# Bitcoin Bottoming Signals and Institutional Crypto Asset Strategies

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-08-05

## Transcript

always down to talk about my bags, disclose to the audience.
In fact, you can go over to Altcoin Daily, go into any YouTube video and go down in the description.
You can see everything we own.
I would say, have I started buying altcoins, let's say in the last 12 months, the bear market?
The answer is the Bitcoin bottom might finally be in.
Is it time to start thinking about which altcoins to have in your portfolio for the next cycle?
Which ones are going to be the big winners and losers and what belongs on your watch list?
Hello and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the podcast that knows that it's always alt season if you never sell.
I'm your host, John Gillan.
Today is Wednesday, August 5th, and today we are joined by Austin Arnold, better known as one half of Altcoin Daily.
Austin is the co-founder and host of Altcoin Daily, a major cryptocurrency news and analysis channel on YouTube with 1.6 million subscribers, maybe more than that by now.
He co-founded this and runs it with his twin brother.
Aaron Arnold.
They've been doing this since 2018.
Altcoin Daily is one of my favorite YouTube channels.
I literally never miss an episode, as I was telling him before we started here.
I'm really excited to have Austin on the show today.
So if that sounds good to you, make sure you like and subscribe.
Share this episode with somebody who's going to enjoy it.
And as a reminder, our podcast today is free.
That would not be possible without our wonderful partners at Securitize, the regulated rails for tokenization.
So keep an ear out for more information about them later in the episode.
But for now, welcome to the Milk Road Show.
Austin.
how are you sir john thank you for having me man honored i am really happy to talk to you i love your hat um i thought a good place to start this conversation would be with you before we dive into altcoins and have a conversation about that you know we've met several times over the years at crypto conferences but you've been running this channel for six years.
I don't think I've ever missed one of your episodes.
And yet I don't know a whole ton about you.
Why have you stayed so locked in and dedicated to crypto all these years and through this really difficult bear market?
Talk to me about your experience with all this.
Running the channel for eight years.
And yeah, when we originally started, Aaron started the channel way back in 2018.
And basically at that time, came at it.
The goal was to come at it from an average person's point of view, meaning if crypto is for everybody, if Bitcoin will eventually hit $100,000, which is what everybody said, or a million dollars, surely two average guys could figure it out.
We don't have a coding background.
I don't have a traditional finance background and just started making a video every single day.
cultivating that like-minded audience, cultivating a community that wants to learn, doesn't have a lot of time, but wants to learn about crypto every single day and have an edge in terms of the knowledge of what's going on in the space.
Gotcha.
And that's how you guys started building this community.
You now, I think you guys have, at least you say this on your YouTube channel, but you have one of, if not the largest community in crypto.
Does that feel like a big burden for two guys who just wanted to start for everybody and just figure it out as you go along?
Is there a lot of pressure that comes with that or how do you deal with that?
We do have the largest community in crypto, over 3.5 million subscribers across all socials, 2.6 million subscribers.
six, I forget, two points something on X, another 1.56 on YouTube.
And honestly, I think that the main thing when we started the channel, the main thing we wanted to promise to the audience is authenticity and not claiming I'm always going to be right.
I'm just giving my opinions.
But especially in 2017, 2018, John, I don't know if you're watching crypto YouTube back then, but a lot of A lot of shilly channels, a lot of undisclosed paid content, a lot of content that I would not want to share with my friends if I wanted to get them involved in crypto.
Of course, there was good ones.
And those good ones are still around today.
But the only thing our audience knows to tune in just for our perspective and authenticity, for our point of view of where the space is going.
Well, I think the reason why you guys have such a large and loyal community is because that content and that clarity of mission has come through and never really changed.
I don't get a lot of shilly things from Altcoin Daily, but I do get tons of alpha and just information about the market, which I enjoy.
And I will just tell you this, I personally have been watching the channel a long time.
I keep track of the number of times I end up getting covered on your channel, which is five right now with this podcast and other things.
The first time I made it into a YouTube video, though, on...
AllCoinDaily was in 2020.
I think I've replied to something on Twitter and you guys put it in a video and I felt like I'd made it into the front page of the New York Times.
Dude, you put out great content.
You put out great clips.
I've been a fan of the Milk Road clips in the last year, year and a half.
So dude, your contribution to the space, big, only getting bigger.
Well, thank you so much.
I really appreciate that.
That's really flattering to hear coming from you.
Yeah, I know.
Look, I mean, I think it's a great opportunity to get you on this channel because I've been following you for so long.
And I think our audience, our community is so dialed into crypto, but they may not be, you know, watching your videos.
And if anybody is in crypto and not watching your videos, they're like living under a rock.
So thank you for the kind words.
All right.
I want to dive into some out.
John, can I ask you one question first, very quickly?
And to the audience, we will get to the Bitcoin.
We'll get to the crypto.
But I was trying to do my research and I saw, I forget their podcast name, but My First Million, those guys originally had Milk Road as a newsletter and they sold it.
So how did you get involved in Milk Road?
Are you the higher on-air talent?
Did you buy it?
I truly don't know.
Yeah, no, that's a good question.
I do not own Milk Road, although I would take it if it was given to me.
No, I'm just kidding.
So my story is a little bit different.
I worked at BlackRock for six years, and this is one of the reasons why I was kind of like...
under the radar in crypto for a long time because i was working at blackrock on the aladdin platform and trying to get involved in digital assets and interviewing and like looking for a way to go like move my career in the direction of crypto um but was was still doing that and uh i started reading milk road i first heard about milk road um from coin bureau actually they did a youtube video about their favorite newsletters in crypto Milk Road was one of them.
And so I really liked Milk Road.
I kept reading, kept subscribing just because it was great informative content, but also entertaining and accessible.
So I love Milk Road.
And then, yeah, there's been a lot of history with this, but Milk Road got bought by a couple of guys out of Canada.
Kyle Reedhead is the big jug of milk, as I like to call him.
And there's some other partners involved.
But I just got hired because they launched podcasts a couple of years ago.
And they were launching a new podcast called Milk Road Macro.
And so I interviewed to be the on-air.
you know, host of the show because I kind of live a little bit at this intersection of macro and TradFi analysis, but also very passionate about crypto and digital assets too.
So it seemed like a natural fit.
And then we've kind of reorganized the channels here.
So now we have Milk Road Crypto, which is this channel, and then Milk Road AI.
This is great.
I feel like I'm just catching up with my buddy at the water cooler here, but that's a little bit about that.
I don't own Milk Road, but I'm just, I'm happy to be part of the community because just like you said, right?
Community is really important.
And I end every episode by saying, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish.
And I think doing that in community is much easier than trying to navigate these volatile, crazy markets by yourself.
So yeah, that's a little bit about me and Milk Road.
I love it.
That was a great ad bringing you in.
Yeah, thank you so much.
Well, I think it's a great ad bringing you onto the channel.
So I think we should talk about some crypto stuff because that is what we're here for.
And I think...
I want to start with the big kahuna, which is Bitcoin.
I started the episode saying it looks like it may be bottoming.
There's still a lot of debate about this.
Where are you on this question?
Do you think Bitcoin has bottomed?
Are you expecting lower lows before this bear market cycle ends?
What do you think?
Short answer is nobody knows what Bitcoin will do tomorrow, let alone two months from now or 12 months from now.
We'll know when the bottom happens.
Six months after, 12 months after, we'll look back and say, oh, of course, that was the bottom.
I believe, though, and this is what I'm sharing with my audience, that Bitcoin is in the bottoming process.
And the three things I look for, number one, when the net buyers of the top, the top of last cycle, become four sellers, that's around when bottoms are happening.
What I mean by that is the DATs, the digital asset treasuries, which was the hype that made all the news.
They kept buying the top, buying more.
Michael Saylor, nobody would have ever thought he'd be a seller.
12 months ago, 18 months ago, they now become four sellers near the bottom.
That's how bottoms are formed.
Number two, the technical analysis, which is Bitcoin always acts like a magnet to the 200-week moving average.
Some say the 200-week moving average is fair value for Bitcoin for any asset.
Some say it's under value for asset or when an asset with product market fit gets to that 200-week moving average, which Bitcoin is around right now, has been around for the last several weeks.
That's around when bottoms are formed.
You can look back at every single Bitcoin bear market, four to four, five out of five, whatever it's been, every single time.
So that's number two.
Number three thing I look for is when Bitcoin no longer sells off the most, acts.
What I mean by that is we're seeing the NASDAQ sell off now and Bitcoin maintains is even up a little.
Before Bitcoin was the easiest liquidity, it sold off first.
Now we're seeing other markets start to sell off.
Bitcoin might've been that canary in the coal mine and Bitcoin is maintaining slash grinding higher.
So three things were in the bottom process.
We hit the 200 week moving average around February of this year.
Last time, last cycle, we had the 200 week moving average.
It took eight months to wash out, finish up, complete the bottom process.
If that same thing happens now, it takes us to October.
Hi everyone, this is John.
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Okay, so there's three things that you're watching for, but the long and short of it is we're going through a bottoming process, and that is playing out in a number of ways.
I'm curious how the Clarity Act fits into this picture for you, because this week, one way or another, it seems like we might get a final yes or no on the Clarity Act.
If that comes through, what do you think their market reaction is?
Or if it doesn't, does that mean we're going to go to Goblin Town?
How do you think the Clarity Act fits into this picture?
I think the prediction markets right now have around a 30% chance that the Clarity Act passes by the end of the year.
I think that I would put the over-under as over to that.
I'd put around maybe 50%.
Like right now, it's clear.
Maybe we don't have the votes, but we especially don't have the time.
The interesting thing, and Senator Cynthia Lummis just announced this this morning, that while the last day before the month-long August recess is this Friday, they will go into the weekend.
and vote on clarity as well as a number of other issues into Saturday, into Sunday before the recess starts on that Monday.
So I believe before the end of the week, we will get a vote on the Clarity Act.
Let us know where every senator stands.
And then we'll have a few weeks in September, two days in October to work that out.
And that's really it.
I think if the Clarity Act does not pass, which let's just assume, I'd say it's not going to pass at Bettingman.
Easiest odds, it's not going to pass.
I think that could be a lower low for Bitcoin.
That could be the final rung of the bottoming process.
Push us maybe into the 50s, maybe into 48.
I think that's the two easiest support levels.
And then from there, Bitcoin will be fine.
Bitcoin has grinded higher for 16 plus years.
Regardless, when there is no regulatory clarity, Bitcoin will continue to get adopted.
The network effect will continue.
The use case and product market fit for Bitcoin is governments will continue to print money irresponsibly.
Bitcoin is a fixed gold like digital gold like asset that still fits.
So Bitcoin will be fine.
I also think based on the what we're seeing in the headlines, the adoption from these new buyers coming in the institutions, Ethereum.
Solana, large caps like that will be fine because we're seeing BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, all these institutions say, well, we believe in smart contracts.
Ethereum has the biggest network.
That's going to be OK.
We believe in Solana.
That's going to be OK.
So that'll be fine, although they'll only benefit more from the Clarity Act.
If the Clarity Act would pass, though, John, I think the bottom is in regardless of anything can wick down in a day or in a week.
And I think.
It's a grand new renaissance, sort of a 1934, 1933 moment, just like when we get the SEC got formed in the 1930s to regulate the financial markets.
I believe that the Clarity Act will be that 1933-like moment.
And finally, big money, finally, for the first time in cryptic history, will feel comfortable entering the space because they now know the rules.
Austin, I really appreciate that analysis there.
I agree with a lot of those thoughts.
I want to talk about Ethereum here because a lot of digital asset native investors were very disappointed by Ethereum's price performance in the last cycle.
Clarity, we still have to see whether that comes one way or the other.
But there has been this kind of like huge push towards tokenization, real-world assets coming on chain.
A lot of this is going to Ethereum.
Do you think that there is a chance that Ethereum outperforms this cycle relative to what it did last cycle?
And how are you framing your outlook on ETH here?
Let me ask you this, John.
If you had to name one, two things that give Ethereum value, what would be those two things, the big two things?
Oh, man, you put me on the spot.
I think the biggest thing that gives Ethereum value is the fact that it's offering the market a credibly neutral, censorship, persistent, open, permissionless, secure, scalable, global financial infrastructure.
And the world is desperately seeking that right now.
And the benefits to all stakeholders that come from the improvements from blockchain technology.
So I think you're seeing tons of capital showing demand for that.
And it's going to Ethereum first.
And so like a lot of these.
things are downstream of that big value offering.
So I think it's the place where you can store value and bring a lot of these pristine capital assets.
And that's creating a lot of that economic activity and demand that we're seeing on Ethereum.
I didn't mean to go into a whole bull pitch on Ethereum, but that's kind of how I would answer the question.
I love it.
And this is why I subscribe to Milk Road, because you have quality perspective.
I agree with you.
The two things to me that give Ethereum value, one is the decentralization.
It's the most decentralized of the smart contract platforms, has the most liquidity, and then also the network effect.
Obviously, there is faster, cheaper bells and whistles, more options.
You can go down the list Solana.
You can keep going down the list.
Sui, Supra, there's many.
You can always keep going down the list.
But the thing that Ethereum has still, in 2026 into 2027 is network effect and liquidity i think that's why we're seeing huge juggernauts like robin hood choose to build on ethereum and ethereum l2 so i'm insanely bullish on ethereum into the next cycle in the next four years i still believe bitcoin is the market mover meaning nothing's going to happen until There's confidence back in Bitcoin.
I think that has the Bitcoin is going for the largest market.
I think it still has insane upside.
But if you believe that smart contracts, the technology is not going away, which obviously smart contracts are here to say automatic contracts, then number one, nobody ever got fired for betting on Ethereum, putting their company on an Ethereum L2.
That's the safe one.
And number two, it has the most liquidity and the biggest network effect.
And we washed out a lot of the sellers and the non-believers, and we're getting a new crop of investors.
Okay, so huge liquidity, huge network effect, strong thesis on Ethereum.
Where does Solana stack into all of this for you?
I think Solana has seen a lot of negative sentiment this bear market.
It's gotten beaten up really bad, and people are saying that Hyperliquid and Pump Fund have sort of stolen some of their thunder.
Are you still bullish on Solana, and what does the thesis for that look like for you?
Insanely bullish on Solana.
It's one of my biggest altcoin holdings besides Bitcoin and ETH.
Obviously, ETH is an altcoin as well.
The one thing I worry about.
So that being said, I'm betting on Solana.
I think that's going to be, especially the institutions, which are the next biggest buyers, and even retail.
From what we saw with the meme coin revolution last cycle, that was tests.
That was a stress test on the market.
Wall Street then saw, oh, Solana can handle this.
Solana is the place where we can tokenize and bring on real world assets.
So insanely bullish on Solana long term.
The only thing I worry about is typically the gems of prior cycles, the coins that had the most hype, the gems of prior cycles, it usually takes them an extra cycle to kick back into gear.
I think we saw with XRP in 2017.
I think we saw it in Cardano after 2021.
So will Solana have the biggest performance even compared to last year?
I would say that's my biggest fear.
But in terms of adoption and Wall Street seeing, oh, this works, we saw the stress test.
Solana, I think, is one of the chosen.
Real world assets like funds, treasuries and private credit are still running on rails built decades ago.
Gated, paperwork heavy, slow to settle.
Everyone's talking about tokenizing them, but far fewer can actually do it and do it without cutting regulatory corners.
Securitize can.
It's the SEC regulated infrastructure bringing real world assets on chain.
nine years in native tokenization not wrapped backed by blackrock morgan stanley and kathy woods ark invest and chosen by the new york stock exchange vanek bny and apollo to do it at scale it's the regulated bridge between traditional finance and crypto tokenize the world at milkroad.com forward slash securitize yeah i think i agree with that perspective it may not be like you know 10,000x.
But the thing that impresses me the most about Solana is the way they've pivoted from being a retail-focused chain towards now real-world assets, Wall Street, and tokenized stock trading coming onto Solana in a big way.
And I think that that...
the ability to adapt and survive is something that solana does really really well um so i'm really bullish on them as well um i do want to get your thoughts on a coin you mentioned which is xrp we don't talk about xrp often on this channel and yet it's one of the larger digital assets by market cap that's out there they fought this huge legal battle and it seems like they finally made it through that right now the price is struggling to hold on to a dollar What is your thought on XRP here?
Are you bullish on this project?
Do you think most of the hype is behind it?
What are your thoughts on XRP?
Generally speaking, we cover XRP all the time on the channel.
If you want to stay updated on the news, Altcoin Daily will obviously cover, especially for a large community like XRP.
I think, that being said, not a lot of the XRP community is necessarily a huge fan of me because it's so, because listen, I'm going to tell them the truth.
In my view, the truth is the biggest thing XRP has going for it in terms of token price go up is the community, especially in a bull market.
That's outrageous.
All the TikToks, all the content you see about all the people all over the world saying how XRP is going to hit $10, $100, $500, whatever it is.
Now, I don't own any XRP.
I've never owned XRP in any grand scale because I'm much more bullish on Ripple, the company.
like Ripple, the stock versus the coin.
I think if they're not the same thing, I think if the fiduciary duty of a Brad Garlinghouse, David Schwartz, who actually has left, was with Ripple, the shareholder value, not necessarily coin.
I do think one of the most bullish things I've seen for Ripple, they're not.
So I think they're going to be fine.
I think they're a legacy play.
I think in terms of who's spending the most money around Washington, if it was just based on that, XRP and Ripple would win no problem.
They're not going away.
I think they're only getting bigger.
And I do think the best thing that they did in the last two years is have their XRP ledger, RL, and their stablecoin, RLUSD, which can bring some DeFi, bring stablecoin transactions onto their network.
Now, that being said.
Now they're competing with Ethereum.
Now they're competing with Solana.
And the share of the pie just gets smaller as they attempt to get market share.
So I don't think they're going away.
But if it was just based on bank adoption, which I don't know a bank using XRP in any large scale, although there's plenty of announcements.
And I know they're using it in test scales.
But if it was just based on that, then XRP would already be at $5 by now $10.
The fact that we've seen all these positive announcements over the years.
And it's still struggling, shows me that the priority is XRP.
I mean, Ripple, the shares, the value of the company versus and the coin comes second.
Gotcha.
I think that there's a lot of nuance to this.
And I would like to learn more about Ripple and their strategy around XRP as well, because there's just a lot there.
But you're right.
There is a lot of very loyal.
committed and I respect them.
The XRP army is like one of the most powerful communities in crypto.
And you got to respect that commitment, you know?
And my mind is willing to be changed, by the way.
Every day I'm scouring for the best information.
If new information presents itself, I will share it on Altcoin Daily with the 3.5 million subscribers first.
But I just want to tell like it is.
And as I start to see more adoption or more positive momentum, then my mind will obviously be changed.
But time will tell.
Time will tell, and we'll be watching the channel for those announcements when they come.
I want to ask you about Hyperliquid because Hyperliquid kind of came out, not out of nowhere, but they launched relatively recently, especially relative to something like an XRP.
And they've been on this monster bull run and perpetuals have really kind of taken over a lot of the market here.
But Hyperliquid has kind of pulled back from its highs.
And now some people are saying that the moat there isn't that defensible, that other things like lighter or other people launching perps contracts might eat into Hyperliquid.
liquid's market share.
What's your outlook on hyperliquid here?
Are you still bullish on hype?
I think when I'm looking at altcoins, which I believe 99% are garbage, they'll trend to zero or trend to zombie coins.
I like to, especially as I'm cultivating my portfolio into next cycle.
And I know we'll get the top altcoins later.
Maybe we will.
But I'm just saying if what I like to bet on is megatrends.
For example, I hold a lot of Bitcoin because the megatrend, in my opinion, is that banks and governments, central banks will continue to devalue the currency.
I want a digital gold-like asset.
So betting on that.
I also like Ethereum and Solana.
The reason is I'm betting on smart contracts, smart contract platforms.
I think the thing that Hyperliquid has, which fits a different megatrend in crypto, is earnings.
Real earnings that institutions can look at and get behind.
It obviously also has product market fit.
We're seeing people, big institutions hedge their bets by trading on hyperliquid on the weekends during this Iran war, whether that's oil, whether that's precious metals, whatever it is.
So they're not even necessarily using it for crypto.
They're using it because, oh, this is the technology that works on a weekend when everything else is closed.
The biggest unknown with hyperliquid is regulation in the United States.
That's still TBD.
So, of course, anything can happen.
But to answer your question, I am bullish on Hyperliquid and I'm bullish on the coin specifically because with their coin, they'll buy back 90% with the revenue they get.
That's different than XRP.
That's different than Solana.
I wish those other networks would adopt the Hyperliquid strategy because that will actually make their coin relate to the success of the company.
But giving those things.
Hyperliquid is going to be fine, I believe.
I think the other protocols nipping at their heels like a lighter, they're going to steal market share.
But I think Hyperliquid will grow in spite of that, much like when Ethereum was invented.
Oh, then we saw Solana and Tron and anything like that steal market share.
But the space grand general and Hyperliquid is the name brand.
Really helpful insights there.
And yeah, that revenue narrative has really gotten a lot of attention and found a lot of success.
So I agree with you.
I would love to see more digital asset projects focused on how they're actually generating revenue and then tying that to their token.
Hopefully the Clarity Act will help with that so people can actually do that legally.
Another project I want to ask you about is Chainlink.
Chainlink has been around forever.
It's like an indispensable part of the infrastructure that makes digital assets and smart contract ecosystems run.
However, the link token has struggled on performance in recent cycles here, but they've made a lot of changes.
They've got a lot of business success and like integration with Swift and others and the institution, a new, I think it's the Chainlink Reserve, like a buyback program of their own.
What are your updated thoughts on Chainlink?
Do you think we're going to see performance from the link token again?
Or do you think this is one of those zombie projects that'll never go away, but is maybe never going to moon again?
Chainlink.
I think it to me is in the past has been in like a similar boat as my views on Ripple and XRP that, man, I'm insanely bullish on the company, but the coin just hasn't really done anything since 2017 or before.
I did get a chance to speak to Sergey on stage at SmartCon in New York.
And I liked that they added the, what is it called?
They're buying back some of the token with the thing.
I like that.
So they're making positive steps forward.
I think.
I'm insanely bullish on Chainlink, the company, and I want to relate my answer to thoughts going forward on ETH.
Like many people knock ETH for saying, who cares if people are building layer twos?
Who cares for Ethereum if all these stable coins are building on top?
We're not seeing direct value for fees being generated or the value accrue back to the main chain.
We're seeing all this adoption, but is it accruing back to the main chain, meaning is main chain coin going up?
I believe Ethereum is the one thing they're doing.
The one of the main things they're doing right is they're getting network adoption, global adoption first.
And then anytime they want, I believe they can turn on the fee generator or turn on the aspects that make that a value accruals to the main chain makes that money.
Much like any network, whether it's the Uber network growing, they gave out tons of subsidies, sign up, you get $20 free, all this thing, you're not making money.
Once they got network adoption, they turned all that up.
And now it's expensive to take an Uber, I think, compared to what it was 10 years ago.
So I think Ethereum, people that knock Ethereum for that, I think focus on the network first.
You can turn the fee generation on anytime.
I hope, and I have no inside knowledge, but I hope Chainlink is doing something similar there.
They're clearly getting adopted by the biggest institutions in front of the biggest people, presidents, the United States, everything.
They are getting adopted by legacy systems that...
are the safest they'll only go for value and you need a chain link to be able to be interoperable with all the different blockchains going forward now i will that accrue to the token i don't know but i hope that after as they gain network adoption they can turn that on much easier than it is to switch up the fees and turn on network adoption doesn't quite work like that get the adoption first and then turn on what makes you money yeah i i totally agree with that i think chain link's priorities have been in order in that way and it is going to be much easier for them to drive that value that they've captured back to the token um so i do have a very strongly bullish outlook on on chain link i'm glad you kind of share that i want to get your thoughts on d5 And I want to like kind of center this question around Aave itself, because we saw a lot of hacks this year where it's like the cold card situation with Bitcoin has been a tragedy to watch play out.
But there have been a lot of hacks across the ecosystem.
The KelpDAO incident got a lot of attention.
Aave struggled a lot with this, but they had this DeFi United thing.
They seem to have recovered.
The price is back at around $100.
What is your outlook on DeFi here?
Do you think that we're going to see a resurgence in DeFi?
Is Avi going to recover and go back to riding high again?
Or what do you think is going to happen with the DeFi sector overall?
I think after stablecoins get regulated and stablecoins get adopted, which is clearly what the United States is doing with the Genius Act, that's clearly the best incentive for the United States because they're the ones that are going to buy the treasuries.
Once you have a lot of stablecoins, what do you do with it?
besides Transact.
You want yield.
And that's where DeFi comes in.
I think that's why we saw DeFi summer back in 2020, once stablecoins started to be adopted.
That was on a sort of a retail scale.
I think the same thing is happening with an institution scale.
And again, ABE earns revenue.
ABE has been around for many bear markets, which makes companies comfortable, invest a little bit of money into big money into these protocols.
