GM. This is Milk Road, the newsletter that helps you understand crypto well enough to make your own calls.
Here’s what we’ve got for you today:
- ✍️ AI agents are coming for bank fees.
- 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: NEAR's Plan to Power an Economy Run Entirely by AI.
- 🍪 Trump Media moves 4,259 BTC.
Ever wondered if your Bitcoin security set up is enough? Unchained lets you pick your current custody set up and stress test it in a single click! Stress test your setup.
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AI AGENTS ARE COMING FOR BANK FEES 🤖
Americans have ~$15T sitting in checking and savings accounts, mostly ignored.
That's the estimate from Joseph Chalom (CEO of Sharplink), who joined us on The Milk Road Show this week.
He says most of that cash earns somewhere between 0.07% and 0.35% a year, while a money market fund (a fund that parks your cash in short-term government debt) at the same bank pays ~3.7%.
Add it all up, and he reckons Americans miss out on ~$180B a year in interest.
And the FDIC's own numbers back up that general idea:
Source: FDIC, SwitchWize
It sits there because moving it is boring, and people have better things to do.
(Joe even admits he has some cash sitting idle at Wells Fargo.)
But AI agents don't get bored. In Joe’s words, "any agent worth its muster will immediately notice that you have uninvested cash."
… and that's exactly what the big banks are worried about.
Between Oct. 13 and Oct. 16, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citi and Schwab all said outside AI agents can't log into customer accounts or move money.
Schwab's CEO says it’s already having to block big agents like Meta's Muse.
The official reason is security:
- Jamie Dimon (CEO of JPMorgan) warned there "could be thousands" of rogue agents.
- Brian Moynihan (CEO of Bank of America) wants a human to sign off on any money leaving your account, and his bank is still working out who's liable when an AI-approved payment goes wrong.
Even Joe agrees banks need to know who (or what) they're dealing with.
JPMorgan's own CFO also tied personal AI agents to a problem the bank already has: deposits leaving in search of higher yields.
Joe’s reframe? If your agent moves your cash into a higher-paying account (even at the same bank), the bank earns less.
So in response, the banks have locked the front door…
But the agents are already getting in somewhere else.
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AI AGENTS ARE COMING FOR BANK FEES (P2) 🤖
Crypto and fintech platforms are rolling out the welcome mat for AI agents.
Coinbase for Agents plugs AI agents like ChatGPT or Claude straight into your Coinbase account, and Brian Armstrong says agentic trading volume is growing ~20% week over week (though he admits it's "still relatively small").
Robinhood says 150K+ customers have opened agentic trading accounts since May, and their agents use its tools almost 30M times a day.
Joe estimates 35% of all financial services fees (~$4T a year by 2035) will be "touched" by agents, with ~$1.4T a year of that competed away and handed back to customers:
Source: Joseph Chalom, Sharplink
But agents are only one side of the squeeze.
Mike Cagney (founder of Figure) says lenders like Goldman charge SOFR (the benchmark rate banks borrow at) plus 2.5% to finance loans, while raising that money at SOFR flat.
His argument is that a blockchain can do the risk checks that that 2.5% pays for.
Though, Joe doesn’t have a crystal ball…
Earlier this year, he predicted stablecoins would double or triple. Since then, they've hovered around $300B, and he admits he got that one wrong.
Agentic trading is still small, and the banks aren't sitting still. Schwab is building its own AI assistant (Charley), which keeps the money-moving inside Schwab.
Chalom himself expects "a period of moats and protections and walls" before agents win out.
Until then, the early winners will be the platforms that let agents in, making Robinhood one of the best public options for that bet.
Btw: our PRO analyst M0xt is up 15% on his HOOD position - all while HOOD itself sits ~47% below its ~$150 high.
That's what getting in early buys you:
Enough room that a ~47% drawdown still leaves you in profit.
Try Milk Road PRO for a buck for 7 days.
INSIDE CRYPTO'S SECURITY ARMAGEDDON
Binance lost over $6B in about 20 minutes last week, the biggest hack in crypto history.
A week earlier, NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin warned that crypto had reached "Security Armageddon."
Illia, who co-authored the Google paper behind the transformer (the T in ChatGPT), joined John to explain what comes next.
Here's what we covered:
- How SHIELD stopped most of the $50M+ that Bitget's hackers tried to move through NEAR.
- What NEAR's vote to cut token inflation from 2.5% to 1.6% means for holders.
- How worried Bitcoin holders should be about quantum computing.
👉 Watch the full episode now.
YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪
Every $BTC to $ETH swap is a taxable event. But inside a crypto IRA, it generally isn't. Here's how Roth and Traditional crypto IRAs work (and the catches).*
Core Scientific is done with mining: It will finish exiting Bitcoin mining by year-end, with AI colocation already 92% of its $232.9M in Q3 revenue.
Trump Media moves 4,259 BTC: About $326M left wallets Arkham labels as collateral for its $1B convertible notes, and Nov 30 is the date to watch.
Circle's beat has an asterisk: Revenue hit $865M vs. $778M expected, but $182M was a one-off ARC presale. Without it, $683M and down ~8% YoY.
*this is sponsored content.
