GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that makes Hot Ones look like a tea party.
Hereβs a taste of this weekβs menu:
- π₯΅ Compute ate Bitcoin's lunch.
- π₯ Stablecoins might break the EU.
- πΆοΈ Sorry, but we're still in a bear market.
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HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK π₯
Compute ate BTCβs lunch as the corporate store of value π₯οΈ
Kyle Reidhead (Head of Research at Milk Road):
Corporations have decided compute is the new store of value - the role everyone swore BTC would fill back in 2021 (and never did).
The difference is corporations don't just want a scarce asset, they want a scarce asset that's also productive - BTC was scarce but passive, ETH was supposed to be the answer, and it turned out to be GPUs.
Exhibit A: xAI dropped $24B on compute and is already renting it to Anthropic for ~$29B a year.
That's why Google is raising $80B in equity and stuffing every spare dollar into the buildout.
Whoever controls the compute finds a way to monetize it - so they're never stopping until the last possible second.
ποΈ Listen to the full episode here.
Stablecoins might be the thing that breaks up the EU πͺπΊ
Michael Howell (Founder & CEO of Cross Border Capital) made the boldest call of the week:
This sovereign debt mess could eventually crack the European Union wide open.
His logic: the only real safe asset in Europe is the German Bund.
French and German debt are diverging fast, and the glue holding it all together was NATO, which is now wobbling.
Then add dollar stablecoins, which make it dead simple to flee the euro for dollars with less paperwork, faster settlement, and a little anonymity from the taxman.
Michael thinks that capital flight is a genuine threat to the euro, the pound, and every emerging market currency.
Not tomorrow, he says - but the dominoes are lined up.
ποΈ Listen to the full episode here.
Sorry, but we're still in a bear market π»
Jamie Coutts (Chief Crypto Analyst at Real Vision) pointed out that the 25-30% pop earlier this year was a textbook counter-trend rally.
Until Bitcoin reclaims/breaks the mid $80kβs on the weekly chart he's not flipping bullish - and he thinks we get one more flush to the mid-$60kβs first (which has since happened).
And that's exactly where he's accumulating.
Jamie's whole thesis is that the agentic AI economy needs blockchain rails to move value - so the smart money is quietly buying the quality onchain protocols positioned for that over the next 12-24 months while everyone else chases AI stocks.
ποΈ Listen to the full episode here.
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HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK (P2) π₯
We're speed-running a global gas shortage β½
Jim Bianco (Founder of Bianco Research) thinks the whole world is being reckless with oil.
The market is betting the Strait of Hormuz reopens in 30-60 days, so everyone - Japan, China, Europe, the U.S. - has been aggressively draining inventories to keep prices capped.
Jim's point: if that bet is wrong and the Strait stays shut, we blow through "operational minimums" - and you can't run the tanks to zero.
Then comes demand destruction, which is the polite term for pricing people out at the gas station - Asia feels it first (21-day tankers from the Gulf), then Europe, then the U.S.
Oil's already up 8% to ~$95, and while $200 isn't his base case, he's not ruling it out.
ποΈ Listen to the full episode here.
Nobody wants privacy until they suddenly, desperately do π
Yan Liberman (Co-founder of Delphi Digital) is calling Venice - Eric Voorhees' privacy-first LLM - wildly undervalued even after a 10x in three months.
He says people wonβt care about it at allβ¦ until something goes wrong.
When there's a leak or a government subpoena - everyone stampedes at once.
He figures even 5-10% of all AI inference wanting real privacy is a massive market, and that's the conservative slice.
On the numbers, Yan pegs Venice at roughly $60M ARR, with ~$10M added in a single month, trading near 11x revenue - cheap for that kind of growth.
His read: only crypto money has touched it so far, and it re-rates hard the moment enterprise and AI investors wake up.
(We just wrote a PRO Report on Venice - here.)
ποΈ Listen to the full episode here.
BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD πͺ
DeFi Saver turns Aave v4 into a trading bot for your loans: Stop losses, take profits, and one-click loan migration - we broke down the pros, cons, and fees so you don't have to.*
Bitwise CEO: this is the most bullish moment in Bitwise's entire 7-8 year history in crypto.
John Gillen: SpaceX's IPO is about to be a $1.8T vacuum in an already-overcrowded U.S. market.
James Seyffart: Everyone's freaking out about $4B leaving BTC ETFs - but ETFs still hold ~$55B in net inflows, and investors aren't behaving like previous-cycle tourists.
Your Bitcoin can hand you cash without selling a single sat β That's Ledn's whole pitch, and our full review breaks down everything you need to know about the platform.*
*this is sponsored content.
MILKY MEMES π€£
