# Institutional Crypto Accumulation Amid Regulatory Mispricing

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-08-18

## Transcript

Okay, so this is my actual alpha.
I think this is something that the entire industry is mispricing and sleeping on, and I think that people are misreading this situation.
What's up, everybody?
It's LG Doucette here, and welcome to The Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show that features some of the biggest names in crypto.
Matt Hogan, Altcoin Daily, Joe Lubin, and of course, John Gillen and LG Doucette, right?
Today is August 17th, 2026.
Things are heating up, even if the prices are not.
I wasn't kidding in the intro.
We've had some big names on the show lately, and they're all saying the exact same thing.
The institutions are locked and loaded on crypto, and it's a matter of when, not if.
Today, we'll explore that a little bit more and even touch on how some of our AI guests are bullish on crypto.
Even the AI people want this stuff.
As I quiz your favorite podcast host, John Gillen, on why things feel so bullish everywhere except our wallets.
And a reminder that our podcast today is free, and it wouldn't be possible without our partners at Sabre.Money, the stablecoin payments platform built for Asia.
Keep an ear out for more information about them later in the show.
John, happy Monday, buddy.
Happy Monday, LG.
It's awesome to be included in that wonderful list of guests.
And I appreciate you trying to make us happen as big name crypto guys.
So yeah, it's like I got the jacket on for a reason.
Ready to go, man.
It's Monday.
Even including myself, which you guys only hear from me like once in a while.
But anyways, John, actually, you do have your Monday jacket.
You're like the Tiger Woods of crypto.
Where's black on Mondays?
Except, you know, red on Sundays, whatever.
Red on Sundays is also kind of how the charts look these days.
But that's not what I want to ask you about.
What I want to ask you about right off the bat is I was like quizzing you with a lot of the.
Narratives, a lot of the populist narratives of crypto, which there's about a handful that we've been regurgitating on the show for a year.
One of them is this kind of, you know, things are hot in July and then August comes down and then there's like a bottom and then we pop up.
And I did see one of your favorites, Ben Cowan.
tweet yesterday that's like, listen, you go down to that 200 week SMA, you go below it, and then you pop bullish above it before you then crater one more time.
And he's like, that's exactly what we're looking at right now.
So John, is there any truth to that?
Is this the moment we're all waiting for in the next couple of weeks?
Is it time to bottom?
It's August 17th, man.
Historically speaking, there is some seasonal weakness at the end of July.
It's usually the last two weeks of July where we see that seasonal weakness.
So I think that there's a lot of reason to expect that might be the case.
But see, the thing that always messes with me is that because everybody is expecting that to be the case, the market will often zig when you expect it to zag.
And I think that is something that I'm not discounting here, right?
So we could still see some weakness, but...
Look, I've been looking at Bitcoin closely for a very long time.
And as of the time of recording right now, I think we just got back to $64K.
So Bitcoin has seen Michael Saylor selling.
It's seen the Clarity Act get postponed.
It's seen this expectation of seasonal weakness and a lot of other things.
And just like in whatever headwinds come, Bitcoin keeps shrugging it off.
And I keep expecting – for a while, I was expecting us to go up and test resistance of $68K, $72K, somewhere in there and see if we could break that.
And then it seemed like we got to 65K and we couldn't hold that.
And it seemed like, OK, well, maybe we're not going to get that at all.
Maybe we're just going to go down and test the support and maybe make new lows.
And now it seems like we're not even doing that either.
So Bitcoin really has stablecoin up here at 74K and is like very, sorry, it's 64K.
And it's like very dogmatically holding on to that.
I asked Matt Hogan about this exact thing last week.
I was like, we've seen some historic volatility in the rest of the market in gold has seen a big spike in price after a long downtrend.
And we've seen historic volatility in the equities markets, in the US markets and in other markets like Korea and other places.
But Bitcoin has been really stable here in low volatility.
And I said, is that bullish or bearish?
He thinks it's bullish.
He thinks that it's a sign that bad news and volatility is no longer...
moving the markets down.
He thinks it's a sign of seller exhaustion.
He thinks it's a signal that the bottoming process is starting to get towards the end here.
But what that means, I don't know exactly, because like you say, a lot of people are saying that that bottoming process usually ends with one big gut drop, you know, washout and a capitulation candle.
My view on this has been, you know, pay very close attention because this is a great opportunity in the market to be educating yourself and to be accumulating Bitcoin at these prices if you haven't been.
But I think it's difficult to call one way or the other right now in terms of are we going to break out or break down here.
But I think just having a plan for either eventuality is the way to approach this.
So I've packed some bags.
I've got dry powder.
I'm ready to scoop more if I get some better buy entries.
But if I don't ever get that, I've already got my bags packed and I'll just be able to scoop some more.
Satoshi's on the way up here.
But yeah, it's been a really just like almost like a maniacal amount of sideways action.
Like I was talking to Chevy about this this morning.
Chevy writes our newsletter here at Milk Road.
And he was saying, like, I feel like we've been at 60, 64 K since like January, February, when we had that first drop down.
And then like we did have a period in between where we went up to 80K.
But if you look at the chart going back to like the beginning of this year, it's been a lot of time in the 60s and it's just like hasn't really picked a direction.
So anyway, long rambling answer, but that's just a little bit of what's going on in my head right now.
Hi everyone, this is John.
Listen, our Milkroad Pro analysts nailed this AI bull market.
They had dozens of calls pay off in a big way for our community.
If you want to see how our entire team of analysts are positioning for the crypto bull market that's going to come after this bear market finally ends, you can join us now at Milkroad Pro.
It's just a dollar.
Link is in the description.
You'll get access to all of our analysts' trades, their watch lists, and see how they're navigating this in their portfolios, and get access to ask us questions in Discord anytime, day or night.
It's just a dollar.
Link's in the description.
Milkroad Pro.
Join now.
I'll see you there.
And even that's right.
And even just looking at if you compare it to recent periods, right, in that last kind of high 60s range, we did have that pop up to 80 or whatever it was.
And I think like May or early June.
Right.
And then I think when we were coming down, came back down and broke that low from that initial capitulation down to the 60s.
I think a lot of people thought like, well, that's it.
Now we're going to find that lower low.
We're going to go into that range.
But then we've kind of been in the lower range of the same thing, which I don't think we've really seen in past cycles.
Again, there's no, you know, I think everybody here agrees that history rhymes.
It doesn't repeat, right?
So it's very odd and frustrating to be in that range.
But really, we haven't varied more than 15% in either direction from the bottom or the top.
And it's been 75 days now since that last big capitulation event.
Right.
And again, it even we did go even lower, but we still never went below like maybe the high 57th and we haven't gone above 67.
So we've just been in this range.
And I always stick to what you've said.
If people were tired of hearing me quote you, quote someone else, whoever it was.
I think, again, Ben Cowan, probably that, you know, bear markets make fools of the bulls and the bears.
And I feel like this kind of extended waiting game is just begging you to make some kind of extreme move, probably some kind of capitulation because you're getting.
frustrated it's taking too long um but as you've as you've proven on the show lately the bigger players they're not they're taking it as an opposite signal that it's time to it's you know if you're planning to make a big move to prepare for that upside it's not the worst time right now Yeah, so I would prefer one or the other, right?
I would prefer a big like 10K candle either up or down.
I wouldn't really care so much which direction.
I would just like that kind of decisive action from the market because that would clear a lot of things up for myself and for other people.
And it would give you more confidence about what.
what dynamic you're looking at right here.
But the thing that I took away from the conversation with Matt Hogan was he spent the last month or so talking to some of the largest institutions on Wall Street.
And the thing he said that stood out to him and really surprised him the most from those conversations was that a lot of these major financial institutions have taken a long time to turn their ship, he said, towards crypto and digital assets.
But now they have made that turn and they're not being deterred by this short-term price action or the lack of volatility or the bear market.
situation that we're in.
He says they view that as just sort of par for the course for markets and just a thing that's commonly associated with this asset class, but it doesn't deter their investment.
It doesn't deter their...
their thesis or their investment in deploying resources, capital, time, attention to building products and services in this industry.
So there's nothing slowing down that strong institutional bull run.
So if anybody missed that interview with Matt, I highly recommend you check it out.
There's a lot of wisdom in that one.
But yeah, so I would prefer volatility in one direction or another, but I'm not.
I'm not getting it, so I'm not going to force the trade.
I'm just going to continue to hodl and chill and build the position.
But I will say this too, because I think this is important to say.
A lot of people are looking at where we are in this bear market, and they're expecting that we will get this final capitulation and big sell-off because they think that we haven't had enough pain, that we haven't seen enough of a drawdown relative to historical patterns.
To say that the bear market has finished and has concluded, to me, that rhymes a lot with the sentiment that we were all feeling in the bull market, which was that we haven't gotten to stretched valuations on the upside.
We haven't seen euphoric blow off.
We haven't seen a lot of these other things.
We topped on apathy rather than euphoria, which has happened in the past.
But anyway, the point of this I'm making is that.
All these calls for Bitcoin in the $30K area or $40K area, I'm not saying that's impossible.
But to me, a lot of that depends on just expectations based on historical precedent rather than the market dynamics that we're currently in and currently seeing.
To me, I don't know if I see us going that low, and I don't want to be caught waiting for it too much if we do.
Until we get some kind of strength, though, I'm not going to assume that Bitcoin can't put in a lower low.
So I do have bids in the mid-50s, and I'm kind of watching to see if we get to that level because it's not too far, and we haven't seen this breakout of strength yet.
So it's reasonable to my mind to expect that we might get a...
slightly better entry here.
But if you don't have a position and Bitcoin's below 70K, I think this is a great time as any to just be slowly DCAing and not worrying about too much about where the momentary price is because a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, Bitcoin is going to be radically higher than where it is today.
And so that's kind of the analysis you have to bring to this and the mindset you have to bring to approaching how you're thinking about Bitcoin here.
Last thing I'll say about that, too, and again, I'm the one bringing the kind of populist narratives is that it's just it's just funny when we get to these moments everyone's been waiting for.
Right.
And that happened last year, late September, early October.
It was like, listen, this is the Q4.
And even you said it right that it's like it's the opposite as what it is now.
Everybody was saying, like, listen, this bull cycle, we haven't had that that dramatic pop off.
Right.
And so everybody's waiting for it.
And this time it's the reverse.
And that was the timing.
Everybody was saying Q4, that's when it's going to be it.
It's going to be Q4.
We said that for so long.
And this time it's the opposite.
It was like end of Q3.
We're going to have that one final dramatic flush down.
Right.
So and again, and I always say it's like, well, if the consensus was fooled last time.
Does it mean it won't be fooled this time rather than the consensus is always wrong?
Like which which, you know, which double negative do you want to take?
So anyways, that's that's all I'll say on my my populist ideals of of of crypto.
I do want to ask you, John, to get more specific on certain tokens, because we talk a lot about the majors here.
But you did have Altcoin Daily on the show very recently.
And we've kind of cut up a few pieces of that interview on YouTube as well for people to kind of cut that out.
And the one that aired this weekend and this again, this is just the mini videos on YouTube was about five specific tokens that they're looking at.
Right.
And that they like going into the next cycle.
So again, not financial advice, not tokens that John is buying, but what were those?
What, maybe you can give us a little, a little preview of what those were and what they're, what they're looking at that they're bullish on, you know, going into this bottom, not bottom time.
Yeah.
So, uh, Austin Arnold and Aaron Arnold are the two twins behind the YouTube channel Altcoin Daily.
They have been making videos in the space for eight years.
They have one of the biggest channels, one of the biggest communities in all of crypto and digital assets.
I love those guys.
I really like their videos and their content.
It's one of my favorite ways to stay up to date with what's going on in the market.
And we've met a few times and I know them a little bit.
So I was really excited to bring them on the channel because I wanted to start putting a credible voice, not from Wall Street, but from a digital asset native voice.
voice to get some thoughts on what are you looking at for altcoins?
What are you thinking about accumulating?
Have you started yet or not, et cetera.
So you can watch that interview to get his like more detailed thoughts on this, but he's very transparent.
He's very open with what's in his bags and what isn't because he wants his community to trust him.
Right.
So like he doesn't want to be accused of shilling things.
He's like, this is what I've got.
This is where it is.
Like you can just like look at that anytime.
The thing that stood out for me though.
He said that he is accumulating by staking a lot of digital assets right now.
So he's bullish on Bitcoin, holding some of that.
Same thing with Ethereum and Solana.
The one that I thought that...
was, you know, stood out to me as something that he was really bullish on that.
It's not that I'm not, or that other people aren't, but he has a lot of conviction on, on Tau on BitTensor.
So he's been staking that and accumulating that a lot.
And that to me was what I stood out from that conversation was just like the conviction he has on that.
Cause he puts that in the same category of like long-term conviction and holds as a, as an Ethereum, a Bitcoin, a Solana, which for a lot of people are considered like the majors and like the blue chips and crypto.
So him putting BitTensor Tau in that.
bucket too.
And maybe he would express this thesis a little bit differently.
And so I don't want to speak for him, but that was a big takeaway that I heard was just like the conviction he has in that project.
I asked him about like a lot of different altcoins and I want to try to like bring him back on the channel as we go into this bull market to just kind of get his updated thoughts.
Cause he, he watches the news very closely every day and he has been doing that for a very long time.
So he personally knows a lot of the people, a lot of the big players in the market, in these projects.
And he has a really good like ear to the ground in terms of like sentiment in retail, as opposed to like, you know, Matt Hogan, I think is one of the best people to talk to for, you know, ear to the ground sentiment and on the institutional side.
And Altcoin Daily are some of the best people to talk to for retail sentiment, you know, and for whatever that's worth.
You know, it doesn't have to fit everybody's thesis.
But I learn a lot from talking to people from all parts of the market, all kinds of market participants.
And that's something I want to start doing more on this channel is like talking to people about what they're thinking about in terms of alts as we get closer to what could be the start of a new major bull run in Bitcoin and in crypto here.
So, yeah, some of those are the standouts for me from that conversation, but just really enjoyed it.
And it was great to get talked to like an OG crypto buddy.
who I like, I've hang out with him at conferences and stuff, but I haven't gotten a chance to do like an interview on a podcast with him yet.
So that was really fun.
And just lots of alpha for everybody.
So really good conversation.
I love that.
Make sure you guys check that out.
It's in the podcast feed from, I think, last week or two weeks ago.
And then the mini video is also posted on Sunday, just yesterday on our YouTube, if you want just that segment.
Another thing I wanted to ask you about, John, and we didn't really talk about this last week.
And if we did, well, I want to say it again, or at least hear about it again, is that two weeks ago, you filled in for me on the AI podcast, and it was for a pretty massive one.
I was out camping with my family.
I had to put lifestyle before work, but it was with Jan Vanik, which is a massive name, one of the biggest names we've had on our AI show, if not the biggest, and one of the biggest names in investing that we've had on the show in recent memory.
What I want to understand is that obviously, I think it was AI focused, but he had a lot of bullish points on crypto as well.
He was very bullish on its future and maybe its utility.
Maybe you can tell us more about that, but also that this is the time to accumulate.
So I'd love to hear a little bit of a summary about that.
Yeah, sure.
So I've talked about this in some of the other podcasts we've done because it was just like a standout for me.
As you said, Jan is one of the most trusted and respected asset managers on Wall Street.
And I think that's a key thing to highlight to the audience is that we bring a lot of the best analysts and market commentators we can find onto this channel to talk about digital assets and to talk about AI on the Milk Road AI channel.
But Jan is a little bit different because he is an asset manager, meaning that he manages $230 billion of AUM and he doesn't have the luxury of just...
doing analysis and like having an opinion, he has to actually manage and deploy capital through all of this.
So if he says that he thinks that the bull run is still going strong, which he did, he has to back that up with $230 billion of, you know, putting his opinion on the line, right?
So I think that's like a really important thing to call out of just like, he's really respected, really trusted, but he's also got a lot of capital and he's got, you know, both hands in the market and a lot at stake.
I asked him this question about the 60-40 portfolio, a lot of people agree, is sort of dead, but people disagree a lot on what replaces that.
And he has been advocating very much for a 10% allocation to what he calls hard assets, which he says can vary for a lot of people.
And what that looks like has to be decided from investor to investor.
But he says that for him, a lot of that is gold and Bitcoin.
And I asked him, does that mean you are accumulating Bitcoin at these levels?
And there's like a little bit of internal debate between himself and other players at VanEck.
Matthew Siegel is the head of crypto research at VanEck.
I also interviewed on this channel last week and asked him about this as well.
But the question is like, do you accumulate now?
Do you just DCA in slowly between now and Q4?
How do you approach building the position?
Jan VanEck just said.
Don't get cute.
Get the position.
Don't try to be smart and pick the bottom.
Just get your position and get allocated and sit pat.
And I thought there was a lot of wisdom in that, right?
I asked Matt Hogan about this question too to get his thoughts because I think all investors, it doesn't matter if you're managing.
$230 or $230 billion.
