🥛 Have we topped? 😰

PLUS: Gov. Shutdowns vs. Crypto 🕵️♂️

GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that aims to answer the age old question: ‘wen top?’

Here’s what we got for you today:

✍️ Have we topped?
✍️ Gov. Shutdowns vs. Crypto
🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Why Bitcoin, Ethereum & Alts Will Keep Rising Through 2026 w/ Jamie Coutts
🍪 US job openings ticked up in August

Walrus is making blockchains faster, cheaper and more secure. Click here to learn more about Walrus.

Prices as of 2:00 PM ET, provided by CoinGecko.

HAVE WE TOPPED? 😰

The economy grows…the economy contracts…the economy grows…the economy contracts…

(Wax on, wax off.)

This process of economic expansion and contraction is known as ‘the business cycle’.

Source: FinancialDesignStudio

The cool part?

If you buy strong assets as the business cycle begins to expand (start of the blue lines), and sell as it begins to contract (start of the red lines) – you can secure yourself a nice little bag.

The trick is: patience and (rough) timing.

(This is why we update exactly where we are in the business cycle each week over at Milk Road Crypto PRO, showing you when to buy → when to hold → when to sell.)

The even cooler part?

Over the past decade or so, the timing of these cycles were relatively regimented – with expansion and contraction phases each lasting ~2yrs, pushing prices up/down in the process.

(Ever notice how crypto prices peak once every 4yrs or so? See: 2013, 2017, 2021…they’re all correlated with the business cycle.)

Now, it’s not perfect. You’re never going to time the top/bottom exactly. But if you can make peace with simply being ‘directionally correct’ rather than ‘surgical’ – it’s a helluva tool!

Bad news: we believe the ~2yr up / ~2yr down pattern (which predicted a Q4 2025 market peak) has since broken and reset.

Good news: as we mentioned back in June, we believe this break & reset has pushed the current cycle peak out into 2026 (and possibly even beyond).

Here are the two potential paths we see in front of us:

The conservative option: instead of the cycle peaking in Q4 of 2025 (now), it will be pushed out to ~Q2 of 2026.
The ‘HOLY SH*T, IS THIS REAL!?’ option: instead of the cycle peaking in 2025, it will move out to ~Q4 2026 / ~Q1 2027.

Here at Milk Road, our estimates fall somewhere in the middle of these two scenarios, with a peak in the second half of 2026 feeling the most likely (at least, for now).

And this isn’t some crackpot idea we randomly cooked up – many analysts are starting to shift their expectations forward…

The ‘Godfather of Global Liquidity’, Michael Howell is predicting a peak in the first half of 2026 – meanwhile, the team over at Real Vision / GMI, led by ‘Business Cycle Daddy’, Raoul Pal, and ‘Cycle Surgeon’, Julien Bittel are giga-bullish…

They see ISM PMI data (which tends to correlate with business cycle peaks/troughs) topping in ~Q1 2027. 👇

Source: @RealVision

The takeaway:

We do not believe the crypto market has topped.

Instead, we think our planned stay in ‘Number Go Up Land’ has been extended by up to a year.

In conclusion: I’m gonna need a running chest bump.

(Stat!)

WEB3’S PRIVACY ISSUE: FIXED 🤝

Imagine if Google made it so anyone with the right link could access your online data.

(It’d be bedlam!)

…now get this: in web3, that concept isn’t a hypothetical, it’s a reality.

Thankfully, Walrus has closed this privacy gap with the launch of Seal — a decentralized access control service.

Seal’s use cases are FAR reaching! For example:

AI marketplaces: gate access to datasets, models, and chat logs, while sharing only when needed
Gaming: reach encrypted in-game content as players reach certain milestones
Content monetization: encrypt media and unlock with pay-to-decrypt, tiered access, timed trials

Ready to super charge your web3 app?

Click here to learn more about Walrus!

GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN INCOMING? HERE’S WHAT IT MEANS FOR CRYPTO 🕵️♂️

Errr, this can’t be good…

Source: Polymarket

ICYMI: If government funding legislation isn’t passed by Congress today, many government offices will shutdown temporarily.

So how could this affect crypto? Lemme start here:

Most of the time, these shutdowns are measured in days – but every now and then, they can stretch across weeks.

Now, certain problems could arise if this shutdown extends up to/past the Federal Reserve’s FOMC meeting on October 28/29 (where they’ll make their rate decisions).

‘Cause if many of the government bodies that produce the data the Fed uses to make its decisions are on leave come October 28th – the data won’t be ready for them to use.

Which could push some Fed members to vote ‘no cut’ in October, just to be safe.

(And as we all know, crypto loves rate cuts – so any fear that we might skip this month’s expected cut could affect prices.)

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that, outside of the above edge case, there’s no clear correlation that says government shutdowns necessarily affect stock/crypto prices.

…sometimes asset prices fall amid shutdowns, sometimes they rise – but those moves are typically linked to outside factors.

So if the shutdown happens – sure, we might see short-term price reactions if it drags out towards the Fed meeting – but in the medium-to-long term, we expect it to be a nothing burger.

Those are the cliff notes.

We just dug way further into all of the above, in today’s edition of Milk Road Macro – I recommend you check it out here!

PRO ALL ACCESS PORTFOLIO UPDATES 📊

Want to know how we’re allocating right now?

Check out Milk Road PRO All Access Portfolio. 🤝

It’s an active feed of our holdings, percentage allocations, and average entry prices — with real-time buy/sell/swap alerts that go out via our Discord.

Disclosure: We are not a day trading portfolio so don’t expect a high volume of trades. Read our “How To Build a Crypto Portfolio” report to learn more about our portfolio strategy.

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