GM. This is Milk Road, your warm towel after a long flight through crypto turbulence.
Here’s what we’ve got for you today:
- ✍️ What we’re watching.
- 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: The Secret War That Could Make Ethereum Explode w/ John Gillen.
- 🍪 Bitcoin is in crisis.
Outskill is hosting a FREE hands-on bootcamp designed to make you a Claude expert in just 16 hours. Sign up now for $0.
Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Powered by CoinGecko.
IS CRYPTO'S CYCLE BROKEN? WHAT WE’RE WATCHING 👀
Welcome back to the Monday Huddle, where you get a seat at our weekly content meeting.
Here’s everything we covered today…
John’s been watching for cracks in the AI trade as crypto grinds along the bottom of its price range.
His view on stocks/AI right now is that the bull run probably isn't over, but it's now running on borrowed money - retail traders and margin debt (cash people borrow to bet bigger) are doing the heavy lifting.
And we've already stacked trillions in market cap onto a handful of names.
E.g. South Korea's market went vertical on two stocks (and the U.S. isn't too far behind when it comes to concentration).
When a market's that narrow/levered, pullbacks can be fast and ugly.
That said, John's not calling this the top - more of a ‘mid-cycle digestion’ (think: a sideways breather).
And all of this is happening while the air's (still) leaking on the crypto side. 👇
Many of the big buyers aren’t buying like they used to.
E.g. Strategy just raised north of a billion dollars and didn't spend a single cent on Bitcoin.
Instead, they parked it in cash to reassure the market they can keep funding STRC - their yield product that pays a chunky dividend.
The larger concern: Strategy no longer has the best product on the market.
BlackRock just launched a covered-call Bitcoin ETF (a fund that sells options against its Bitcoin to spin off income), and Goldman's about to follow suit.
Both are cheaper and pay more.
But don’t worry - we’re not expecting a death spiral here, just an outcompeted product with no clear way to win demand back.
Which raised a question…
BECOME A CLAUDE EXPERT FOR FREE
Claude is rapidly becoming one of the most valuable AI tools in the workplace.
Good news:
Outskill is hosting a hands-on bootcamp designed to make you a Claude-expert in just 16 hours.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
- Master Claude’s Chat, Cowork, and Code modes
- Set up plug-ins to automate your work
- Build apps and dashboards without writing code (vibe coding, babyyy)
This session is completely free but only for the next 72 hours.
Please support our sponsors who make this free newsletter possible.
IS CRYPTO'S CYCLE BROKEN? WHAT WE’RE WATCHING (P2) 👀
If AI keeps vacuuming up every spare dollar for another three or four years, does crypto's next four-year cycle get dulled?
John's answer: maybe. And that's what's messing with him.
The cycle top he wanted to see in 2026 did show up. The economy accelerated, liquidity flowed.
It just didn’t show up in crypto - instead, it poured into AI stocks and IPOs.
In past cycles, crypto sat at the far end of the risk curve - the place where spare cash went to find asymmetric risk/reward.
But this time, it's all getting hoovered into the AI trade.
Still, John isn't bearish. He just thinks the approach needs to change. Buy the right tokens, he says, and crypto starts to look like plain old value investing.
He’s watching Real-World Asset (RWA) tokenization - which is climbing fast. Around $30B sits onchain today, up from $5B early last year, with trillions in sight. With this growth, a few sound assets should then get pulled higher by real adoption - even without a euphoric alt-season.
But can that happen when crypto is still in somewhat of a regulatory gray area in the U.S.?
The CLARITY Act (the bill that would set U.S. crypto rules) cleared the House last year but is now stuck in the Senate over ethics fights, with a narrow window before the summer recess.
Prediction markets are showing its passing as a coin flip:
And our in-house view is much gloomier than that.
… but that might not matter: The SEC and CFTC are currently telling the market "you can build - we won’t sue."
And if the financial industry moves enough of its business onchain while there’s a crypto-friendly administration - sustained momentum over the next few years could hinder a new administration's ability to safely reverse things.
But if/when that happens, it’s going to take time and patience to play out.
… and is that even something the current market has to give?
As John put it: "I'm over here saying ‘take the long-term view, accumulate spot, don't touch leverage.’ And every other player in the market is levered to the gills, hoping it doesn't blow up."
That's the crossroads it feels like we (crypto investors) are all at right now.
Stay solely in crypto and be early to the next bull run, or move some money into AI and try to catch some short-term gains before the bubble bursts.
So where do we stand?
Judging from analysts’ portfolios - we’re pretty much split down the middle:
- Melvin and Vincent are purely in AI.
- M0xt and Kyle are diversified between AI and crypto.
- John is embracing patience/pain and staying purely in crypto.
If you want to see every asset each analyst holds, along with their full portfolio weightings, try Milk Road PRO for a buck for 7 days.
THIS WEEK: ANALYST PAYDAY 🎙️
ICYMI: On the Monday before the first Wednesday of every month, each of our analysts gets $500 dropped into their portfolio. What they do with it is up to them; some will put it to work right away, others may sit in cash until markets feel friendlier. Either way, they have to explain their thinking.
It's the same thing a lot of you are already doing, taking a slice of your paycheck and putting it to work. The difference is you get to watch exactly how the analysts think about it, in real time. We cover all of it in a report and a live AMA on the first Wednesday of every month.
Next up on the schedule:
- 📆 Jul 1 at 10:00 a.m. ET.
We go live this Wednesday with John, Melvin and Martin 🫡 Come ask them anything and get their take on what's next. Submit your questions using this form.
BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪
Pre-internet money rails meet the agentic economy? Yikes. Arc is Circle’s open Layer-1 built for the internet-native economy. Humans and AI welcome.*
Novogratz: Bitcoin is in crisis (and it's not just macro headwinds).
Lyn Alden: Iran accepting BTC payments sounds scary for sanctions - but there's a caveat...
CZ: The AI arms race between the U.S. and China is on - and the main point of concern is regulation (or the lack of it).
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.
*this is sponsored content.
MILKY MEMES 🤣
ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛
VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY
