resolves to the upside because.
It's just, I mean, that's just the trend that's happening and it's, it's, it's a bullish diversion situation that will resolve higher.
But yeah, it was just, it was really exciting.
And I didn't, I didn't feel like it was appropriate to be like, come on, Joe leak something, you know, as I didn't want to be rude about it, but like, yeah, some people noticed that they were like, Hey, this guy said he knows something like big and he's not saying it yet.
So yeah, we'll see real world assets like funds, treasuries, and private credit are still running on rails built decades ago.
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Well, we got to get him back on the show when he's ready to talk.
I think the guy's ready to talk.
You got to get his ass back here, man.
We need the exclusive with wartime to give us that, to give us the breakdown.
Okay, well, thanks for the alpha man.
I think that that's really helpful.
Good recap.
And again, you guys can find those episodes literally just in the channel.
If you're on the podcast apps, just scroll down a couple or on YouTube.
Just look at the channels, the last weeks of episodes.
John, another factor that I know you mentioned, I think, in our creator huddle this morning.
was about low volatility on Bitcoin.
And we're kind of changing gears here because we talked about Bitcoin and Ethereum and the great bulk case for Ethereum.
So you're listening from where hot Ethereum takes, maybe there'll be some.
But for this part, I want to talk more in the weeds, like short term right now.
I was asking you about the bottoming process.
I know that volatility is a huge part of that.
So I'll kind of give you the mic back to take us through your thoughts there.
Yeah.
So on bottoming here, I think that.
There are periods in Bitcoin's price action where it starts to find these ranges and channels and bull or bear flags.
And then usually what happens is, you know, the market is a means of collective intelligence and a way for a lot of different people to sort of help collectively make up their minds about how to properly value an asset and like integrate a bunch of information that's in public and like resolve that in price action.
But what happens is that while Bitcoin is figuring that out, while the market is working, usually what happens is Bitcoin will try to find – it'll end up somewhere in the middle of a range as it's trying to pick which direction to go, which way to break out, break down, whatever.
That's what we're kind of seeing around $64K.
And that's one of the things I was writing about last week.
It was like, hey, this is a pretty key level here for this downtrend that we've been in and see which way this breaks here.
A lot of people were expecting Bitcoin to go up to $68K and sort of like – use that as the next test of resistance.
To me, I think if we clear 74K, I think that is confidence from the bulls that they're back in control and the market's going to seek higher prices and we can see recovery.
But what I was writing about was like, this looks to me like the money flow, momentum, and a lot of other indicators are trending in the wrong direction.
We're not seeing a lot of follow through from the bulls here.
And so the 64 price level to me seems like it might be a spot for some continued local weakness.
Now you mentioned volatility because Bitcoin has been painting so many like long-term.
trends like bear flags and then breaking down and then long-term bear flag and then breaking down.
Some of them have gone for over a hundred days, right?
And it stays in like this pretty consolidated range, not a lot of volatility there.
What that's an indicator of is that there's not a ton of capital.
There's not a lot of just momentum, attention, trading volume happening.
And so the price is sort of stagnating and going sideways.
And so the ranges on these things are kind of getting tighter because there's not a lot of big swings happening.
So, you know, we were sitting at 64K and I was like, well, 68 might be the next upside target.
And then if it breaks down, we'll maybe see 58K, right?
Like it's just like tiny little wiggles on the chart.
And that to me is kind of like.
the summer doldrums where we are, right?
And like, I think that probably continues for a while and one way or another, right?
I would like to see that end with either like a big breakout to the upside or like a flash crash down, something to like really...
like clear things and like unlock the market and bring back some of this attention and um and that'll start get things moving again but i think for right now we're in these tight little ranges and bear flags and downtrends and i'm kind of expecting the continued weakness to continue until the market proves otherwise like if we get a reversal where we go over 68k over 71k over 74k then okay maybe the bulls are back and maybe it's time to like start deploying more capital but in the meantime If we're in this short-term downtrend within a longer-term downtrend, I'm just staying patient, letting the market come to me.
