🥛 Is crypto just along for the ride? 🥴

GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that's smoother than your dad's dance moves at a wedding.

Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

✍️ What we’re watching this week.
🎙️ The Milk Road Show: 5 Bitcoin Bear Cases Just Got Destroyed w/ Sam Callahan.
🍪 Raoul Pal: "It's all so f*cking obvious." Every bank is here.

Milk Road and Alumni Ventures are teaming up this week only to give readers early access to high-potential startup opportunities. Get access to VC deals for FREE now.

Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Powered by CoinGecko.

WHAT WE’RE WATCHING THIS WEEK

Every Monday we drag our content meeting straight into your inbox, so you can see what we're chewing on before the week gets going.

This one opened with red on just about every screen.

And a lot of the damage centered around Asia.

South Korea's KOSPI (its main stock index) got halted entirely after crashing 8.4% at the open, and Japan's Nikkei fell 4.2%, wiping out roughly $335B.

John was all over it while the rest of us were all busy battling the Sunday scaries:

Source: Milk Road PRO/Discord

He’s seeing it like this:

Markets are bracing for Japan to hike interest rates, which threatens the ‘carry trade’ - where investors borrow cheap yen to buy assets elsewhere and then scramble to unwind when the yen strengthens.

(Btw - if you want round-the-clock access to our in-house madman [John] posting real-time market insights at 9pm on a Sunday, try Milk Road PRO for a buck for 7 days.)

On the yen trade itself, John's approach is to stay out of the ring:

"Better to trust the central bankers to manage the simultaneous devaluation of all their currencies relatively equally and just pick the assets you want to allocate to protect your capital during that process."

Crypto didn't dodge the red weekend either - BTC slid to around $59.1k on Friday night, before clawing back to ~$63.7k as of this writing.

But this dip wasn't really a crypto story…

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WHAT WE’RE WATCHING THIS WEEK (P2)

This recent crypto dip wasn't really a crypto story in itself…

With a stock market pullback looking likely, traders sold off crypto first to cut risk.

(Ok, that blows.)

So when can we expect a shiny new narrative to ride to crypto's rescue?

We’re not holding our breath.

For the most part right now, it’s the same pool of crypto capital that’s rotating between trades, and any new money is being pulled elsewhere (more on that in a second).

That's why Martin keeps steering us off narrative-focused tokens, and towards projects with real revenue and users.

Hyperliquid is turning Wall Street heads (even the NYSE founder marveled at 11 people running something that big), while Sky held up far better through the worst of the selling.

Those are the assets we're glad to own.

Meanwhile, there’s a whole bunch of fresh cash heading to space this week:

Source: @cryptorover

The SpaceX IPO (part AI play, part rocket company, and the biggest listing in human history) is already 3x oversubscribed - meaning there’re more buyers lined up than shares available - and is expected to open near $135 per share.

All of which will suck liquidity (fresh cash) from the market - likely hurting risk assets (like crypto) even more.

So here’s our current mood, in a single sentence:

Patient, picky, and in no rush to force a trade.

Crypto's riding shotgun to stocks for now, and the narratives are running on fumes.

For now, we're watching whether stocks steady up, and how SpaceX prices before making any big decisions.

See you in the next huddle.

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