GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter hotter than a validator's server room in August.
Hereโs a taste of this weekโs menu:
- ๐ฅ Ethereum and Base are NOT AT WAR.
- ๐ฅต Every company will have its own chain.
- ๐ถ๏ธ Galaxy has a secret money printer.
HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK ๐ฅ
Base and Ethereum aren't getting divorced ๐
Crypto Twitter is at odds yet again over a technical detail regarding account abstraction, the technology that enables the building of Web2-like user account management systems for Web3.
Binji (Founding Member at Ethlabs) is pushing back against the drama after Ethereum and Base gave up on building a shared account-abstraction standard.
His take is that Facebook building its own website doesn't mean it has divorced itself from the internet. His analogy: Ethereum is New York, and if every neighborhood were Tribeca, he'd never go.
Plus, Base has billions in ETH sitting on it and is consuming blobs "like nobody's business."
๐๏ธ Listen to the full episode here.
Every company gets a chain ๐
Karl Floersch (Co-founder & CTO of OP Labs) says we're heading to a world of a million chains, where every company has one, just as every company ended up with a website.
More than 50 organizations are already running L2s on the OP Stack, and they processed ~6B transactions last year.
He says weโre still early, with less than 1% of the global financial system onchain.
Karl also said the new SEC/CFTC rulemaking might actually be better than the CLARITY Act, since the bill was full of compromises.
๐๏ธ Listen to the full episode here.
Galaxy's secret money printer ๐จ๏ธ
Kyle Reidhead (Head of Research at Milk Road) already has 10% of his portfolio in Galaxy, and he's itching to buy more.
The market hates Galaxy's crypto business because it was supposed to help fund the AI data center buildout, but Kyle's pointing out that crypto just ran 30%, and nobody remembers how profitable crypto businesses get when volumes come back.
His bet is that the crypto side starts printing, that cash funds the data centers, and the flywheel gets massive.
๐๏ธ Listen to the full episode here.
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HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK (P2) ๐ฅ
Hyperliquid is coming for the #2 spot ๐ฅ
Eliezer Ndinga (Head of Research at 21Shares) is doubling down on his call that Hyperliquid can become the second-largest crypto asset behind Bitcoin.
At ~$24B, HYPE trades at 30x+ its gross revenue, and Eli says the Kraken/Payward deal (which opens regulated U.S. access) helps justify that premium.
He calls Hyperliquid the "Google of price discovery," with open interest at an all-time high of $18B+.
Fun fact he threw in: Google was roughly the 21st search engine, so being early doesn't mean winning.
๐๏ธ Listen to the full episode here.
The market is sleeping on IREN's power ๐
Martin Toman (Lead Analyst at Milk Road) thinks Wall Street is valuing IREN only on its contracted business and missing the 5GW of secured power it has locked up.
For context, Galaxy is in second place with 1.6GW, and demand runs into the tens of gigawatts.
IREN's first Microsoft building is already generating ~$1B in revenue, and Martin expects all four buildings (~$4B in total) to be online by year-end.
The catch is that IREN needs ~$25B in funding next year, so Martin is modeling 20% dilution and waiting a week or two before he buys.
๐๏ธ Listen to the full episode here.
BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD ๐ช
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**this is partner content.
