🥛 Brace for volatility this week 📆

GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter more reliable than the “BTFD” guy in your group chat.

Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

✍️ What to look out for this week.
🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Solana Adoption Is Exploding… But the Market Isn’t Pricing It In w/ Kash Dhanda.
🍪 Bitmine just bought another 60,976 ETH.

Alchemy is the blockchain infrastructure behind Robinhood, Polymarket, Stripe, and Coinbase Wallet. Get their free guide on the real costs of blockchain infrastructure.

Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Trade today with Milk Road Swap.

WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR THIS WEEK 📆

Another week, another stacked calendar.

Here’s what you need to tell your OpenClaw to watch on your behalf this week:

1. Macro 🌎

Here’s what’s coming down the pike in macro:

The U.S. Stock Market & Oil Futures react to Iran conflict updates - Mon - We say ‘Monday’ but really it will be every trading hour while the conflict continues.
February Existing Home Sales data - Tue - Are existing homes selling or stagnating in the U.S.?
February CPI Inflation data - Wednesday - Did inflation slow or increase in February?
U.S. Q4 2025 GDP Data - Friday - Did the U.S. economy grow or contract in Q4 2025?
January PCE Inflation data - Friday - PCE is a broader-based version of CPI, and it's the Fed’s preferred inflation metric (so it’s important!).
January JOLTS Job Openings data - Friday - How does the U.S. Job market hold up in January?

What we’re watching closely from the lineup above…

Oil prices: If they continue to rip with no clear ceiling, that becomes a problem.

The rising cost of oil creates the potential for increased inflationary pressures, reduced economic growth, and tighter monetary policy.

(Things all asset classes are typically affected by.)

Source: TradingView

PCE data: As mentioned above - this is the Fed’s preferred inflation metric. A slowdown in PCE will help to increase the likelihood of future rate cuts.

Sadly, right now, Polymarket is telling us we’ll have to wait till July for our first cut:

Source: Polymarket

2. Government/legislation 🏛️

House Republicans are threatening to kill a bipartisan housing bill over a CBDC sunset clause.

The bill bans retail Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) until 2031. Republicans want to change that ban date to ‘forever’.

The fear being: a retail CBDC would let the Federal Reserve monitor and potentially control individual spending.

That concern isn't unfounded.

A retail CBDC could give the government real-time visibility into every purchase you make.

And programmable money can also have conditions attached: expiration dates, restrictions on what it can buy, etc.

(YIKES!)

Let’s hope the ban is made permanent.

Ok, but what about the crypto market itself - what’s going on there?

Let’s take a look…

BEFORE YOU RUN YOUR OWN BLOCKCHAIN NODE

I don’t know about you but here’s a stat that blew me away:

Running blockchain infrastructure can cost $850K–$1.4M per year.

That’s exactly why Alchemy, the crypto infrastructure behind Stripe, Visa & Robinhood, just published a free framework on the hidden costs of building and running a blockchain node.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

A build vs buy matrix for each infrastructure component
Where teams typically spend the most money
The full cost stack of blockchain infrastructure

The framework takes about 15 minutes to read and it’s completely FREE.

Get the free guide here.

WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR THIS WEEK (P2) 📆

In today’s episode of ‘make it make sense’ the total crypto market is *checks notes*

Hmmm, wait… no, that can’t be right.

*Checks notes again with one eyebrow raised*

👇

3. Charts 📈

Errr, the crypto market is outperforming the S&P 500, Nasdaq, and Gold over the past 24hrs:

Source: TradingView

I guess the ‘sellers are likely exhausted’ theory we’ve been throwing around is starting to prove itself ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We’ll be watching closely to see if this strength is maintained throughout the rest of the week.

Let’s hope it lasts!

4. Podcasts 🎙️

Oh boy, here I go singing the praises of our Podcast team’s booking prowess again…

Here’s (yet) another banger line-up for you:

Mon - Kash, Jupiter Exchange, Milk Road Daily.
Mon - Rawson, Lead at Delphi Intelligence, Milk Road AI.
Tue - Nicky Shiels, Markets, Metals & Macro @ MKSPAMP, Milk Road Macro.
Tue - Max Gokhman, Franklin Templeton Deputy CIO, Milk Road Daily.
Wed - James Seyffart, Research analyst within Bloomberg Intelligence, Milk Road Daily .
Thu - Matt Hougan, CIO Bitwise, Milk Road Daily.