Solana's at $75, and Ethereum is a little bit under $1,800.
Bitcoin is at $62.
It's just falling off of $64.
Like I said, I thought it was going to come down.
It seems like it has.
We might go down to $58K.
We might go down to $57K.
So we might see some continued weakness from some other alts.
And I think that, you know, you're going to be looking for sometime late July, August as some kind of a bottoming process here, because I do think that everybody expects Bitcoin to start going higher in Q4.
So this is a great example of this.
When I say everybody, I mean like this is a consensus from the highest levels on down.
Like there was an interview with a guy named Jan Van Eck, who's the head of Van Eck, which is a $200 billion asset management firm.
He did an interview this weekend on a podcast.
And he said that the debate in his firm about Bitcoin is not whether or not it's going higher, but when and how much to allocate to it because it is going higher.
That's a foregone conclusion.
But basically their firm's thesis is by October of the Q4 of 2026, you want to have your full allocation because the market's going to move away from you and Bitcoin is just absolutely certainly going to go higher.
But that is kind of everybody's consensus.
So I think everybody's going to start front running that and building into a position in September and August because everyone expects October to be when the peak of bottom is and then we're up to the races from there.
So this is a lot of rambling thoughts on this, but just my view on this is that.
We're still seeing weakness.
That's continuing.
But I don't think there's too many more months of this ahead.
So I'm looking to start building my positions here.
If we do get a dip of Bitcoin into the 50s again, I might just start, you know, like really going in on some of these things.
But I don't know.
There's just some thoughts around that.
Why the low volatility makes me feel like Bitcoin is in the bottoming process and sort of like how I'm playing this as Bitcoin finds its bottom here.
John, a year ago, did you think that Q4 2025 was going to be this blow off top?
That was the direction of travel that everything seemed to be heading.
Yes.
Yeah.
You know what I'm asking about is like this consensus idea, right?
And that's something that always worries me.
It worries me on the AI side as well, right?
When we were doing that show and I asked the analyst the same question.
I'm like, listen, everybody's saying this part.
Does that not mean it's wrong?
How does that play out for Bitcoin this time?
Because I agree with you.
That's where it seems to be pointing.
And I did the show for months and I was like, sounds good, man.
Time to accumulate every bottom you see.
Buy some more because.
Everybody and including one of your favorite analysts Ben Cowan is kind of pointing to this and that would also suggest some continuation of the four-year cycle.
But a year ago, everybody was saying that Q4 2025 was going to be the fabled quarter, right?
And we were wrong.
We had one day, you and I did a live show that day and we got smacked.
So I'm just wondering like, and again, something like consensus views.
That's also like witchcraft.
You know what I mean?
Like that's also male astrology of like, well, what do you think?
Like I'm just tying together like stupid patterns, you know, and you, and I'll regurgitate.
I know what you're going to say is that the bear market makes fools of bulls and bears.
I know you're going to say that, but what is your view on that?
Is there not too much consensus on the fact that we bought it?
We're going to bottom in three months and we're taken off.
Yeah.
So I, I, I'm not going to say the.
The bear market, I think, is played out.
I think the bear market is relatively exhausted.
I think that my view on this is that that consensus is borne out by a lot of people.
There's a lot to back that that thesis.
And that may well be what happens.
But my.
theory is that because everyone expects that to everyone's going to be to happen everyone's going to be front running that it's the same thing that happened last year everyone thought q4 was going to be this explosive blow off top in 2025 so so much leverage got built up expecting it to run higher that when the october 10th flash crash happened we got these huge amounts of cascading liquidations and it just sort of like basically meant that crypto never really rejoined the party.
We had so many different traders and so many positions just liquidated on one day that the digital asset space never really rejoined the bull run.
Now, I think that what I'm expecting to have happen here is that because so many people are expecting Bitcoin to keep going lower until October, people are going to start DCA-ing into their positions.
So we're not going to see that like...
huge collapse and i think that bitcoin is going to start moving higher sooner than people think which is kind of like what happened like in 2024 when we got the etfs and everyone started front running to having and we made a new all-time high before the bitcoin having which had never happened before so i think we're going to see more front running because more and more people think that all this is going to play out the way it has historically another thing i want to say here is i think this is very important A lot of the smartest analysts and the people who are paying most close attention to this have already noticed this and are already doing this.
They're already positioning for this.
Like Jan Van Eyck, what he was saying was not whether or not Bitcoin is going higher, not whether or not we should have a position, but how much of a position we should have and when we should start building it.
Jordy Visser, who is a guest I've interviewed several times, who's former head of macro for Morgan Stanley and an independent research analyst focused on digital assets and artificial intelligence.
Great guy.
Good guest of this program.
I got to get him back on, honestly, to talk to him.
But he called Micron at like.
I think he was buying Micron at like $60, like under $100.
And Micron went to $1,200 and is now trading around $1,000.
So he picked all of this memory trade like long before anybody was even awake to this being a huge bottleneck in artificial intelligence.
Now what Jordy is focused on is Bitcoin and Ethereum.
And when he's doing his weekly updates every week, he's talking about crypto, about Bitcoin, about Ethereum.
He's watching price levels.
He's watching price targets.
And he is saying that a year from now, Bitcoin is going to be the crowded trade.
Ethereum is going to be the crowded trade.
That's where all the capital is going to go.
And just like he was early to Micron, I think he's early to figuring this out as well.
I'm not going to regurgitate his whole thesis here because it's a little different than mine and everyone can have their own and that's fine.
But the point is, this is like a foregone conclusion.
Most of the smartest analysts are already aware of this, have already started positioning for it.
And I think that retail is usually the last, but once retail does catch on to this, this rotation that's coming.
They are one of the strongest drivers for that bullish momentum and the overvaluation, the leverage, the speculation, and the real strong profits and returns on these trades.
So I'm very patient right now on Bitcoin and Ethereum.
I think the smartest people on Wall Street have already started to figure this out and are positioning for it.
And that's what I'm trying to do for our communities to help them see this coming, position for it, stay ahead of it, and benefit from it rather than be left chasing and missing the boat when it runs off and gets away from everybody, which I think… is going to happen much sooner than people expect.
That's what I'm saying.
I don't think you have until October to build your position.
I think this starts to move much sooner than that, precisely because everyone expects Bitcoin to keep going down until October.
John, in your Milk Road Pro portfolio, you are 25.5% cash.
What is the plan for that?
Deploy the cash into crypto when I think the time is right.
And I'm going to be like...
That's very soon.
It's very, when I think the time is right, it's going to be based on the market.
It's going to be based on price action.
And it's going to be.
You're going to time the bottom.
John is going to time the bottom.
That's what you're telling me.
That's what you're saying.
I'm not saying I'm, well, look, I've already been deploying it, right?
Like a couple of weeks ago, I bought when Bitcoin went below 60K, I bought some.
When I also bought some alts when Bitcoin went below 60K.
I think Bitcoin could very well go below 60K here again.
It might.
today before we end this conversation might be below 60k again i'm going to be looking to take positions i still have bids on um so i i think that you know If Bitcoin proves to me, if it gets above 74K, I'm like, all right, maybe we have seen the bottom.
Maybe I'm being too greedy here.
But as long as we're continuing to see this downtrend here for the short term and I'm getting bids filled at 60K and below 60K, I'm going to leave them on and let the market come to me and not chase this yet.
But you're right.
I'm not trying to time the absolute bottom.
I'm perfectly content buying below 60K, even if it goes to 30K.
So I'm not trying to like absolutely time the Pico bottom, but I do think I'm going to get some better opportunities here in the short term and I'm going to take those opportunities.
That's why I have the dry powder.
I want to see just one last like late August.
