# Crypto Strategy: Bitcoin DCA, Altcoin Utility, and AI Integration

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-10-28

## Transcript

So if you're looking at like daily transactions, daily volume, Solana is the biggest, more than Ethereum by a long shot.
Revenue, they are the biggest as well.
Bitcoin is fighting to hold on to 80k, but alts are fading here.
Is this all just a fake out or is crypto coiling for the biggest bull market in history?
And what do investors need to know about all of this?
Hello and welcome back to Crypto's R Us.
I'm George.
We're all George.
I've always wanted to say that.
Hello and welcome to Milk Road Crypto.
I'm your host, John Gillins, and today we are joined by one of the goats of crypto, George from Cryptos R Us.
George has been making crypto videos since at least 2017.
He runs one of the biggest crypto channels on YouTube and is one of the most trusted and respected voices in retail in crypto.
George has been through every day of crypto for the last decade.
He's going to share a ton of wisdom with us in this episode.
I'm really excited for this.
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 and that would not be possible without our wonderful partners at Alumni Ventures, giving accredited investors access to private market investment opportunities alongside leading VC firms and Nexo, the digital asset platform that lets you trade, earn and borrow all in one place, all from one account.
So keep an ear out for more information on both of them later in the show.
But for now, welcome to Milk Road Crypto.
One of the greats, George, sir, how are you today?
I am good.
Thank you for that intro.
That was awesome.
Glad to be here.
Like I've said before we started recording, I've been watching your show for many, many years.
Excited to talk today.
George, I wanted to start with the big thing in everyone's minds right now is Bitcoin.
It's fighting to hold on to 80K here.
We've seen some weakness in the markets.
What's your updated take on where we are with Bitcoin right here?
What are you watching?
Just give me your thoughts on Bitcoin here.
Well, it's always tough.
I mean, like you said, I've been in crypto.
I started my channel in 2017, but I actually got started in 2017.
13 when Bitcoin first hit a thousand.
So I've lived through almost every single cycle except the very first one.
But we always go through these periods where, you know, the bubble comes, the bubble top pops and we come down from it.
And during those crypto winter months, it's bad.
No one wants to be part of it, right?
People leave.
But once you find that bottom, it also is kind of like iffy and scary and people don't know whether that's the true bottom or are we really recovering, right?
And I think we went, we did go through that, you know, after hitting 58K, like 58, 59K, roughly 60K.
And we stood there for a while.
We tested it a few times.
Now we're back to, you know, 80s.
I do feel confidently that we have.
started recovering from our bottom, right?
But not fully, obviously.
So there are still things that are scary and stale and boring.
And plus our macro environment right now isn't really helping.
But overall, I still preach what I've been preaching for years, which is just hold on DCA because anything that we see right now, we have seen similar cases or even worse macro conditions in the past.
And Bitcoin...
has always recovered and thrived afterwards.
And I believe we're going to see the same thing this time around too.
Well, let's unpack a little bit more of HODL and DCA because it feels like we're entering the early phase of a bull market.
And I think I agree with you.
A lot of people kind of feel that way, but it's really hard to know how to position and how to navigate that.
Because like you said, it can be very volatile.
We can have false starts, deep pullbacks.
How are you thinking about allocating to Bitcoin here, accumulating here, or are you just already in position and just holding tight and seeing what happens?
How are you thinking about this?
Well, I've made a lot of mistakes over the years.
What I've learned is you really can't outsmart the market.
Some of the smartest investors from Wall Street have said the same thing.
They cannot tell you if the price will go up today, tomorrow, next week, next month.
No one could predict it.
It's kind of like a casino out there.
Sure, we can use technical analysis or signals and patterns and what we have seen before.
especially with crypto, because the market cap of overall liquidity is still quite small.
It's very volatile.
So trying to outsmart the market, thinking that, oh, you know for sure that it's going to go up next month or it's going to go down next month.
You're going to cost yourself either hard-earned money or crypto.
So I've done that over the years where I've tried to time it.
try to time the bottom, try to time the top or panic sold or sold trying to buy the bottom or, you know, all these things or try to trade with leverage and all these things.
I've learned that nothing outperforms just holding Bitcoin and DCing along the way.
And something that actually reinforces this is recently I've been, you know, dealing a lot with with AI and using all the models and stuff.
And I've been trying, I've been creating a lot of stuff, but one of the things I wanted to try to create is a trading bot.
