GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that's the Yoda to your Luke Skywalker.
Here’s what we’ve got for you today:
- ✍️ The era of Wartime Ethereum is here.
- 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: The Best Investments Look Dead Before They Explode w/ Eric Jackson.
- 🍪 The CFTC approved the first regulated BTC perpetual futures.
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THE ERA OF WARTIME ETHEREUM 🔫
The era of Wartime Ethereum is here.
That's the call from our lead macro researcher (and longtime ETH bull) John Gillen, who recently published a response to Bankless co-founder, David Hoffman's "Why I Sold My ETH" article.
John has a ton of respect for David, so take this as a good-faith disagreement between two people who are essentially on the same side.
David's argument runs roughly like this:
The "ETH is money" thesis (the bet that ETH grows into a base monetary asset) has already played out.
David believes ETH likely already got the price it deserves, and he doesn't see it re-rating to a much higher or lower valuation - so he's moving his capital elsewhere.
Which - if you’ve followed David/Bankless at all over the last few years, you’ll know - is a MASSIVE shift from one of ETH’s most vocal evangelists.
John reads the current state of Ethereum/ETH a little differently…
First, he thinks it's way too early to call the game. By his read, ETH hasn't even started to reach its full potential.
The CLARITY Act (the U.S. bill that would spell out which regulators oversee which corners of crypto) still isn't law. Roman Storm, the developer behind privacy tool Tornado Cash, is still on trial. We're barely past the prologue of the ‘digital asset adoption’ story.
John's analogy: calling Ethereum finished now is like declaring American self-governance a flop in 1781 because the Articles of Confederation were a mess.
Big things take time to settle.
He figures the real war is still ahead: the day the banks and Big Tech try to kill Ethereum and fail.
(That's the wartime part.)
Which brings him to the price of ETH…
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THE ERA OF WARTIME ETHEREUM (P2) 🔫
John pushes back hard on valuing ETH off its L1 fees alone and running that through a DCF (a model that values a company by its future cash flows).
In his view, you can't value Ethereum like a business. It's not a lemonade stand.
The market hands ETH a monetary premium the same way gold trades far above what its industrial uses would justify.
A spreadsheet doesn't capture that.
On the worry that crypto's becoming a vassal of TradFi, John takes this threat seriously.
The man spent six years inside the belly of the beast (BlackRock).
He also sat front row at a recent crypto conference as the CEO of BNY Mellon (America's oldest bank, with $59T in assets under custody) told the room the banks were here to take the lead.
His response is the opposite of selling - he holds and stakes his ETH as a way of voting (with his capital) against a world where the banks own the rails.
John's view here is binary:
This asset class either grows into dozens or hundreds of trillions of dollars, or it winds up worthless.
There's no version where ETH treads water at a ~$250B-300B market cap forever.
The direction of travel is one or the other, in his view. 👇
John reckons a big chunk of the current bearishness is just bear-market fatigue. ETH has lagged for a long stretch, so people are reaching for reasons to walk.
Meanwhile, the network itself keeps humming:
- Usage is at all-time highs.
- Fees are sitting at all-time lows.
- The staking queue keeps getting longer.
- And the Ethereum Foundation (the nonprofit that funds ETH's core development) is still shipping upgrades.
John's read: ETH is just taking longer than everyone had hoped.
He still likes ETH. He's not selling. And he thinks the next chapter is one you won't want to miss.
But all of this is only scratching the surface.
For the full picture of what the era of Wartime Ethereum holds, give John's piece a read here - it’s well worth your time!
(And don’t just take it from me.) 👇
BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪
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Matt Hougan: Hyperliquid's mainstream adoption is only 5% done.
Nice! The CFTC just approved the first regulated Bitcoin perpetual futures in the U.S…
Closer: JD Vance said Washington and Tehran are close to agreeing a deal to extend their ceasefire in the Middle East war.
Yup. The Louvre. Proof of Talk is an executive web3 summit returning to Palais du Louvre, Paris on June 2nd & 3rd. Use code MILKROAD for 20% off.**
*this is sponsored content. **this is partner content.
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