People are enjoying the last bit of summer.
No one's there.
Everyone's tuned out.
One last like.
like just dead candle, like drop weight that just sits there for like a couple hours.
And John shows up in the milk road pro discord.
It is like attack, deploy, deploy, buy, buy, buy.
And it's, we're sitting out.
It's like, it's like some ugly number, like 47 K or something like that.
You know, like some like, Oh, like I can't believe it.
And frigging, I don't know.
Uniswaps at 10 cents or like, I don't know, whatever other things.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Thank you.
Uniswap's on your watch.
So just saying other good tokens, you know, things that are going to, Uniswap has the BlackRock thing.
That's what made me think of it.
But, you know, all these other tokens, they're going to do well in the institutional world and blah, blah, blah.
And it's just like, this is, you'll never, this is the, this is the, there'll be like a Solana $8 moment, you know, like there was last cycle.
Maybe it'll $8 again.
But I'm saying it's like, I think that that's one of the biggest trades from last bear to bull.
Last time was like Solana was at eight bucks for a couple of days or a couple of hours and it, and it peaked at 300, you know?
And I feel like, I feel like there's a point, hopefully, maybe in the next couple months.
It's not going to rebound right away, but we're going to hit that.
It'll sit there for a day.
John's going to be spamming everybody like, this is it, this is it, this is it.
And then that won't actually be the bottom.
It'll be another bottom a couple months later.
If that happens, that will be the bottom.
So to be clear, that has happened before several times in several different assets.
It's happened in Bitcoin.
It's happened in Solana.
It's happened in other ones.
So I am prepared if we get one of those big like like nosedive, like, you know, gut dropping dips.
But I'm not necessarily depending on that.
I do think that there's a world where we just kind of grind around, form a bottom here and then eventually start climbing our way back up.
I think that's more likely to be what happens here.
But in either event, I want to be able to capitalize on both of those opportunities.
But that's happened.
I've seen that in XRP.
I've seen it in Solana.
I've seen it in Bitcoin.
And that usually does, not usually, but that has marked bottoms before in the past.
Bitcoin spent a long time at 6K.
And then when COVID happened, it dropped to 3K.
And that was the bottom.
And then we went up to 20.
So yeah, it could be out that way.
A day or two, man.
I remember I had a limit by set for ETH at like 85 or 90 and it filled and I was like shocked.
I woke up the next day like, oh my God, I can't believe it.
But it's, you know, and even that last dip.
And again, we're getting really, really hypothetical here.
So there's a million different scenarios that can play out.
But I feel like that last dip would come on some kind of news like the Clarity Act is officially dead.
And it's like, you know, and then it's like, then the next day the market wakes up is like, that doesn't matter.
But there'll be this like panic.
I got to sell that even people, you know, and hopefully not people listening will be like, fuck it.
I knew it.
I've been holding it for so long.
I'm going to sell here because it's clearly going nowhere.
I could buy some micron and they'll sell the bottom, you know, like just one last, like just shake, strangle everybody out one last time of hopelessness.
And then that's it, you know?
Um, and we'll, and you'll be covering it right here on the show, man.
And I'll be grilling you about it every Monday.
So I'm excited.
I don't know if you've seen this, but on The Office, there's a scene where Michael Scott says, I declare bankruptcy, and I've got the meme that I'm going to use all ready to go.
It's this picture of him, and it says, I declare bull market.
And when I think we have bottoms, I will be posting that.
I will be making a lot of noise.
I'll be like, now is the time.
All systems go.
I'm not going to be like, you know, hemming and hawing about it.
Like, yeah, that's it.
Go.
Go get all in now.
Yeah.
Not financial advice, of course, but I'm all ready to go for when this happens.
It'll be some weird, ugly headline that was like, oh, no, I can't believe this happened.
Like Tom Lee's a Russian plant or something.
Like, I don't know.
Like somebody makes no sense.
Or LG, or we just do what we're doing and we have this apathetic grind and then it starts to apathetically grind higher and nobody notices.