All investors right now, I think, are looking at the markets and being like, hey, what is my strategy on digital assets?
What is my portfolio allocation to Bitcoin?
What is my strategy on that?
What makes sense for me?
And they're figuring that out.
So I think that these conversations with people who do this professionally are really helpful for the audience as they think about what strategy makes sense for them.
percentage of their portfolio they want to have allocated and how they want to go about timing, building that position and thinking through that.
So yeah, really great conversation on a ton of topics in the AI space.
But I was really, you know, just interested and curious to hear about Jan's overall bullishness on Bitcoin and how he's allocating.
And like I said, he's like, don't get cute, just get the Bitcoin.
And I thought that was a helpful perspective.
You know, one thing we've talked about a lot on this show is that crypto is quickly becoming a huge part of the global payments infrastructure, and nowhere is that more obvious than in Asia.
But if you're actually running a remittance company or a payment business, you know that the hard part isn't moving the stablecoins.
It's dealing with local banking partners, compliance, liquidity, and all of the operational headaches that come with sending money into places like India and Southeast Asia.
That's why today's partner is Sabre.
They give payment companies stablecoin-powered infrastructure to collect and make payouts across Asia without having to build all of that complexity themselves.
Besides looking at all this, besides looking for bullish content or listening to bullish content naturally, John, and I think a lot of the people that are still hearing crypto and talking about crypto at this point are bullish.
All the bearish people, they're kind of gone.
Or there are people like Ben McKenzie, we talked about last week, but non-crypto people being bearish on crypto, naturally.
How do you pass in time right now?
Right?
Because the thing is, is like people listen to the show and we do a lot of great episodes.
You've taken over as a full-time host and you've brought on a lot of excellent guests and definitely brought a lot of energy to the show and people listening get stoked.
But man, it is a waiting game.
And I think a lot of people feel that.
People still here listening, holding their tokens like, You know that by now, right?
It's not some, being patient is not a new thing.
But even circling back to what we said at the start, man, it's like, we've been chopping though in a range that has been even more extended than usual.
So like, what are you supposed to do as a crypto believer right now, right?
You educate yourself, listen to content, but inevitably, unless you're going to go to the altcoin dailies and be like, okay, maybe I'll buy some BitTensor or other people calling for a ton of other tokens, like Pump is doing well right now, HyperLuca is kind of bouncing back, all these other kind of alts, you know, revenue generating alts, which is a big narrative and a big meta from, from recent years outside of that.
And just following those, what else do you do?
I think that this is like, kind of a wild question to me because my perspective is completely different like yes price action has been stable but it doesn't get less interesting to me because the market is always fascinating it's always generating information it's always sending a message it's always discounting um you know future price action future developments so there's always more to learn about the markets and in the markets the macro landscape is going through a complete like overhaul like kevin warsch is completely reimagining what the federal reserve is how it reacts to data, how it assembles data, what its role is in the marketplace.
There's this whole intervention going on.
The Japanese are doing a lot of intervention in their markets to support their currency.
That's having a lot of impacts.
There's a lot of uncertainty about what is going to happen between now and the midterm elections.
Is Trump going to issue a holiday on capital gains tax?
There's all this stuff going on with the Clarity Act still.
The thing that I would really say, though, as it relates specifically to crypto and digital assets, There is so much happening right now.
All of these protocols are rapidly building and shipping.
It's not a bear market.
It's a builder's market.
There's tons of things going on from top to bottom.
Ethereum is one of a great example of this.
There's so much going on in terms of the debate about should they change the issuance rate on ETH, the asset.
There are debates going on and conversations about what should go in the, you know, the Glamster upgrade is the next ETH upgrade, but the Hegoda upgrade is the next one after that.
There's tons of conversation going on around that.
I'm going to, I think, try to get to.
the ETH Labs guys back on the channel to talk about that because there's just so much going on in EIPs, so many changes happening to ETH, the asset, to ETH, the protocol.
There are new organizations that have been launched in the Ethereum ecosystem that are going out and bringing institutions to Ethereum and just so many changes that are happening there.
And it's all accelerating the investment, the capital, the changes like the digital asset treasury companies of Sharplink in particular has just been.
like nonstop shipping, investing, launching new partnerships, new protocols.
They just announced a new thing with Lido, which I haven't had a chance to catch up on yet.
So I need to get them on for a podcast just to keep up to speed with them.
The same thing with Bitmine and Tom Lee.
There's tons of things going on there.
And I really want to get more connected to what they're doing in the ecosystem.
Solana is another great example.
Jito ship GTX.
I brought on Rebecca Reitig from Jito Labs to talk about that and everything they're building there, why that exchange platform is unique, why they think it's going to, compete and excel as we all try to figure out what the everything app of finance is going to be And Solana is also evaluating its issuance and reducing the issuance of Solana.
There's like three proposals.
I think the voting on that ends tomorrow, so we'll find out if that goes through or not.
Tons of changes going on in Solana, tons of developments and shipments, explosion of tokenized stock trading on Solana ecosystem.
Tau is building and shipping all the time, as I said.
There are so many other things like Aerodrome and Velodrome are combining, and they're going to move everything into one token called Aero.
They're changing their tokenomics.
There's just so much going on.
I'll stop.
because I'm rambling a little bit here.
But my point is, there's a never ending list of things that are going on in crypto.
And all these things are changing in shipping all the time.
Near Protocol became the first protocol to become quantum resistant.
Venice hit $100 million in annualized revenue.
Pump has been on a 60% pump in the last few weeks.
It's just like always stuff happening.
So this question of like, what do you do to pass the time?
I don't, I've never been bored in crypto for a minute.
I think I'm always like out of date.
If I stop paying attention for two days, it seems like something has already changed or happened.
There's always something new going on.
And so, like you said, I just invest in education and trying to stay up with the space, stay current with what's going on.
And there's always something exciting.
There's always more to learn.
There's always a new innovation.
And even if you're more focused on one asset or ecosystem, you can learn a lot from the other ecosystems that you're not in.
How are they dealing with these problems?
How are they addressing these things?
Because all of them are facing.
similar sorts of pressure and competing objectives.
And you can always learn a lot from just seeing how alternative ecosystems go about dealing with these things.
So anyway, long-winded answer, but I'm just a huge crypto nerd.
And this is one of the best times in crypto to be learning because the fundamentals have never been stronger.
The future trajectory of this space has never been more bright and clear.
And it's just a great time to learn.
And I can just call these people and get them on the podcast and talk to them.
And I love this.
It's a great opportunity.
So that's how I'm passing the time.
I'm just staying educated.
I like that.
I like that.
I think that that's a really good take.
And that's, I think that was kind of leading you into that, but it was that, you know, a lot of these companies, even the ones who do have tokens are actively building or changing or evolving and adapting to what's coming next.
Right.
And, or they're still making money, right?
Like you posted a pro update right before we started recording this in milk road pro about pump that it's like, listen, it's been a bear market for a year.
If you ask the larger population, meme coins are a thing of the past, yet these guys are still at the top, like top 10 daily revenue, if not top five, right?
Like these guys still make a ton of money, even though now there's meme coins in other chains.
There's meme coins elsewhere outside Solana, and yet these guys are still making tons of cash, right?
So even that is something worth paying attention to.
They're still trying to crack through with different ideas, different business models, and then other really vital businesses, like you were saying with Aerodrome.
uh and velodrome like combining into arrow and it's like that's you know that's a really important dex you know that's a really important part of the market making liquidity for the space on eth and you know let you talk more about that but it's like those types of companies um they're not stopping like they if anything this is helpful for them because there's less attention right like people don't expect the token to move up on every announcement or anything like that right now right they can actually make vital changes to prepare um for the next leg and kind of for where the space is going.
Yeah.
And another example of this, I think, you know, I asked Altcoin Daily about this as well, but Chainlink is like a longstanding project that's been in the space for a long time, but they've also made a lot of updates and changes recently as well.
So, you know, you mentioned this revenue narrative that we're seeing.
Chainlink instituted a Chainlink Reserve program to do buybacks of their token.
And the revenue that they're directing to those buybacks is in the top 10 of crypto projects again as well.
So now Chainlink is doing buybacks and Chainlink has seen a breakout in price action, which for anybody who's a Link Marine knows that Bitcoin's about to dump.
Because anytime Chainlink pumps, Bitcoin always dumps and ruins the rally.
But anyway, I'm joking.
But Chainlink has been a great example of this too, right?
They've been here for a really long time.
They've been successful.
for a long time but they're not stagnating or resting they're innovating they're changing their tokenomics they're always launching new things new partnerships so there's just aggressive growth and innovation happening in the space that i think is really bullish and it's the thing i think is i like about this is that It shows that these products, these projects, these protocols are responsive to changing market demands and pressures, and they're adjusting to deliver to the market what the market wants to see.
And so I think that's all really bullish, and I got to find somebody from the Chainlink ecosystem to come on the show and break all this down more too.
But yeah, it's not just these new things, right?
Like PumpFun is a relatively new product in the crypto world, but it's like these… quote unquote, dino coins like Chainlink that are also doing this innovation and also building and not being stagnant, but leaning in, building and shipping.
So I think it's a really exciting time, man.
This is a great time to be in crypto.
What was that?
I remember when I joined the space six years ago, there was one Chainlink guy, like the Chainlink wizard or something like that.
I don't know if he's still around.
Chainlink god.
Chainlink god.
That's it.
He had the Pepe thing.
Is he still around?
Is he still, he's already survived.
He's still around.
I've met him a couple of times at conferences.
I've DMed him to invite him on the show a couple of times.
I haven't gotten that scheduled yet, but hopefully, hopefully we can get chain link God on the show to break down.
People need to know about link.
But yeah, there's a lot of great people in the, in the community.
And so, yeah, I'm rooting for all those guys.
I think a lot of these tokens in these companies as well, but also through bear markets, develop strong communities, right?
Because Chainlink to me has always been a place, and probably even more so now, or maybe more so in the past, but it has like a cult-like following, right?
And even this Chainlink god guy is a good example.
And I think that that's in these times when they accumulate true believers who can really ride from the bottom all the way up, right?
And it seems like that's what's happening.
So it's a good time to summarize all that.
It's a good time to pay attention and pick your beliefs.
When I was working at BlackRock, I got myself included on the meetings that they were doing with Chainlink because I told the head of our digital assets team, I was like, listen, Sergey Nazarov is like Mick Jagger to me.
If I can get in on these meetings, I want to get in.
And so that was one of the coolest experiences I got at BlackRock was sitting in on those meetings.
So yeah, I'm a Link Marine.
There's a lot of great Link Marines.
But yeah, it's far from over.
There's a lot going on and I stay busy because crypto never sleeps and never stops.
So yeah, it's a great time.
My last question for you, John, on this on this bright Monday, we ask it every week.
We're asking it every week since I've been doing the show.
Clarity Act now back up to 20 percent.
Definitely a lot of people declaring it for dead, but it feels like it could still be alive at this point.
What's your take?
And we talk about this every week.
You probably talk about this with a lot of your guests as well.
Okay, so this is my actual alpha.
I think this is something that the entire industry is mispricing and sleeping on, and I think that people are misreading this situation.
So I wrote a post about this on X recently because I think...
This is what I'm seeing.
And it just seems like everybody is so fed up with clarity that they've totally checked out.
But this is far from dead.
I grew up in the Washington, D.C.
area.
I used to work on Capitol Hill for a little bit before I moved to New York.
And there's a saying in Washington, D.C., which is that a bill dies nine times before it passes.
This bill has been declared dead over and over and over again.
And nobody thinks it's going to make it over the line.
The last time.
that this, just like last week, right?
Like there was a postponement, right?
The Senate announced that they're going to vote on this after the August recess in September.
September 15th is when the next date to vote on clarity cloture is been set for.
Between now and then, there's not going to be any movement on the Clarity Act.
So there's nothing happening in the short term.
However, immediately after that announcement came from the Senate, the chairman of the SEC announced that he was going to bring people in on Friday, this past Friday.
to talk, have an open meeting about some regulatory accommodations for digital assets, for tokenization, for whatever the case may be.
That meeting never happened.
The chairman of the SEC canceled it due to a quote unquote unforeseen scheduling conflict, whatever that means.
But they did not reschedule the meeting, which is important to me because.
They don't intend to ever have that meeting.
The president of the United States instead scheduled his own meeting for this Wednesday, which I think it's going to be August 19th in the White House.
The president is personally going to attend.
And it's with a lot of the leaders of the United States crypto industry and digital asset projects.
So at that meeting, I don't know what they're going to talk about, but they're definitely going to be talking about clarity.
They're definitely going to be talking about Trump's involvement in the digital asset industry.
And basically what it comes down to is like the Democrats have basically said in so many words.
We won't pass this bill without, quote unquote, ethics considerations, which all comes down to basically the Trump family getting completely out of the crypto industry altogether in America.
Whatever you think of that.
And I think, look, there's a lot of valid reasons why, you know, people aren't happy about what Trump's done in crypto.
I'm not necessarily happy about a lot of what he's done in crypto.
Setting all that aside, the indication that I see here is that the chairman of the SEC was going to step up and offer like a in lieu of clarity act, regulatory clarity to the industry.
Trump.
basically nixed that, called his own meeting, and is now trying to work out some sort of compromise that he feels is agreeable that allows this Clarity Act to get over the line.
The reason all this matters is that the entire market is basically assigning a less than a 10% possibility that the Clarity Act passes.
Galaxy Digital revised their estimation for the likelihood that Clarity passes from 75% yes to 10% yes that it passes in 2026.
So what I'm saying here is that If this meeting on Wednesday produces some sort of compromise that ultimately results in getting to a place where we have a version of the bill that can pass into law, that could be a huge bullish catalyst that surprises the whole market.
And that's a mispricing of the asset class that corrects rapidly, I think.
So this is one of these catalysts where everybody thinks this is dead.
Nobody is paying attention.
Everyone is frustrated and checked out and offsides in their position in their book, in their portfolio.
If this does actually reach a compromise and this bill that's been declared dead nine times out of 10 does actually pass and become a law, I think you're going to see a violent repricing that could mark the end of the bear market.
And so this is something I'm watching very closely because I think as we get closer to September 15th, I think we'll have a much more realistic idea of whether or not this is possible.
Now, again, it's not guaranteed.
There's a lot of other things on the Senate's agenda and on their docket to look at before the end of Congress.
So I can't guarantee this is going to happen.
personally important to the sitting president that this this is like the top of the regulatory um agenda for himself for his organization for his administration for congress and that's a good place to be so we'll see what happens but i think this is something that everybody is is missing that the likelihood of this bill passing in my opinion is going up not down and the market is mispricing that would you make a bet on polymarket I think everybody is making a bet on this in their portfolios anyway.
And I think that's enough exposure.
That's an easy 5x.
Listen, if Clarity Act passes, ETH won't 5x overnight.
But that market would on Polymarket.
Just saying.
I'm just saying.
Well, see, but that's the thing is Ethereum would be the asset I think that is most likely to benefit from this because this gives clarity to a lot of the things that are in some sense, some way or another, for better or worse, built in the Ethereum ecosystem.
And, you know, if you're a member of Milkware Pro, you can see my portfolio and you know that my bags are very packed.
So, yeah, I'm ready for this.
I think I've taken my position.
I've made my bet and I'm just going to let the market come to me on this one.
I love it.
And we'll see.
We'll see where that leads us.
John, thank you so much.
Pleasure as always on these Mondays to chat.
And thank you for your thoughts.
And, you know, congrats on all the great stuff on the podcast.
Great to find all those big players aligned with the way you see things.
And like John said, if you want to talk to John, he's very responsive in our discord.
He posts a lot of great pro updates.
And one day he will unload his 30% bag of cash.
into the market.
We don't know when.
It could be very soon.
We don't know when.
And you will find out about it on this podcast, but only retroactively.
You know, we'll wait.
If there is one last flush, John, we won't tell anybody what you're buying.
We'll let you buy.
We'll wait two months and we'll tell them what you bought after.
Unless you're a Milk Road Pro member, in which case you'll get it in real time.
John, appreciate your thoughts, man.
And always appreciate the chat.
So thank you and have a great week on both our shows, both on the Crypto Show and the AI Show.
Thank you, LG.
It's a lot of fun.
Glad to see you again.
Talk soon.
The European Blockchain Convention returns to Barcelona on September 16th through 17th, bringing Europe's digital asset marketplace to life, where the continent's fragmented markets converge into one room.
5,000-plus attendees, 300-plus speakers, 90-plus countries, two days, one deal floor, the institutions, capitals, builders, and infrastructure providers you need to be across.
All in one place, all at the same time.
What normally takes months of cross-border travel happens here in 48 hours.
Use code MILKROADPRO underscore 15 for 15% off your ticket.
Link is in the description.
Want insights on what's moving crypto markets and how we're trading each event?
Subscribe to our channel and join the Milk Road daily and pro newsletters and start investing like the top 1%.
This show is for educational purposes only.
Nothing we say is financial advice.
Investing is risky.
Never invest more than you can afford to lose.