And you hear a lot of it.
There are a lot that exist.
And I'm like, okay, let me give it a shot.
And I've tried for months and all the smartest models, okay, did back testing and tried every single combination of all the indicators and metrics that we have.
signals and patterns and historical stuff that's happened.
Put it all together.
Bottom line, every agent has come back and said, you cannot outperform holding Bitcoin in a bull run, no matter what you do.
That was the conclusion.
They all came back with it.
They said, you're either going to lose money or you're not going to make.
as much as just holding bitcoin so that reinforces what i see myself over the years um until someone really really really smart figures out out smart trying to outsmart the market or trading just does not work holding dc is the best strategy You may not know this, but the best investors in the world leave a paper trail.
Hedge funds have to file their holdings with the SEC.
Politicians disclose all of their trades.
Companies like NVIDIA have to disclose what they own.
And the biggest wallets in crypto are all publicly visible right on chain.
The problem is it's all scattered across government filings and block explorers.
It's impossible to get it all together without knowing what you're doing and knowing where to look.
So Milk Road pulled it all together in one place, and we're calling it insider portfolios.
Warren Buffett, Cathie Wood, NVIDIA, Nancy Pelosi, Vitalik, all trackable, all free, all available for you on Milk Road.
Pick any insider you want.
You can see every position that they have and what they have traded into or out of recently.
You can click any stock or coin and also see which insiders hold it in their portfolios.
And if you click the bell icon, you get an email anytime they move in or out of position.
So head to the link in the description, sign up, sign in.
It's all free.
It's all there.
It's all Milk Road.
Well, I want to talk about that a little bit more because I've heard you say in the past that people should have half or even as much as 70 or 75% of their portfolio just in Bitcoin.
And that's a heavy concentration on that asset.
Talk to me about the thinking there and how you arrived at that decision for yourself.
I mean, early on, I was just looking at how to diversify your portfolio, what's a good allocation to hold.
And prior years.
I've always said 50, 25, 25.
That's the 50, 25, 25 rule.
50% in Bitcoin, 25% in big caps, and 25% in anything else.
And the logic behind that is, of course, you get the stability and growth of Bitcoin, which is still really good.
Big caps, they help you in a bull run.
So these are like ETH, SOL, XRP, you name it.
And then 20% in mid caps, small caps, micro caps.
meme coins, whatever, because in a bull market, they will really carry your portfolio.
They can blow up in a big way.
I somewhat changed that tone because this last cycle has shown that we now have just way too many tokens, way too many coins that have basically, I mean, if you think about crypto overall, there's only so much liquidity.
So there's only so much liquidity that could be spread around.
Because we have millions upon millions and millions of tokens now versus before, there's only so much money that could spread to them.
So the environment's different, not like 2017 or even 2021, where you saw good altcoin seasons where everything blew up.
I don't think that's going to be the case going forward.
I think people are more cautious and they're putting their money with things that they know.
like Bitcoin and big caps, right?
Mid-cast, small caps, they may put a little bit here or there, but they're not really doing it in the same amount as before because there's so many.
So that's why I think my tone has changed from the 50, 25, 25.
It's more geared towards the Bitcoin and the bigger caps because that's what people trust and know.
And then, yeah, maybe if we're in a true altcoin season, then you could put a little bit more into the mid-cap, small caps, and so forth.
All right.
So let's talk about your outlook for Bitcoin from here, because I've heard you say that if the Federal Reserve started hiking rates again, that would make you kind of a little bit more hesitant on Bitcoin.
The Fed's hiked once.
There's an FOMC meeting, I think, at the time this episode comes out.
And people expect them to hold rates, but they might hike again in December.
Does this worry you at all?
And how are you thinking about that in terms of positioning?
It does and it doesn't.
I mean, Wall Street prices things in.
So it already priced in that we're going to have one more in December.
OK, so that's the thing.
Now, if FedWarsch came out and said, well.
you know we looked at things and we're you know projecting that in 2027 we're gonna have four hikes or something right um and and the street only predicted three that would cause you know a sell-off and traditionally that's how it's been it's just always like what they're expecting and what's priced in already obviously in In times of rate hikes, it doesn't help markets because the point of the hikes is to stop markets, is to curb markets.
The whole point of hikes is to slow things down.
Right.
But right now, the Fed is stuck between a rock and a hard place because they don't actually want to slow things down.
They actually want to increase activity.
They want banks to lend out more.
They want people to buy more houses and go out and spend more.
But the problem is inflation is high.
So they have to pick which side they're going to go with to try to curb inflation or to spur up the economy, right?
Get jobs going.
And right now, they deem that they have to curb inflation.
That's their priority.
That's why we're seeing these rate hikes, because they feel like inflation is going up too much.
But that can change.
I mean, one of the big reasons why inflation started going up so much is due to the war, the Middle East war.
Obviously, we had a war ongoing for a while now in Europe, and it's still ongoing.
But the Middle East...
you know, situation really changed things.
Gas is, you know, sky high, diesel sky high, supply chain, manufacturing, everything, prices just start going up.
So that is something that can hopefully resolve itself or get some kind of ceasefire or to end or something.
And if that happens, let's say end of this year or early next year, then that could totally counter any plans that the Fed has.
right in terms of hiking and how many times to hike and all that stuff so um but going back to the original question if it turns out in 2027 we have just endless hikes okay to try to curb inflation it's not going to be good for markets not going to be good for bitcoin um but if we find a resolution to that where maybe we only get one more right in q1 or something and then it stops and then maybe in q3 q4 we actually get cuts That will definitely help markets and Bitcoin and crypto.
So it really, you know, that's kind of how I see it.
Gotcha.
Okay.
So there's still more to come in on that, but relatively priced.
And George, I want to talk about some altcoins because I think, you know, you've made your concentration on Bitcoin pretty clear and the thinking behind that.
But I also saw somewhere where you said if you had a thousand dollars to put into five altcoins to hold for years, you would pick Ethereum, Solana.
XRP, BNB, and Hyperliquid.
And we can take these kind of one at a time here, but that's a pretty tight concentration in large cap altcoins.
Walk me through the selection process there.
Why did these five stand out to you?
Well, it's pretty obvious.
I mean, these are the five that almost everyone knows in crypto, right?
So going back to what I said before, people are putting money into what they know.
Ethereum, Solana, XRP, they all have heavy institutional interests now, which I think is a good thing.
Obviously, a guy like Tom Lee that's buying up ETH.
There's ETH treasury companies.
There's also sole treasury companies too, but they both have ETFs, which helps obviously long run because it takes supply away from the circulation.
XRP now, they just got a bank charter.
They're involved with many financial institutions as well.
So these are all obvious.
And plus they have the most users, the most utility, most TVL, all that, like all the metrics that we have, they have the most of it.
BNB is also up there.
They don't have as much institutional interest, but there are still some.
But in terms of usage, Binance and the whole ecosystem is absolutely huge.
And they still do BNB burns every quarter.
So it's definitely going to carry them.
BNB is not going to go anywhere.
They've been around.
They've always been kind of like, hang in there and all of a sudden they just make big moves.
I still remember back in the day when Binance reached out to me when they were getting big or first starting out, like they wanted me to market them.
And I got a million of those emails and I had no idea who Binance is, but look at who they are now.
And I remember getting in BNB when I was below like $5.
It was crazy back in the day.
But yeah, they're going to be around for a long time.
Now, I threw hype in there as a fifth one because I see them.
Obviously, they're the giant in terms of perp trading.
They are the giant.
They make a ton of revenue.
And because of their flywheel effect, I think they're going to do very well.
And plus, even a CFTC, you know, Trump and CFTC have come out and said they go try to work with Hyperliquid to bring him back in the U.S.
I mean, when.
When they name a specific project that they're working with, that's a big endorsement.
That means they're planning some big things.
So I think they're going to be just fine as well.
And they have been performing very good.
So that's the reason.
Basically, because they all have the most utility, the great metrics, the user base, and institutional interest.
Well, I want to unpack that hyperliquid pick as well a little bit more here because you've called this something that's on an unstoppable path.
And especially, like you said, if it gets approval from U.S.
regulators, it could have a lot of room to run here.
There are other competitors in the perp space.
I'm just curious on your thoughts on hyperliquid specifically, how you see them as distinct from some of these others in this altcoin basket and why you're so bullish on hype specifically.
Well, I mean.
They started it all, right?
And they have a really good jumpstart.
But obviously, Binance came out with Aster.
And there's many others that are trying to copy.
But they have the most liquidity.
And that's the most important thing.
One of the reasons why DEXs overall before were not popular and wasn't really being used for a long time was due to liquidity.
Because on SEXs, you can...
like Binance or KuCoin back in the day, now Coinbase and whoever you use, they have infinite amount.
So slippage is low.
You could make a million dollar trade and not really affect things.
With DEXs, that's just not the case.
The LPs, the liquidity is so small.
You do a million dollar trade, the slippage is like 30%, right?
So what Hyperliquid has now is that liquidity.
They have so much of it versus everyone else.
So perp traders love to trade on there.
They don't have to worry as much about slippage and they can pretty much find anything on there.
And then now hype, they also have business model where they allow others to ride on top of their, their liquidity.
Like for example, Phantom, Phantom launched it.
I don't think a lot of people know this, but like Phantom, I did some research because I was thinking about doing something similar, but Phantom launch.
per trading on their platform.
I think they're the biggest or maybe one of the only ones to do it, but they simply ride on top of Hyperliquid.
And in the first year alone, they made like 20 plus million dollars in fees.
Like it's insane.
They have the user base.
So they're like, why not?
Right.
And then they integrate it and that did well for them.
But so that so the biggest, I think, advantage for Hyperliquid is just.
how much money they have in liquidity.
And now you got other partners riding on top of it.
And if a partner like Phantom, you know, is making $20 million a year, then you do the math, how much is Hyperliquid themselves making and how much are they putting that back into their own token?
And the firewall effect, you know, doesn't take a G to figure out that their goal too well for a future.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you like the business model.
You like the token alignment.
The last altcoin I think that you added to this list was Solana.
And Solana just shipped, I think, their biggest upgrade ever.
Many people are saying with this Alpenglow upgrade.
But Solana is still down, I think, around 60% from its high.
Are you still bullish on Solana?
What's your updated thoughts on Sol here?
And do you think it will ever recover to a new high?
Yeah, I've been on the Solana bandwagon for years now, but I do think they will recover.
I think they're very...
undervalued right now.
You know, like in crypto, you can't really judge chains like you do stocks.
There's no P ratio.
Most of these companies do not make money.
Right.
Very few do reports other than like Ripple, for example.
But what you can judge are a few like important metrics in terms of activity or how much money is flowing.
Right.
Or.
how much the chain is making.
So if you're looking at like daily transactions, daily volume, Solana is the biggest, more than Ethereum by a long shot.
Revenue, they are the biggest as well.
Okay, so almost any meaningful metric that you have measuring chains, Solana is number one.
Okay.
The only real metric that it has not surpassed Ethereum is TVO.
And mostly it's because of the stable coins, USDT, USDC, primarily riding on Ethereum.
And that's one of the biggest reasons and all the liquidity pools and, you know, everything else.
But if you look at everything else, Solana is leading the way.
So obviously it had a lot of FUD around, you know, ftx because they held a lot and and uh at one point they dropped to like eight dollars and uh a lot of people thought they're gonna go away now they did well and this upgrade makes them even more suitable for you know transactions finance transactions things that need to be very quick so it's good so i'm a big solana fan um i build projects on top of solana as well so i think they're gonna do just fine and they have the institutional interest as well.
Okay, I want to pivot to another niche that a lot of people have been paying attention to, which is the intersection of crypto and artificial intelligence.
And I want to kind of get your thoughts on this space too, because Venice and Near are two of the best performing alts recently this year.
And I want to get your thoughts on this whole space.
Are there any other names in that space, that intersection of crypto and AI that have your attention that you're allocating to?
Or are you kind of sticking to that small basket of five alts we already talked about?
Yeah, I'm gonna be honest.
I haven't been looking at any of the new AI projects, but the two you mentioned, and there's a few other in the space, you know, like Venice and there was another one I saw recently and Near because Near has Near AI.
They're all inference companies or inference projects, meaning that they're just offering open source models, right?
And allowing people to basically use it or rent it.
Okay.
And then some, are in the infrastructure space that offer you to like privately host something.
So there are, you know, these are the ones that are in this space.
And obviously some have done really well.
Like I checked Venice, their charters were doing really well, but it's not really, you know, like in AI.
Like if you look at Venice, their token is like, if you buy their token, you could stake it, right?
But like, you also get a discount with, their models or you get a certain amount of allocation or some amount of tokens you get with their models but like it's not really an ai it's not really fully integrated ai i guess right and i think that's what i'm waiting for there are a lot of projects out there they're kind of layering ai stuff on top of their chain or their project which is fine there's nothing wrong with that um but i'm looking for something like really innovative and i haven't really seen that yet where there's like a true dApp, maybe that's powered by AI, that's riding on top of a chain that has real utility with its tokens, right?
Because once someone figures that out, that will be the next billion dollar project or company.
So nothing against any of these guys.
And Nier, I know, you know, outside their inference company, they have their chain, obviously, which has been around forever.
I used to call them a baby Solana.
They kind of pivot away a little bit.
You know, they're concentrating on like AI transactions or finance transactions and in their secure model.
But yeah, overall, they're just chains and they're all trying to figure it out.
So I'm hoping that this cycle, we will see a lot more of it and more innovations that I can't even think of right now.
This pullback on Bitcoin is scaring a lot of people and I am not one of them.
So if you want to see what I'm not selling and why, what's on my watch list and when I'm going to be deploying more capital into these markets, you can join Milk Row Pro today.
It's just a dollar.
The link is in the description.
I answer questions day and night in Discord.
I'll see you there.
Yeah, I agree with you.
I think there's going to be a lot of things unlocked at that intersection that haven't even been thought of yet.
And I'm excited to see what happens there, too.
Here at Milk Road, we've been very focused on this intersection of crypto and AI.
And I've been curious to see you have also been building things with AI tools as well.
And I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about what you've been building.
There's Ask Clash and Clashpad.
There's a lot of projects you've started that you've built yourself with AI tools.
Talk to us a little bit about that and where that intersects with your work in crypto.
Yeah, I think like a lot of people, right around like the February timeframe, I heard like on X, I started hearing about like people saying, oh, you know, cloud code is the best, vibe coding is so addictive.
You need to get in before you're left behind.
Right around February is when I got in.
I got into Cloud Code.
I think at that point it was like Opus 4.6 or something like that.
And then I started experimenting it.
And I know most people, their experience is going on ChatGPT or Gemini and just asking basic questions, which is fine.
These models are really good at answering stuff and digesting information and giving you something really good.
But if you use them to build, you could pretty much build anything.
The advancement of these AI models have been vast in the last eight months.
The intelligence level and capability probably gone up 5x within, if not more, within the last eight months.
So imagine the next eight years where things will be.
But I started building.
I have a project called Clash, and it started as a gaming project.
because i wanted to experiment with it and i kind of pivoted to ai and that's where we are although we do have gaming but ask clash.ai is like an ai intelligent platform so think of it as like like a chat gbt right it has a composer you can ask questions but the main thing is it has all these intelligence all the crypto intelligence that you would want is built into the page so all the charts that you see, all the metrics that you see, all the data that you see that spread around on X, it could be like a Bitcoin returns or ETF inflow outflow, or what a pattern is the liquidation heat map, right?
All these things are very useful.
You can find an ass clash and most of it is free, right?
We also have auto charting where if you're not a technical guy and you want to see short term where something is going, it will do that for you.
And we also have AI intelligence built in within our portfolio manager, for example, and also macro stuff.
You want to know about the FOMC meeting or what inflation is, right?
All the data is there.
And the composer has all that data.
So if you're asking a question about crypto projects or about Bitcoin or about stocks or anything, or even AI, it can answer in a way that the other models can't because of all the data that we have.
So that was kind of my first endeavor and it is running.
We have thousands of people that use it daily.
And I don't know the total count, over 10,000 people have signed up and they are using it.
So that's great.
I have several others.
I created Clash Pad, which is a launch pad.
And I know the first reaction from most people is like, well, we don't need a launchpad.
There's too many, right?
Like Pump.Fun and all these other guys.
But Clashpad was created differently using this different feature at Meteora, which allows you to share fees.
And that's important.
So everything launched on Clashpad.
This is, by the way, on top of Solana.
So everything launched on Clashpad.
The creators set a fee.
It could be 1%, 3%, or 5%.
And that fee gets distributed to the holders.
So this encourages holders and discourages traders because every time they trade, they have to pay that fee, right?
And the fee gets distributed to holders.
So a lot of people do like it.
A lot of community members like it.
They're creating their own projects.
I've launched a few tokens as well on there.
So that's also something else that I've done.
and going to gaming too.
I started going down gaming.
I created a first-person shooter called Frontline that I've been working very hard on.
It is totally separate.
It has its own token.
It was launched on Clashpad.
I launched it mostly to help Clashpad because we have this good, you know, good ecosystem and this flywheel that's kicked in.
Yeah, so I've been building and building and building and building.
That's what I do.
Most people don't believe it, but I just sit in front of my computer for like 16 hours a day coding, either improving something or trying to build something new.
And I've been doing that for like, you know, six months at least.
Well, this is something I've always known and admired about you.
You do build things.
You build community.
You build projects.
You build Legos.
You're definitely a builder.
And I think people love that about you.
why we're all George.
I want to talk about the outlook from here because, you know, as we said at the beginning of the show, it feels like we're at the early phases of a bull market.
But a lot of people are now questioning, is the four-year cycle going to play out?
Is this a lengthening cycle?
Is 2027 going to be bullish or bearish overall?
What are your thoughts on where we go from here for Bitcoin?
Do you think those cycles are behind us?
Do you think they continue to play out or just look differently?
What are you expecting next from Bitcoin here?
Yeah, I think the cycle...
is going to play out differently we will always have some sort of four-year cycle because of the halving event and i think most people don't realize this if you and and i got to give like tech dev some credit and also other people that have kind of pointed this out michael saylor as well if you look at the previous cycles um they all ended a certain way they started and ended a certain way For example, I think people just weren't paying attention or didn't connect the dots.
But if you look at all the previous halving cycles, they all land on election years.
OK, so that's one.
And if you just look at it, it's like Bitcoin and markets blow up after elections after November.
So was that a coincidence?
Probably not.
There's probably something to that, that liquidity is starting to flow.
you know have made similar cases for like if you look at like the the bond market that i think he put out like the 10-year or 20-year chinese bond market and it just so happens during those years when it's you know china is doing really well and liquidity is flowing bitcoin also pumps up right um sailor has pointed out business cycles too if you look at people that have looked at business cycles uh bitcoin does really well during when business cycles do well, meaning businesses are booming and liquidity is flowing, right?
And a lot of that had to do with rate cuts, some of the macro stuff we talked about.
So in the past, a lot of years went by where me and others were like, yeah, Bitcoin is about to go up because based on history, this is where it should go up, right?
Like after having that.
Things just get better and we're just going to go up.
No one really knew why.
But now it's been so many years and we have done so much studies.
Now we kind of know why.
When money is flowing, economies are doing well, rates are low.
These are times when markets thrive.
And I believe that's when Bitcoin will thrive also.
You know, I think the four year cycle exists because of the halving event, but I don't think automatically like the next one that we're going to have in 2028, just because we have a halving event, we will just blow up afterwards.
I don't think it works that way anymore.
I think it really depends on all these other factors and we have to just pay more attention to them.
That's why, like I said, in 2027, if it turns out that like we're going to have four rate hikes or something or something crazier than that, it's probably going to affect Bitcoin's recovery.
Right.
But if things improve, then it will definitely help Bitcoin Bitcoin's recovery.
So, yeah.
So my answer is, you know, it will be different for sure.
I think a lot of people are wondering how this is going to be different for altcoins, because it seems like the alt seasons of the past are over.
Outperformance from altcoins still could happen again at some point.
When do you think that starts to come back into altcoins?
And what are you expecting?
Because I've heard you say that your big picks on altcoins could do a 5 to 10x by 2030.
Is that still your expectation?
And when do you think that movement starts to happen for altcoins?
Yeah, Bitcoin will have to lead the way for sure.
But look at where Bitcoin is right now, like 80k.
So by 2030, where could it be?
$300,000, $250,000, $300,000, that's like, what, 3x, right, already.
So if Bitcoin could do a 3x, then Ethereum is sold another to certainly do a 5x or more because they're much smaller, right?
It's so much easier to move them.
The overall size is just way smaller.
So obviously, they could move more.
So that's the biggest reason why they can go up more.
But when they start moving is, well, Based on everything else I said, when money's flowing, liquidity is flowing, people are feeling good, they will follow back in.
But I think this cycle is different.
Like I said, I think there are too many coins, too many tokens out there.
People are going to be more selective.
So they're going to look at the projects.
Well, everyone always looks at price number one.
But yes, that's never going to go away.
But I think people look at other things like usage.
How much utility is being offered?
Or do they have a real product?
Are they actually making real money and having a flywheel effect?
They go look at the communities and how active they are, socials and stuff like that.
I mean, those are all important things.
But I think it really comes down to utility, volume, things that actually show that they have traction.
They're not just speculative.
projects which in the past worked right if you had something that sounded promising people buy in on it that's no longer the case you have to prove as a project that you have something that works um and i think those will stand out and i don't think you even really need all coins season for that like like hyperliquid for example um and there's others that have shown it too where If they have true utility and they're making money and they have a good flywheel effect, they will do well even without altcoin season.
But when altcoin season comes, they'll do even better.
You know, one of the weird things about crypto is that the longer you're in it, the more accounts you seem to end up with.
You buy in one place, trade somewhere else, earn yield somewhere else.
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I think a lot of people, George, once we do see altcoins start to perform, get excited and they get euphoric and they start.
going towards things like leverage and let's say making mistakes.
You have a lot of wisdom and experience.
And I think something I've always respected about you is how consistently you have preached not to use leverage.
I'd love for you to kind of talk through how to defend against those bull market emotions and keep yourself from making mistakes like getting over levered and getting liquidated and just how you go about explaining that to people who maybe get caught up in feelings during the bull market.
It's tough.
It's like a drug.
Using leverage is like a drug.
It's best not to start because I still do it.
I just do it in small amounts.
But I've lost hundreds of thousands of dollars due to liquidations over the years.
It's tough because in a bull market, everyone looks and feels like a genius.
You can make a tremendous amount of money in a bull market.
Even at X, you see all these traders that make.
millions, 10 million, 100 million or whatever, right?
Because they had a 20X long open and it carried them for months or something in bull market, right?
But look at all of them now.
One after another, they all got liquidated, every single one.
Because in a bull market, everyone just looks and feels like a genius.
You could basically call anything and it's right.
But when it gets rocky and volatile, that's where...
That's where you find out they're not all geniuses.
Right.
And I've learned this a hard way.
And I've told people this.
And at the beginning of the show.
Right.
Like you can't win trading.
Like even the AI agency tell you they've done research for me.
They've said even like the countries with like Taiwan or Korea or Japan, where there's like so many traders that are trading all the time with stocks and crypto, only 2% ever win.
98% loses.
Who's really winning when you're doing a leverage trade?
It's the platform.
It's the ones that are selling you the shovel, okay?
Selling you this pipe dream that you go find gold, okay?
So that's why Binance and all these other guys, why they're so rich because of all the trading volume.
Whether you get lucidated or not, they win.
It's really that simple.
It's not hard to figure out.
Unfortunately, I think there is a lot of corruption too.
I do think there are a lot that work with market makers or market makers themselves.
They move markets.
I don't know how they have enough liquidity or something.
Because if you look at like on Ask Clash, you can find this like liquidation heat map.
There's like certain levels, right?
That triggers a lot of liquidations.
and it always happens to trigger like at the exact point people that have lever traded know like your your your liquidation point could be like 76 000 and bitcoin's at like uh 86 000.
you're like there's no way no way it'll get there and then you see a a whip down from 86 down to 76 and quickly recover back up Like you're like, how is that possible?
It's because they know all the people are going to get liquidated there.
But, you know, all these exchanges and market makers are overseas.
So no one really looks into them.
I think it's the reason why this is actually a smart thing.
If you look at Scott Bessent and he said he's working with the CFTC to bring leverage traders or leverage trading back to the U.S.
and perpetrating.
because they actually want to offer some oversight and actually look at what the exchanges are doing to give somewhat of a consumer protection versus right now, it's just like all overseas and no one knows what the hell's going on.
But anyways, going back to the point, yeah, don't do it.
If you can avoid it, don't do it.
You're probably going to lose money.
Thank you, George.
I appreciate you preaching the gospel.
I want to end with a question about Tom Lee, because I've heard you say that Tom Lee changed your mind on Ethereum and kind of made you bullish on Ethereum again.
You've also said that Tom has been saying that he thinks 2027 is going to be one of the most bullish years in investing history.
And you said that you hope that he's right.
And I want to kind of like.
end with a double-barreled question about that.
What do you think has to happen to make 2027 the best year in investing history?
Do you think that's possible?
And what are your thoughts on this?
Or is he just an overzealous bull?
Yeah, he kind of has to be an overzealous bull now, especially because of his company.
But yeah, he changed my mind on Ethereum because, like I said about Solana, anything meaningful that you can measure, Solana has already overtaken Ethereum.
which is why for a long time I said Solana eventually overtake Ethereum.
However, that thesis, I don't know, it could still be invalidated, but Tom Lee kind of changed the game.
He followed a sailor, copied him exactly and started buying up Ethereum.
So he's very close to 5% of Ethereum.
And then all the rewards that he gets from staking as well, he keeps.
So it increases pile over time.
He brought a lot of institutional interest because of it.
So it's not just him.
Obviously, there's ETFs and stuff, but people are paying attention and saying, OK, well, if he's doing it and others are doing it, we got ETFs, we should take Ethereum more seriously.
Right.
But the problem is Ethereum still can't scale.
They can't scale.
That's why we have layer twos around.
That's why we have like Arbitrum around that's doing well.
OK.
Why Robinhood, you know, Robinhood chain, why they didn't launch.
On Ethereum, they launched Arbitrum because it could scale, but Ethereum itself cannot.
And you could argue, well, all these L2s help Ethereum.
Yes and no, because from a price appreciation standpoint, people would just rather hold Arb than ETH, right?
So yeah, so you kind of changed my mind on ETH.
I think they will be around for a long time, but it's outdated tech.
Vitalik is still working at it.
He's been talking about scaling forever.
So hopefully...
You can figure out how to scale Ethereum properly and then this won't be a problem anymore.
But it seems like it's a bigger, it's a big issue to solve and it's not easily solvable.
Second part of the question was Tom has said that he thinks that 2027 might be the most bullish year in investing history.
What do you think has to happen to make that true?
Do you think that'll happen?
What's your outlook for that?
Yeah, I hope it's true.
It's just that, you know, right now things are looking so cheery.
And you had Paul Stewart Jones.
come out and say that he thinks 2027 is going to be a horrible year so it's hard to know who's right tom lee i think he has really good perspective he has been in this space for a long time but he he has to be a bull because he needs people to keep buying ethereum at this point right and he's been wrong before but just like i have and so many people other you know others have but i think the main thing is how the macro environment is going to be There are times where you see where like it's hard to correlate, but it makes sense.
When bond yields start going up in the US, commodities start going up, gold and silver and Bitcoin all start going up.
Right.
It goes to show you there are a group of people that believe that fiat and cash is trash and they want to diversify into something that's better, you know, that's scarce, that that can hold value.
So there is a scenario where, hey, bond yield continued to rise across the whole world and everyone is starting to feel the same pain points that investors and funds will turn to Bitcoin as a way to protect themselves as a store of value.
So that is a possibility.
Obviously, I mentioned if the war ends and inflation comes down and there's no more rate hikes in 2027, that could definitely do it.
the ai trade can do it too i think there's ai soft right now but these companies these tech companies whether they're in infrastructure or software or hosting or chip making they're all making money hand over fist so they can lead the recovery and again you know if they If they lead the way and there's liquidity flowing, people are making money and they want to diversify, they could put that money into crypto because they have seen past cycles where they have made tremendous gains.
That could certainly happen.
So I don't know specifically what Tom Lee has said, why he's so bullish on 2027, but I can just speculate and guess.
Some of the conditions that we're going through now, he...
probably thinks will be over in 2027 and things will improve and that everyone's go FOMO in.
So like I said, I hope that's right.
I hope he's right.
I hope we have a really good recovery year.
This whole year has been up and down and not so pleasant.
But if you look at it, this past year has been one of the best years versus the prior cycles when we were going through crypto winter.
They lasted a lot longer.
Recovery was much slower.
So we're way ahead of the curve.
So even though it's been bad, to put things in perspective, not nearly as bad as before, but I'm hoping 2020 will be a good year.
Well, I hope you and Tom Lee are both right about that.
George, thank you so much for being on Milk Road Crypto.
I've been following you for years.
I think everybody in crypto has been following you for years.
We all appreciate what you're doing and just like the authenticity and just the work, the commentary and how you keep showing up every day and just going through all this with all of us.
So thank you so much for being on Milk Road Crypto and sharing so much wisdom with us.
Where can we send people to find more of you and your work online?
Most on YouTube, you know, Cryptos Are Us.
You can find me there on X2.
But yeah, I really hope that people tune in, but also check out the products like Ask Clash.
I think people will really find it useful, especially if you are a crypto investor or investor overall.
The data and the metrics that we have are really, really useful.
But also check out everything else we have in the Clash ecosystem.
So that's it.
Well, thank you, George.
We're all George.
And I hope we can catch up again later on in the bull market.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you all for joining us.
I hope you all learned something today.
So until next time, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish, don't use leverage, and we will see you all in the next episode of Milk Road Crypto.
Thanks for being here, everyone.
Bye.
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