And then before you realize that, oh, we've ground, we're back up at 100K, you know, like, so that can happen.
Also very likely.
Yeah.
Also just despair.
Like it's been for months, man.
Like it's been since February, since that dip in February down to 60 K of just like, God, let me just can't break out of this range.
Right.
And especially after the, you know, went up to 83 K and then we couldn't even get through.
And now we're back in the same, we're back in that low range.
Right.
It's like, God, just shape, just the, the, the, the apathy and the, the, the length will shape more people out than the, than the crisis.
Right.
So that's, that's the, this is.
This strategy here is to not try to be dogmatic about what must happen, but watch what does happen.
Learn from the market as it's giving you information, not try to force your trades, stay patient with stuff.
Like I said, I had a bid filled at 58K like a week ago, something like that, which I set in February.
And I watched Bitcoin go from 60K all the way back up to 84K.
And I didn't chase it because I was like, until the things I'm looking for, for confirmation of a breakout fire.
I'm still fading this rally.
I'm still expecting to go lower.
I wanted it to break out.
I wanted it to go higher.
I was watching it to see if it did, but I didn't chase it.
And then as a result, instead of buying in in the 80s again, I got to accumulate again below 60K and take advantage of that.
So I'm just trying to tell people like you don't have to be dogmatic, but if you pay attention, like I say, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish.
You can capitalize on these opportunities and set yourself up to do very, very well when all of the euphoria, frenzy, speculation comes back.
So now I think is the most important time to stay locked in.
And I'm really enjoying this.
This is just one of the most, most, this is like the best value to like risk reward opportunity on digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum that we will ever see.
And so it's just a great time to be in the markets and, you know, just being part of all of this.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
Well, that's wonderful.
We'll track it here.
And again, if you want to get that call, you want to get the GIF.
from Michael Scott, you want to get whatever the hundred different movie analogies that we have in the hopper ready, you got to go Milk Road Pro, man.
You want to be ready to know, but I mean, you know, this is actually a really good point.
A lot of people really, really love you, John.
They really love the way you think about this.
They know, they agree with everything you're saying.
And a lot of that insight into action is going to be in Milk Road Pro starting now.
Right.
Starting now, whatever the signal is that you're talking about, that's going to come soon.
If there is a signal, maybe there won't be one.
Maybe it'll just be like you're saying a low, long grinding process at the bottom.
But that, listen, if you believe that and you want to keep following John, you want to keep following the teams and we've worked through this, like.
We don't give 33% off like ever.
So that's pretty good.
If you want to log that in for like a year, it's not very expensive, like just to be able to track this and you get, we've also set up now.
And one thing the team's working on, John, that we haven't mentioned is we have real-time notifications by email, right?
So if John buys something, you can get a notification.
We're also adding text very soon.
So that to me is most important because a lot of people don't like to like grind and discord.
We all have inboxes that have like a trillion freaking emails we don't read.
So I think the text notifications for me are going to be really important for these types of things as they happen.
Not that, not that bought it, you know, making your final buy of ETH at the bottom or whatever is, is the matter of minutes by text.
I just prefer text.
So to me, that's a great feature.
We'll work at the teams working on it should be live pretty soon in the next couple of weeks, next couple of months.
And a lot of other great things in Pro as well.
So a great place to get access to John.
The deadline is tonight.
So you got until the end of the day to sign up.
I mean, you can sign up tomorrow, but it won't be 33% off.
Excellent pitch.
Really well done, LG.
Nice, natural, organic.
Just really, really well done.
This is me.
John, pleasure to talk again, man.
Thank you.
Thank you for all the bullish talk and congrats on all the great guests lately.
And you guys can listen to John every day here on the show and another great week of guests coming up.
And I'll be back on Monday to grill him on whatever's going on.
New bombs, new crisis, new bullish takes right back here on Mill Pro.
Thanks, LG.
It was fun.
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