GM. This is Milk Road, the daily newsletter that's the pit crew tightening the bolts on your portfolio.
Here’s what we’ve got for you today:
- ✍️ The pullback that never came.
- 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Crypto’s Next Big Rotation Is Already Underway.
- 🍪 Raoul Pal: "Markets look like they absolutely want to rip."
On Sept 23, Milk Road's Martin sits down with Alumni Ventures to talk about blockchain and private markets. Save your free seat here.
Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Powered by CoinGecko.
THE PULLBACK THAT NEVER CAME
As you know, every Monday, we get on a call to argue about markets in the week ahead.
Here's where we landed on today’s call:
Three weeks ago, Bitcoin ripped from the low $60K range, up to ~$82K on a short squeeze.
We all assumed we'd hand some back (the talk was $72K, and maybe a retest of the old lows before grinding higher).
But it never came.
John spent three weeks waiting for a dip that refused to show up, and it forced him to change his view of things:
"If people were going to sell, they would have sold by now," he told me.
The line he's been watching is the 50-week moving average - the average of Bitcoin's last 50 weekly closing prices, and the crude dividing line between a bull market and a bear.
Bitcoin closed right on it Sunday night (in fact, slightly above depending on what exchange you were pulling prices from).
That changed what John needs to see. He's stopped caring about breaking $82K and has flipped to just needing one more week of not collapsing.
Hold this level without falling apart and he'll call it a bull market. None of it's guaranteed, but the levels overhead matter far less now the 50-week has been reclaimed.
So I asked what actually drives us higher once next week’s FOMC and CLARITY Act vote are out of the way…
His answer: the market being awake is the catalyst.
The total crypto market cap has gone from $2.3T in February to $2.82T last Thursday - a seven-month high.
And almost all of the new momentum in alts over the last week or so is coming from one place…
FREE SEMINAR ON BLOCKCHAIN & PRIVATE MARKETS
Is VC capital still flowing into crypto or has AI taken it all?
Where is venture capital actually deploying across crypto and fintech right now?
Join Sophia Zhao (Partner at Alumni Ventures) and Martin from Milk Road for a live fireside conversation covering:
- Where capital is moving across blockchain and fintech
- What the next generation of blockchain companies are actually building
- How accredited investors can get exposure to private markets
The best part? It’s completely free to attend and takes just one hour.
THE PULLBACK THAT NEVER CAME (P2)
Memes have been running north of 80% of Robinhood Chain's volume since launch, and have been inspiring people to download apps again and bridge fresh cash into their wallets.
It's silly, and funny, and noisy - yes.
But outside of the carnival, something is happening…
You might remember BONER coin from last week's issue - the meme that absorbed most of the tokenized HIMS supply and briefly sent the token four times above the real share price.
John reckons that was just the opening act.
When traders lock tokenized shares inside meme liquidity pools, market makers have to mint more onchain stocks to replace them - creating a flywheel effect that forces more and more stocks to be minted onchain.
Which is why (long term) John's more interested in Coinbase than Robinhood, despite Robinhood being the one with all the attention right now…
Coinbase is issuing genuine tokenized stocks onchain rather than wrappers and IOUs (like Robinhood).
A real claim on the share, not just a token that tracks its price (slower, less entertaining, yes - but a better product at the end of the day).
That said, whichever one gets the attention day-to-day/month-to-month - it doesn’t really matter as far as the broader crypto market is concerned.
Remember, the market being awake is the catalyst.
So to wrap up - this week, we want to see two things happen:
First, we want to see the memecoin-stock pairing craze to continue and grow.
Second, and more importantly, we want to see Bitcoin hold $79-80K and confirm the bull run.
If it holds, John's expecting the same winners to keep winning.
P.S. He’s posting his trades in real time inside Milk Road PRO, if you want to follow along - join here for a buck!
BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪
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Madness: Vlad Tenev's recent follow of the AMC memecoin account on X pushed its token (MEME) 6x, from a $36.2-239.5M. All within 5 mins.
Lyn Alden: The Treasury is drawing more attention to the bond market issue than the intervention is actually solving.
Raoul Pal: "Markets look like they absolutely want to rip." Speculative positioning in markets right now is flat. Nobody is long. That's a setup.
*this is sponsored content.
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