GM. This is Milk Road, the newsletter that self-soothes in public, so you can get smarter about crypto (read the first article, it’ll make sense).
Here’s what we got for you today:
- ✍️ Talking myself off a ledge (Russell 2000 vs. ETH)
- ✍️ JPMorgan launches on Base Chain
- 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Bitcoin Has Entered a Bear Market? Here’s What the Onchain Data Shows w/ Julio Moreno
- 🍪 TradFi is playing catch up
Fuse is a $300M ARR energy company launching The Energy Network on Solana. Discover the future of energy now.
Prices as of 2:00 PM ET. Trade today with Milk Road Swap.
BIG YEAR FOR THE RUSSELL 2000 = BIG YEAR FOR ETH? 🤔
Oh, man.
I don't know about you, but this choppy, sideways price action is wearing on me.
And honestly, it's bringing my mood down.
So today I'm going to try to cook up a self-remedy – right here, on this page. And if it works, you can draft off what I’m putting down.
Sound good? Great! Let’s start here…
1. The Russell 2000 vs. Ethereum
ICYMI: The Russell 2000 tracks small-sized U.S. companies, and its price movement has a history of correlating with Ethereum.
Problem is… that correlation has veered off track recently.
The Russell is hovering around all-time highs, while ETH looks like my uncle Kenny trying to swim after 10 beers at the shore house last summer.
(Struggling to keep its head above water… and completely naked for some reason? Wait, no, that was just Kenny.)
… right, well, that’s a bummer. Last I checked, I was meant to be bringing the mood UP.
Gimme a sec, course-correcting…
If the correlation between the Russell 2000 and ETH is going to hold, it means either Ethereum is going to need to move up, or the Russell is going to have to move down.
So what’s it going to be?
2. Mr. Goldman, Mr. Sachs – help me out here. What’re you seeing?
When gauging the outlooks for major stocks (S&P 500), tech stocks (Nasdaq 100), mid-caps (S&P 400), and small-caps (Russell 2000) – Goldman Sachs sees the Russell massively out-performing in 2026:
This suggests that, if the correlation resolves, it won’t be thanks to the Russell falling, but to ETH moving up.
Ok, nice! We’re heading in the right direction… but 2026 is two-weeks away.
My TikTok-smoothed brain has been conditioned to demand instant gratification – which means I’m going to need something more immediate.
And I think I might just have found it…
3. The Santa Claus Rally
If you’ve never heard the term ‘Santa Claus Rally’ – it references the fact that, historically, asset prices tend to do well in the second half of December.
And what happened at midnight last night? Yessir! We officially crossed into the second half of December.
So we have:
- The Russell 2000 and ETH correlating over time…
- Indications that the divergence in price movement will be resolved by ETH moving up…
- Asset prices doing well in the back half of Dec. (hinting that the party starts now)…
Ah, dopamine.
Welcome back old friend.
P.S. I stole most of these charts from our Milk Road Macro team – join their free newsletter here, so you don’t have to rely on my thieving hands to get them next time!
A NEW FOUNDATION FOR THE GRID
Is this the most legit energy company to ever enter crypto?
Fuse is a $300M ARR UK utility powering 200,000+ homes - and now it’s launching The Energy Network, a new digital layer engineered to scale our grids and save billions in costs.
It’s one of the only three projects to receive a no-action letter in the past 5 years (and yeah, that’s a pretty big deal).
It’s real infrastructure, not speculation - connecting homes and devices to make power smarter, cheaper, and more efficient.
One of the highest-revenue DePIN projects in crypto - and it’s still pre-launch.
DEFINITION DERBY: JPMD ON BASE CHAIN 📚
I know, I know – two back-to-back Definition Derby segments in two days?
(What can I say? I’m drunk with power.)
But JPMorgan just launched a stablecoin for institutional investors – and even though it sounds dry as hell, it’s absolutely worth talking about.
Here’re the cliff notes:
Think of it almost like Venmo, but for institutional clients of JPMorgan.
Previously they’ve been using bank transfers to pay each other (which only work during business hours, and take days to go through).
Now, they can move money instantly, 24/7, and for ~$0.01 in fees.
Ok, hooray for the fat cats using JPMorgan as a platform – what does this do for all of us out here in the trenches?
If you hold ETH (which I’m guessing the majority of us here do) – it could mean a whooole lot at scale.
JPMorgan moves approximately $10T per day in total payments, and right now JPMD only makes up ~$3B of that volume – i.e. there’s a ton of room for it to expand.
For context: in a strong market, the entire crypto market does roughly $100B in trading volume each day.
Which means JPMD alone has the potential to increase crypto’s daily trading volume by 100x.
And every time JPMD changes hands, the transaction fees need to be paid in the Base Chain’s native token: ETH.
Here’s the math on that:
$10T in potential daily trading volume + all fees to be paid in ETH = a massive future demand driver in the making.
(And when demand for a scarce asset like ETH increases → number go up.)
PRO ALL ACCESS PORTFOLIO UPDATES 📊
We’re not immune.
The Milk Road All Access Portfolio is stuck in choppy, boring, ‘grind sideways’ mode along with the rest of the market. 👇
Wanna know what we’re allocating to, in order to break out of this funk in 2026?
Join Milk Road All Access and read our “How To Build a Crypto Portfolio” report to learn more about our portfolio strategy.
GO ALL ACCESS AND UNLOCK:
- The Milk Road PRO All Access Portfolio — See what we’re investing in, how we’re allocating capital, and what actions we’re taking each week (buy, sell, hold, watchlist) ✅
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PRO REVIEW OF THE WEEK
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TradFi is playing catch up: Nasdaq just announced it plans to launch 24hr trading, 5 days a week, starting in the second half of 2026.
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MILKY MEMES 🤣
ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛
VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY
