GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter spicier than a taco truck at 2am.
Here’s a taste of this week’s menu:
- 🔥 ETH might need to get cheaper.
- 🥵 It's a bull market… for banks.
- 🌶️ Photonics is the new AI trade.
Peoples Reserve goes beyond basic crypto lending with borrowing, mortgage, yield, swap and spending tools. Read our full Peoples Reserve review.
HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK 🔥
ETH is cheap, but it might need to get cheaper 📉
Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, walked through five ETH-vs-Bitcoin signals and only two are flashing "bottom" so far.
His deck was literally titled "Cheaper, not capitulated" - ETH is ~17% below its holders' cost basis, but the relative-value and exchange-flow metrics say it hasn't fully washed out against BTC yet.
The spicy part: for ETH to reach the extreme undervalued zone that historically kicks off outperformance, either Bitcoin needs to rip while ETH sits still, or ETH needs to bleed even more from here.
And despite Bitcoin breaking $66k, Julio's still calling this a bear-market rally, pointing at ~$72k as the trader cost-basis level that's rejected every bounce this cycle.
His message: don't get too excited about green candles yet.
🎙️ Listen to the full episode here.
It's a bull market for banks and a bear market for everyone else 🏦
Sid Powell, co-founder and CEO of Maple Finance, says we're living through a total inversion of 2021 - back then it was all-time-high euphoria with no real traction, now it's the reverse.
Maple's loans are near an all-time high around $1.75B, JPMorgan's tokenizing, BlackRock's onboard, and Robinhood's running DeFi rails on the back end, yet retail prices sit at bear lows and his timeline is more capitulated than he's ever seen it.
His read: this is the "deployment phase," and the builders ignoring the sour sentiment will win when the S-curve finally bends.
(Same as the AI crowd who started in 2017, before AI had found product-market-fit.)
🎙️ Listen to the full episode here.
Everyone's on GPUs and memory, Melvin's buying the light 💡
Melvin, Milk Road's AI analyst, thinks the market's asleep on the "third bottleneck" in the AI buildout:
Photonics, the optical networking that moves data between GPUs using light instead of copper.
The semiconductor trade got wrecked, and he's treating that as the entry - Goldman figures networking content per AI system could jump ~29x, with co-packaged optics revenue scaling from ~$1B today toward tens of billions in a couple years (though even Melvin thinks Goldman's timeline is too hot).
His high-beta degen pick is Applied Optoelectronics, an ~$8B name that swung from $18 to $233 in a year and flat-out told investors revenue is capped by production capacity, not demand.
His safer play is Marvell, the Jensen-blessed "next $1T company" that just fell ~45% off its highs.
🎙️ Listen to the full episode here.
OUR TAKE ON PEOPLES RESERVE
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Their $BTC-backed mortgages let you put Bitcoin toward a home without cashing out or worrying about forced collateral liquidations. You can also borrow cash, use separate yield products like Vaults and Bitcoin Bonds, swap tokens, and there’s a crypto debit card on the way.
The catch is, you need $PRN for the best rates, and the platform’s still new without a long track record
In our latest review, we look at bitcoin-backed mortgages, self-repaying mortgages, lines of credit, bonds, vaults, cards and more.
Read our Peoples Reserve review today.
HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK (P2) 🔥
An AI is beating the market and it's not close 🤖
Gav Blaxberg, founder of Wolf Financial, pulled the curtain back on Arena, a live benchmark where his team handed the top AI models $100k each and let them trade in real time since November.
The GPT-based strategy is up 70% while the market's up about 11.5% over the same stretch, posting its reasoning every day it makes a move.
Gav's bigger bet is that agentic trading is about to detonate - he quoted Chris Camillo saying it could 100x retail trading volume once people stop placing orders themselves.
He's already running agents that scan his portfolio every 5-15 minutes, watch for Trump posts that move markets, and ping him the second a stock turns profitable.
🎙️ Listen to the full episode here.
The market thinks Galaxy is crypto, M0xt thinks it's an AI printer 🖨️
Milk Road's lead analyst (M0xt) argued everyone's mispricing Galaxy Digital because they still see a struggling crypto stock and totally ignore its Helios AI data-center business.
His edge thesis: you have no informational advantage buying Apple or Nvidia, but Galaxy sits in a blind spot because nobody includes it in the data-center conversation.
The setup is Helios has ~800 MW contracted with CoreWeave, worth roughly $1B in revenue at ~90% margins, and none of it has hit the P&L yet, so Q2 earnings should force a re-rate. Martin models fair value near $57 against ~$24 at the time, and it's his biggest position at nearly 20% of his book.
His view: "If you are not bullish on Galaxy, you are doing something wrong or you haven't done your homework."
🎙️ Listen to the full episode here.
BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪
Wanna use your Bitcoin without selling it? Peoples Reserve goes beyond basic crypto lending with borrowing, mortgage, yield, swap, and spending tools.
Yikes… Warren Buffett called out America's gambling problem. Novogratz thinks he's onto something.
Mert: "What does Solana need to do to compete with Hyperliquid? That's actually the wrong question because Solana doesn't compete with Hyperliquid."
Lyn Alden: A $1T market cap is possible for stablecoins on a 5 year time horizon.
If you hold HOOD, read this. Robinhood has grown into an all-in-one platform for stocks, crypto, IRAs, prediction markets, credit cards and advanced trading tools.
Put your Bitcoin to work without touching your stack.
MILKY MEMES 🤣