So I think DeFi is the obvious next step for institutions.
I think they earn revenue, which institutions will like.
I don't think, if I had to give a negative, I don't think protocols that earn revenue also sort of you can get a ceiling with that because, oh, what should it be valued at?
10 times revenue, 20, 50, whatever it is, you get a ceiling with that too.
But right now in crypto, we'll take anything.
Like obviously, if we were just valued, if Aave and Hyperliquid were just valued, which are sort of global names, at the same future earnings of revenue that major players in the in the traditional market were valued at they beat 5x higher 10x higher whatever it is for a certain protocol Now, in a bull market, in a raging bull market that also marks a ceiling, but I think maybe, you know, this is that we're seeing a churn in users in crypto, which we tend to see every four and eight years now since institutions, and that's what they like.
Gotcha.
Okay.
I got to ask you a question about the intersection of AI and crypto.
This is something we've been focused on a lot at Milk Road.
I'm curious your thoughts on this.
What projects you like in the space?
Are you a big fan of BitTensor or Near or something else?
Where do you see these two major megatrends coming together?
And is there a way you're expressing that thesis in an investment in anything?
Huge fan of decentralized AI.
I think it's our one shot.
Crypto and AI convergence is our one shot to not repeat the same mistakes of the past, which are giving big tech all of the power.
The Web2 companies, Facebook, Google, whatever it is, Amazon, all the power flow to them.
The little guy, they steal our information.
We get nothing.
accept a good product, of course, but they steal our data in spite of that and they can have our control.
Decentralized AI is the way to our one shot to prevent that.
I also think it's a mega trend.
So I think AI, if you're in every little crypto portfolio, besides Bitcoin, besides Ethereum or a smart contract platform, I think you want to bet on AI because obviously crypto will ebb and flow, but AI will be relevant for the next five years.
in the traditional world, next 10 years in the traditional world, because we're competing with China.
It's a national, it's a defense, it's a national defense security issue, us competing for AI dominance.
The United States is incentivized, even in a 10% dip, even in a 20% recession, they're incentivized to stimulate that because we're competing against China here.
So decentralized AI, even when it takes 1% of that, 5% will play a part.
The protocols that I like, and having said that, my strategy, John, in general is bet on the blue chips and then just ride the megatrend wave.
So I think the blue chips in AI are near protocol, BitTensor Tau, as well as Eric Voorhees' VVV token, Venice token.
I'm personally a believer in BitTensor Tau.
The reason is, there are a couple of reasons.
They're tokenomics.
The way they form consensus, there's only...
there will only ever be 21 million tau.
And while Bitcoin finds stranded energy all around the world and monetize it, BitTensor does the same thing for talent.
And also the other things I like about BitTensor is you're betting on the infrastructure.
So, you know, 90% of robotics companies and AI companies will fail.
The interesting thing is a lot of the decentralized ones are building on BitTensor on their subnets.
So that will churn out in the process.
If just one or two hit, the bad ones will get taken out of the system.
New, better ones will hop in.
And the other third thing is the thing that I'm beginning to hate, John, about altcoins, not hate, but just be a little disgusted why all the pre-seed.
valuations where insiders got in first, it finally releases the public and average retail gets nothing price only goes down.
It seems for all these altcoins after they launch for years and years, that's because insiders are selling.
They had seed rounds that early rounds, BitTensor had a fair launch.
So that's a big difference.
Cause so with that, I'm not really as much to a degree making the founders rich in that sense, I'm supporting the network.
So those are my thoughts.
Okay, so we're bullish on decentralized AI as a subset of AI overall.
And just like you said, ride the megatrends in the blue ships and let the market come to you.
I think that makes a lot of sense.
I want to ask your thoughts on whether or not you've started accumulating for these altcoin positions.
Is this something you're still watching on a lot of these?
Do you already have a lot in your bags?
Do you want to talk about what's in your bags?
Because I think a lot of people in my community are wondering this.
Is it too soon to start buying for the next cycle?
Just because it's something down 90% doesn't mean it can't drop another 50%.
How are you thinking about this in your portfolio?
Always down to talk about my bags, disclose to the audience.
In fact, you can go over to Altcoin Daily, go into any YouTube video and go down in the description.
You can see everything we own.
I would say, have I started buying altcoins, let's say in the last 12 months, the bear market?
