GM. This is Milk Road, the daily newsletter that's the fresh set of eyes your portfolio needs.
Hereβs what weβve got for you today:
- βοΈ BTC just ripped!
- ποΈ The Milk Road Show: Is Ethereum About to Outperform Everything?
- πͺ Only 6% of Bitcoin's history has been this quiet.
Ledn is a Bitcoin-backed lending platform that lets you borrow against your BTC without selling it. Read the full breakdown here.
Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Powered by CoinGecko.
BITCOIN JUST RIPPED ON A BOND MARKET ANNOUNCEMENT π¦
Bitcoin went from roughly $64,400 to almost $72,000 in under 24 hours.
And on the way up it forcibly closed about $1.1B worth of shorts.
That's the biggest single day of short liquidations in Bitcoin's recorded history, and over $1B of it happened inside about an hour.
What set it off was a press release from the U.S. Treasury about bond buybacks.
(Stay with me, I promise this gets good.)
The U.S. Treasury normally sells bonds to fund the government. A buyback is the reverse. They go into the market and buy their own older bonds back off the dealers holding them.
They pay for it by issuing new short-term debt, so the total pile of government debt barely moves (it's a swap).
On Wednesday, the Treasury said it's at least doubling the size of those operations, from $2B a pop to at least $4B, starting September 9, running through November 4.
They're aiming at the long end of the curve (bonds that don't mature for another 10 to 30 years), and against a $32T Treasury market, that's small - but the important part is why they did it...
On Tuesday, the 30-year Treasury yield (what the government pays to borrow money for 30 years) hit 5.337%, the highest since 2007.
Buyers had gone on strike at the long end since late June, leaving dealers sitting on bonds nobody wanted.
So the Treasury decided to step in, and the 30-year fell back to 5.196%.
John, our crypto analyst, is calling it the most fundamentally bullish catalyst for Bitcoin since the Fed started cutting rates two years ago - and the chart doesnβt disagree:
The way John sees it: The government just showed everyone it won't let long-term borrowing costs float freely. And rather than wait on the Fed to solve the issue, the Treasury walked into the bond market itself.
Whatβs weirder is, the whole reason the Treasury got backed into this corner has little to do with government spending, and a lot to do with AIβ¦
SAFEST WAY TO BORROW AGAINST BITCOIN
The nightmare scenario:
You borrow against your BTC β the price dips β you wake up to a liquidation notice right before Bitcoin bounces back.
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Here's why it's one of the safest ways to borrow against Bitcoin:
- 50% starting LTV (other platforms start around 70%)
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We break down Ledn's features, how its loans work and the risks you should know about in our article.
BITCOIN JUST RIPPED ON A BOND MARKET ANNOUNCEMENT (P2) π¦
Hyperscalers (the giant cloud companies building AI data centers) used to pay for construction out of pocket.
Now they borrow, with long maturities, from the exact same pool of investors that buys 30-year government bonds.
Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle averaged about $28B a year in bond issuance from 2020 to 2024.
They did $121B in 2025β¦
Then $159B in the first five months of 2026 alone. π
Bank of America expects that group to keep borrowing around $140B a year, and reckons it could top $300B.
Investors are charging them for the privilege, too. Meta's own 30-year notes yield 6.30%, and a $12.5B data center bond tied to Meta priced at 7.53% in July.
The Treasury is offering 5.2% for the same 30 years.
I.e. The U.S. government is now bidding against Meta for the same lenders.
β¦ ok, but how does any of this affect crypto?
When the Treasury stepped in to buy back U.S. debt, they showed they were willing to print money to support the bond market, debasing the U.S. dollar in the process.
As the U.S. dollar debases (i.e. becomes more plentiful), scarce assets (like crypto) that are priced in U.S. dollars typically become more valuable.
On top of that, there were a whole bunch of shorts that were forced to buy crypto as prices rose, amplifying the move.
Right, so thatβs where weβve beenβ¦ but where are we headed?
The catalysts to watch from here:
- September 9: The first of the bigger buybacks.
- September 14: The earliest possible Senate vote on the CLARITY Act.
- November 4: The Treasury decides whether any of this spending continues.
On top of that, just in general:
Keep an eye on Q4. Itβs historically been a positive period for crypto, especially when coming out of down markets.
Btw - John bought Bitcoin at $60,796 on June 5, well before any of this landed, and he's already up around 18% (who else can say that in crypto right now?).
Donβt miss his next call!
Track each one of his investments in real time with Milk Road PRO, before prices go from $25/m to $39/m next Wednesday.
BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD πͺ
Matt Hougan: "The bull case for Ethereum is that the total number of assets onchain is going to 10-100x."
Lyn Alden: The retail bid was weak last cycle - and the corporate treasury fad has peaked. But there's still one massive untapped pool...
Matt Crosby: 94% of Bitcoin's entire history, it had MORE volatility than right now. Only 6% of Bitcoin's history has been this quiet.
MILKY MEMES π€£
ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY π₯
VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY
