GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter serving hotter opinions than a Bitcoin maxi during an altcoin rally.
Here’s a taste of this week’s menu:
- 🔥 Most crypto ETFs will die.
- 🥵 SOL’s doing $87M in app revenue. Nobody cares.
- 🌶️ The U.S. is building God.
Milk Road and Alumni Ventures are teaming up this week only to give readers early access to high-potential startup opportunities. Get access to VC deals for FREE now.
HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK 🔥
130+ crypto ETFs filed and most of them are going to die 💀
James Seyffart (Senior Research Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence) gave a reality check on the crypto ETF explosion.
James says there are over 130 crypto-related ETF products launched or filed, and the strategy is basically spray-and-pray.
Issuers throw everything at the wall because one hit pays for all the failures. He expects mass liquidations in 12-18 months.
But the real alpha?
James says Solana ETFs have 50% known institutional holders (way higher than Bitcoin or ETH), while XRP ETFs are under 15% - meaning XRP is almost entirely a retail play.
🎙️ Listen to the full episode here.
Solana's doing $87M in app revenue per month and nobody cares 🥱
Kash Danda (COO of Jupiter) says the biggest surprise right now is the insane disconnect between Solana's usage and its token price.
Kash rattled off the numbers:
2B transactions in February, $26M in network revenue, $87M in application revenue, and $650B in stablecoin activity making Solana the #1 chain by stablecoin volume.
Meanwhile the token's getting beaten up like everything else.
Jupiter itself did $1.16T in trading volume last year (199% YoY growth), just passed a net-zero emissions proposal killing future token dilution, and has bought back ~$220M in JUP.
Kash's take: if you believe crypto is useful, Solana is where you go.
The fundamentals have never been better. The market just doesn't care yet.
🎙️ Listen to the full episode here.
The U.S. is building god. China is building the factory floor 😇
Rawsen (Lead of Delphi Intelligence, Delphi Digital's AI research arm) lives in China and sees two completely different AI strategies playing out in real time.
The U.S. approach is techno-capital - build the most sophisticated model possible, charge monopoly rents, and basically try to create 50 million geniuses in a data center.
China's approach? Open source everything, commoditize intelligence, and inject it through their massive industrial base via programs like "AI Plus" for healthcare, education, and public services.
Rawsen’s observation:
Because the U.S. is a service-based economy, AI actually disrupts America harder and faster than China, where manufacturing is still the backbone.
He thinks the U.S. is winning near-term on semiconductors and CapEx, but China's long-term advantages in energy buildout, robotics data loops, and manufacturing integration could flip things.
🎙️ Listen to the full episode here.
WANT TO INVEST IN STARTUPS?
As ordinary investors, we can only invest in public products.
We never get access to private deals such as investing in startups… until now 👇
Milk Road and Alumni Ventures are teaming up this week only to give readers early access to high-potential startup opportunities.
All you have to do is sign up with your name and email to receive curated startup pitches.
Here’s why we’re excited about it:
- Co-invest with elite VCs like a16z, Sequoia and Accel
- Pick only the deals you like
- Absolutely FREE to join
Get access to VC deals for FREE now.
HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK (P2) 🔥
Stablecoins are the casino chips, not Bitcoin 💸
Max Grockman (Deputy CIO, Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions) pushed back hard on the "Bitcoin is the new gold" narrative during a crisis.
Max says Bitcoin's volatility is way too high for capital preservation - if you park $1M in it, tomorrow it could be $800K or $1.2M.
That's not a safe haven. Stablecoins are.
Max calls them the casino chips - you bring in your dinars, your yuan, your rubles, the cashier doesn't discriminate, and you get your stablecoins.
Now you can move around the casino (or across borders) without worrying about a 20% haircut overnight.
The stablecoin market just crossed $300B and Max thinks the U.S. is accidentally fueling adoption on both sides - debasing the dollar AND passing frameworks that encourage institutional stablecoin use.
🎙️ Listen to the full episode here.
China's got 3 months of oil and Xi knows it 🛢️
Peter St. Onge (PhD Economist & Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation) basically said the Iran conflict isn't really about oil shortages for the U.S. - it's about squeezing China.
Peter points out the U.S. gets like 2% of its oil from the Middle East and has four years of stockpiles.
China? Three months.
And here's the kicker - nearly half of China's oil before this whole thing was sanctioned oil from Russia, Venezuela, and Iran at a 20-30% discount.
Trump's already taken Venezuela and Iran off the table, and if he peels Russia back into the Western fold too, China suddenly has to pay full price for everything.
Peter says China's growth just hit the lowest in 35 years, the property market is 2008-level bad, and Xi has way less leverage heading into the April meeting than people think.
🎙️ Listen to the full episode here.
PRO INSIGHT OF THE WEEK 🔮
This week’s PRO Member question:
“What’s going on with GLXY?
And why hasn’t there been any big announcement about which hyperscaler is going to snag the additional 830MW that was approved back in January?”
This week’s PRO Analyst answer (from Martin / m0xt):
“It has been just over a month since they got that approval.
I mean, I don’t care if they announce the next tenant in next month or 3 months. It will happen eventually. GLXY is not a short term play.
The revenue from Helios might appear in Q2 earnings, so thats the next thing to be excited about.
Another thing to watch is their Q1 results from their crypto biz. I expect similar numbers to Q4, but lets see.
Still by far the biggest position in my portfolio.“
P.S. Want direct access to our PRO analyst team, so you can get your burning questions answered in real-time and make the right moves?
BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪
90% of hacked protocols were already audited. Secure your mainnet launch before your audit with the same deterministic testing tools used by Circle and Uniswap.**
Now kith: The SEC and CFTC just ended their turf war over crypto.
Denied! Looks like SBF's shot at a retrial just got shut down.
Robinhood's Vlad Tenev on tokenization: "It's like a freight train. It can't be stopped and eventually it's going to eat the entire financial system."
Look out! We just launched a brand new page covering the best crypto trading terminals (spoiler: We think Genius is the best).*
*this is sponsored content. **this is partner content.
Get access to VC deals for FREE now.
MILKY MEMES 🤣
