GM. This is Milk Road PRO, your crypto surf instructor (we’ll teach you how to ride the coming wave of exponential growth).
It’s been almost 4 years since the top of the last crypto cycle in November 2021.
Which was almost 4 years from the top of the cycle before it in December 2017.
Which was almost 4 years from the top of the cycle before that in November 2013.
So the million dollar question is... Have we topped once again, another 4 years from the previous cycle or is this cycle different?
Interestingly, if you look at long-term whale Bitcoin holders, it appears they believe it has, as they are beginning to sell in large amounts.
If you look at crypto twitter, it appears many also believe this to be true.
At one point in time, I too agreed that we could top around October 2025. I even released a “Kyle’s exact sell plan for 2025” PRO report laying out a plan to take some profits in Q2 2025 and then again near the potential top in October 2025.
Yet, here we are, November 2025 and I’ve taken 0 profits. In fact, I’ve continued to add to my portfolio all year and so too has the Milk Road PRO All Access portfolio.
So does that mean I’m saying the famous last words of “this time is different”?
Well, I guess that depends on what you think is the reason for the past three cycles.
If you think crypto just randomly moves in 4-year cycles because of human psychology or market timing, then yes I believe this time is different (though I’d also say you’re wrong).
If you think crypto moves in 4-year cycles because of the Bitcoin Halvening, then I once again believe this time is different (and once again you’re wrong).
While I do believe this cycle will be longer than 4 years, I actually don’t think this time is different at all.
I think the same reasons that controlled the markets the last 3 cycles are in play once again this cycle. The only difference is that this time around, those reasons don’t happen to fit in a 4-year time frame.
By the way, this is not a new thesis, this is something I have shared in various PRO reports, PRO AMAs and podcasts over the last year. I’ve increasingly said my probabilities of an extended cycle into 2026 are rising.
Today, I believe this cycle will not only extend into 2026, but it may last until the second half of 2026, if not into 2027 or longer. Yes, that means we could have months to potentially years left in this bull run and I’m going to use the rest of this report to explain to you why.
I’m going to quickly skim over what I think controls markets and then dive deep into the main reason I think we could have years left in this bull market (hint: AI), and then finish with what this means for crypto assets and when we’ll take profits in our portfolio.
So sit back, grab a coffee, and enjoy!
WHAT CONTROLS THE MARKET CYCLES?
For those of you that are new to Milk Road Crypto PRO, I’ve been saying for years now that crypto cycles exist for the same reason cycles exist in equities, real estate and basically every other asset in the world.
They exist because of the business cycle and the liquidity cycle.
I’m not going to go too in-depth on this, as I’ve covered it in detail before, so I recommend you read the following PRO reports if you’re not up to speed:
But essentially, on the liquidity side, as more liquidity is created and put into the system, the value of fiat currencies debase against scarce assets like Bitcoin, Real Estate, Gold and stocks. I think many of you already understand this concept.
The part I think is less clear to many is the business cycle side of things.
The business cycle is essentially the cyclical nature of the contraction and expansion of the global economy. As the economy expands and businesses get bigger and more profitable, the price of assets related to them increase, as more people have more money to invest and consume. Of course, as the economy contracts the opposite is also true.
The ISM PMI is one of the most common ways to understand where the business cycle is. Generally, we want to see this metric accelerating for markets to be risk-on, especially when it’s above 50 (this means the economy is expanding).
The opposite is also true, as we see more risk-off in markets when the ISM PMI is dropping.
For the last 3 years, the ISM PMI has struggled to accelerate and sustain above 50. The main reason for this in my opinion is that financial conditions have remained rather tight with rates, DXY and Oil sitting higher for longer.
However, Tomas, our macro genius at Milk Road Macro, created his own proprietary metric to track the business cycle called the Global Economy Index. This metric is more ahead of the curve in terms of expressing where the business cycle is versus the ISM PMI which is a monthly survey.
This metric tells us a little different story, which is that we’ve already completed a mini business cycle and we’ve now started a brand new one.
If you remember late Q1 2025 before ‘Liberation Day’, we were in a bit of a growth scare. Meaning, the business cycle was heading the wrong way after a push forward at the end of 2024.
When Trump announced global tariffs the business cycle fell off a cliff and according to our Global Economy Index indicator it completely reset in such a short period of time, meaning, it technically started a brand new cycle.
Of course, this is just one indicator, so we should take it with a grain of salt, but what is clear is that things changed significantly after the tariff announcement.
What’s interesting about this is that certain assets, especially Bitcoin, held up really well during this time considering how far down the economic index went. It was like a short and sharp “bear market” followed by an aggressive recovery (similar to the COVID shutdown in March 2020).
You can look at this in two ways: an extension of the cycle or a reset into a brand new cycle. Either way, the perspective I take from this is that while we started the previous cycle with Bitcoin at $16k in December 2022, with this reset, it’s like we’ve started a new cycle in April 2025, with Bitcoin at $78k.
With this lens, there’s no way you would think we’ve topped out today at $125k.
But my thesis on a much longer bull market has more to it than just a cycle reset.
WHY THIS BULL RUN COULD HAVE LEGS INTO 2027 OR BEYOND
The answer is AI.
I believe AI is about to create one of the biggest and potentially longest bull markets in history. Bear with me here, but I’m going to dive down the AI rabbit hole for a second and then tie it back to why it matters for crypto and this cycle.
In case you’ve been living under a rock recently, AI has begun making its way into every aspect of our lives, just like the internet has over the last 30 years.
Most people know AI today as the chatbots we frequently use like ChatGPT or Grok, but it’s quickly becoming so much more than that.
For example, if you’ve seen Sora2 from OpenAI, then you’ve seen how the entire video and image world of content is currently being disrupted. But AI is more than just a digital content creator, we are now on the precipice of AI moving into the physical world. This is where things really start to change.
- Tesla already has robotaxis driving autonomously in Houston and San Francisco, with some analysts suggesting this could expand far beyond these 2 cities by the end of the year.
- Production-ready humanoid robots by both Figure and Tesla are here and should begin ramping up sales in early 2026.
- We’re seeing AI breakthroughs across the healthcare and medical industries, with AI-related cancer detection breakthroughs happening just last week.
And not to mention the amount of AI being used to create efficiencies in essentially every corporation globally, whether it's in factories or in the board room. This trend is only just getting started and it will not stop anytime soon.
Now you might be asking, why does this matter to the crypto cycle or the business cycle? Are sales of Tesla cars and humanoid robots, or ChatGPT memberships really going to extend this bull market for years?
No, not at all. You need to think about what’s happening in AI from another layer deeper.
The more that we use AI, the more we need to invest in the infrastructure to enable all of this AI usage.
Every time AI does anything – whether ChatGPT is outputting text, Sora2 is spitting out a video, or a self-driving Tesla is changing lanes – it uses compute and processing power in a physical data center somewhere in the world.
And right now, we have nowhere near enough compute and processing power to keep up with the world’s AI usage, and that’s before autonomous cars, humanoid robots and the rest of AI’s use cases really take off!
Current estimations say we need to spend at least $500 billion per year on data centers for the next 5 years just to meet CURRENT DEMAND!
Now let’s go one layer deeper into this infrastructure, just to fully grasp what is happening here.
This compute requires massive data centers (literally the size of Manhattan or bigger) to process all of the data. Which requires 10s to 100s of thousands of GPUs (mainly from Nvidia) within each data center.
And these data centers have a power capacity already of over 1 gigawatt (GW), with estimations that we will have up to 5 GW data centers in the coming years.
To give some context here, a 1GW data center at full utilization consumes ~8.76 terawatt-hours (TWh) yearly, which is roughly 2% of the entire U.S. total electricity usage in 2024. 🤯
And that’s just 1 data center, at just 1 GW capacity. Think about what this means when we have 100s of data centers with 5 GW power capacity in the coming years.
Predictions already suggest that data centers in the US will consume 12% of the entire US energy resources by 2028!
The moral of the story is this:
- We do NOT have enough data centers to power the exponential adoption and usage that we are seeing in AI today.
- We do NOT have enough GPUs to fill the incoming build out of these data centers globally.
- And finally, we do NOT have enough electricity to meet the demand created by the exponential adoption and usage of AI.
The energy and new infrastructure needed to power this AI revolution is unlike anything we’ve seen in human history. It’s likely going to be bigger than the industrial revolution and it’s definitely a bigger infrastructure build-out than the internet revolution.
It’s going to cost trillions and trillions of dollars.
Now here’s the real catch…
This is not just a friendly, slow and steady build out amongst the companies and countries who choose to participate. This is an all-out arms race by the most powerful companies and countries in the world to build the biggest data centers, with the most GPUs and access to the most energy.
It is a very real, do or die situation to win AI.
From the company perspective, if they don’t win the AI race, they risk losing their company. This is a winner-takes-all (or most) situation in AI because the companies with the most data and the most processing power will offer the best products, there is no other way around it.
Mark Zuckerberg from Meta has already committed to spending $600 Billion on AI infrastructure by 2028 alone, saying that he’d rather mispend a couple of HUNDRED BILLION dollars than miss the AI moment.
But more importantly is the perspective from the major economies, as this is a matter of national security. Forget creating great products, the countries with the most powerful AI and robots will be the countries with the strongest defense and the strongest army.
Human-based armies and defense no longer matter. Sending humans into battle against AI robots and drones is like bringing a stuffed-animal to a gun fight, but worse.
Even outside of the defense sector, economies need AI to replace their aging populations.
If you remember from my video last year about why market cycles exist, the big reason why countries are in so much debt in the first place is because they have aging populations, resulting in a less productive society.
The only way to promote growth in an economy with an aging population is either immigration (which you can only do so much of) or printing money (which has serious implications).
AI is the solution to countries with aging populations that are not productive enough to grow their economy (which, by the way, is every major economy in the world).
What this means is that, it does NOT matter how much it costs economies or companies to win this AI battle, they will spend whatever it takes. They literally have no choice.
This is why we will see trillions and trillions of dollars spent on AI infrastructure and energy over the coming years (we are already seeing this in both the USA and China).
This is why we will see regulations change around the world to enable and accelerate this AI infrastructure buildout (we are already seeing this in both the USA and China).
This is also why we will see continued tensions amongst countries to strategically position themselves ahead of others in terms of costs and access to the materials required to build these data centers and power them.
(We are already seeing these tensions between the USA and China – why else do you think the tariff war is happening now?)
The structural dynamics of our markets have already changed and I see no way that this will (or even could) stop in the coming years.
To stop investing in and building out this AI infrastructure is to admit defeat and die – that’s the reality for the world’s biggest companies and economies.
While this sounds absolutely ludicrous (which it is), those who understand this will have an edge in the market.
With this kind of sustainable and ongoing demand, it’s clear that buying the dip continues to be the best strategy.
Of course, many will tell you that we are in an AI bubble already and the music will stop soon because it’s the same as the late 90s with the Internet.
But what these people are missing is the fact that this AI infrastructure build out is being built by companies with the largest balance sheets in history, in addition to governments with a bottomless pile of cash.
Not to mention, the more we build AI, the more the revenues from AI products increase. This is not how things went in the 90s!
Now, I should say that at some point down the road leverage and debt will make its way into this – and at that point we should be concerned.
But we are nowhere near that today.
And finally, this doesn’t mean that every asset is going to continue to go up. It’s clear, however, that this is extremely bullish for specific sectors like data center companies, GPU/chip companies and energy companies.
… but what does this mean for crypto?
Uh, Oh… 😧 The rest of this report is exclusive to Crypto PRO or PRO All Access members!
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WHAT’S LEFT INSIDE? 👀
- Why this bull run might last into 2027.
- The moment Kyle plans to sell his crypto bags.
- The three signs the market’s about to peak.
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