GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that comes in hotter than a maxi defending their bags on Twitter.
Hereโs a taste of this weekโs menu:
- ๐ฅ BTC is the purest AI trade you can buy.
- ๐ฅต Crypto OGs are annoyed that BTC got too corporate.
- ๐ถ๏ธ Stock certificates are truly archaic.
2022 killed crypto lending. Nexo survived - and is now the 3rd-largest crypto lender in the world. We asked their US COO how. Watch here.
HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK ๐ฅ
Bitcoin is the purest AI trade you can buy ๐ค
Jordi Visser (Founder of Visser Labs) says everyone keeps framing the AI trade as Nvidia and Micron, but he sees it differently.
He's been calling Bitcoin "the purest AI trade" for over a year, arguing that billions of AI agents are useless without financial rails to actually transact on, and that's exactly the role crypto fills.
Jordi thinks that thesis just hit its trigger point:
The biggest short squeeze in crypto history added $500B to the crypto market cap in a matter of days, and he's now calling for the entire space to hit $50T to $100T within five years.
He's not ignoring the memecoin frenzy on Robinhood chain either, seeing it as the same retail energy that shows up right before institutions pile in.
๐๏ธ Listen to the full episode here.
Crypto OGs are annoyed that Bitcoin got too corporate ๐ฆ
Katie Talati (Head of Research at Arca) says there's a real split forming in crypto right now.
The people who got in early are watching Bitcoin go from a cyberpunk outsider asset to something BlackRock talks about on CNBC every day, and a lot of them hate it.
Katie thinks that discomfort is part of what's fueling renewed interest in privacy coins like Zcash, since some of that original community just wants an asset that still feels private and uninstitutionalized.
๐๏ธ Listen to the full episode here.
Stock certificates are truly archaic ๐
Carlos Domingo (Founder & CEO of Securitize) has run his company for almost nine years without ever holding a physical share certificate for it.
Instead, his own stock trades onchain on Solana, through the same rails Securitize built for everyone else.
The company is now a licensed transfer agent, broker dealer and RIA, partnered with the two biggest transfer agents in the U.S. plus the New York Stock Exchange on 24/7 trading of tokenized equities.
Carlos calls this "the end of the beginning" for tokenization, and he's betting the next phase is consolidation, since a bare tokenization platform without that full licensing stack behind it won't survive what's coming.
๐๏ธ Listen to the full episode here.
NOBODY WANTS TO SELL THEIR CRYPTO ๐ฆ
Selling crypto triggers a tax bill. Borrowing against it doesn't.
That's why crypto lending is booming againโฆ and why Nexo is now the third-largest crypto lender in the world.
We sat down with Neil Steinhardt, COO of Nexo US, to talk:
- Why borrowers are choosing credit over selling
- How Nexo got back into the U.S. (Bakkt, RIAs & the GENIUS Act)
- What kept them alive when Celsius, BlockFi, and Genesis didn't
- Where the market goes next - and the M&A wave nobody's positioned for
๐ Watch the full episode here!
HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK (P2) ๐ฅ
The AI layoffs are already happening, you just can't see them yet ๐ป
Martin Toman (Lead Analyst at Milk Road) says the AI job-loss story wonโt show up as dramatic layoff headlines, at least not yet.
He thinks itโs happening, but only underneath the surface for now.
Companies at the AI frontier are hiring aggressively and eating market share from slower competitors, but those older companies wonโt die overnight, theyโll just bleed out over the next few years.
Martin thinks the real wave of visible layoffs only hits once money gets scarce again, when higher rates finally force companies to tighten up.
๐๏ธ Listen to the full episode here.
The market hasn't caught up to what's actually happening in memory ๐ง
Vincent (Lead AI Researcher, Milk Road) points to Micron's valuation as proof the market hasn't caught up to what's actually happening in memory.
Despite locking in long-term supply contracts with floor pricing, Micron's forward P/E sits somewhere between 6 and 12, a bear-market multiple for a company sitting at the center of an AI memory shortage.
Vincent's view is that investors have PTSD from the last memory boom-and-bust cycle and are pricing in a crash that these new long-term, floor-priced contracts with Samsung and others were specifically designed to prevent.
The way he sees it: Micron is no longer cyclical, it's a structurally repriced bet the market just hasn't caught up to yet.
๐๏ธ Listen to the full episode here.
BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD ๐ช
Free seminar on blockchain and private markets. Our PRO analyst, Martin, is joining a live webinar to discuss where VC money is flowing. Register for free here.*
Question: If you had $10k to invest ANYWHERE right now, where would you put it?
Wholesale inflation is up: PPI reaccelerated in August, year-on-year we're at +5.4%.
Jordi Visser: "When you get all mad and say this house of cards is going to crumble down... it's not. The governments can't allow it to."
*this is sponsored content.
๐ Watch the full episode here!
MILKY MEMES ๐คฃ