The answer is no.
But have I started accumulating and adding to my bags in the last 12 months?
Absolutely.
because I've been staking.
Obviously, cut the losers in the bear market, especially with proof of stake coins.
You can earn more coins just by helping validate the network, supporting the network.
So I've been accumulating Solana, staking that, Ethereum, and BitTensor.
I think I'll start to buy altcoins after we see, listen, in a bear market, you want to bet on Bitcoin.
and the high caps may be ETH in the bear market.
In a bull market, you can get more speculative.
I believe we are in the bottoming process.
I don't think it's a bad time right now to buy coins with product market fit and hold for four years.
My general advice to anybody that asks me about this, don't invest anything in Bitcoin they are not willing to hold for at least four years.
Don't invest anything in altcoins you're not willing to watch go to zero.
So as long as you understand that, then I think crypto is a new a 12th vector of the market i think it'll be there with precious metals with equities with real estate with crypto and if the space is getting bigger not a bad time to be cutting the losers and adding to the coins you truly see still A lot of wisdom in that.
As always, I always end every episode with stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish.
The stay educated piece is really important to me, especially in a bear market.
You have one of the best sites, best channels in the world for crypto news, for analysis.
I'm curious where you go to get your crypto news and analysis when you're trying to put together your videos, when you're trying to learn about the market.
What are some of the news sources for crypto that you trust the most that you like to go back to?
Where do you go for that?
The cool thing is that crypto has changed, as you know, in the last five, 10 years where now mainstream media is starting to cover crypto.
But even that is still just the blue chips now, which is a lot better than where we were six years ago.
But I think the best place to get information is X direct from the source.
It usually goes there first.
And in their search column, you can sort of cultivate and aggregate exactly what you want.
X is great.
I love the crypto media like CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, Bitcoinist, Decrypt.
And then obviously Yahoo and Bloomberg and CNBC.
That's level one of where I get all my information, X being the main source.
And I think number two is I just like to follow as many podcasts as I can.
I'm following Milk Road.
I'm following What Bitcoin Did.
I'm following all these TradFi podcasts and trying to learn and listen as much every day.
So one of the easiest things to do, actually, if you...
If you go on X and just like look at the people I follow, it's because I find value in their content.
If you go on YouTube, our subscriptions are public.
It's because I find value in their content.
And I think those are some of the best places to get information as the space evolves.
Well, I think your videos are about 10 or 11 minutes.
They come out every day.
And if you only have 10 minutes to keep up with crypto, you can't do better than an Altcoin Daily video.
So if anybody in our audience isn't following Altcoin Daily, make sure you do that.
Awesome.
Thank you so much for being on the show.
I really hope we can keep checking in as we go through this market because you're somebody who I'd really like to have coming to share with our community and just like picking your brain.
Like I said, when I started this, I watched a ton of your videos, but I don't get a lot of like insight directly from you because you're mostly commenting on the markets.
But I think you are one of the best sources of wisdom and knowledge in this space.
So if anybody hasn't gotten the message yet, where can we send people to find more of you and your work online?
Man, find me on AltcoinDaily on X, on YouTube, on Instagram, on TikTok.
Special promotion just for a special gift for just for the Milk Road audience.
Anybody, you go in the video description to find our merch store.
Anybody that wants five people that want a free hat, put in promo code Milk Road.
And if you watch to the end of the video, if you want a hat, it's just there if you want.
Milk Road for a free Altcoin daily hat for the first five people.
And John, let's absolutely check in.
This space is only getting bigger.
I think we're going to look back in five years and be like, of course, that was the bear market.
Of course, I should have bought more.
Of course, things have totally changed and grown five years, 10 years from now.
And I know we'll both be here on the journey.
Yes, sir.
And hopefully we'll have a free hat to go along with it.
Thank you so much, Austin.
I really appreciate that.
There's a kind gesture for our audience.
So yeah, thank you for being on the Milk Road Show.
And I hope we'll catch up again soon.
Appreciate you.
Appreciate you.
And thank you all for joining us.
I hope you all learned something today.
I thought this was a fun episode.
We got to cover a lot of different altcoins in this one and learn from one of the best.
So until next time, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish.
And we will see you all in the next episode of the Milk Road Show.
Thanks for being here, everyone.
Bye.
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