GM. This is Milk Road, the daily newsletter that's your seatbelt for the crypto rollercoaster.
Here’s what we’ve got for you today:
- ✍️ The war you didn’t know you were in.
- 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: The Tokenization Opportunity Is Bigger Than Anyone Realises.
- 🍪 CZ proposed freezing Satoshi's BTC when quantum arrives.
Arc, the Economic OS for the Internet, is built for stablecoins, tokenized assets, and AI agents. Start building on Arc.
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THE WAR YOU DIDN'T KNOW YOU WERE IN ⚔️
Our macro guy, John Gillen, just dropped a follow-up to his "Wartime Ethereum" article, and it's a heavy one.
It reads as part warning, part call to arms, and built on a single idea: there's a war on, and most people don't know they're in it.
His framing comes from military theory, pointing to sixth-generation warfare: a kind of conflict where the battlefield is your own head, the weapons are AI, and the prize is control over what you believe and what you can do with your money.
The people being conquered often never realize there was a fight.
His view is that this war is live right now, and the proof is governments tightening their grip on two things: information and capital.
Let’s start by looking at Europe: John points to MiCA (the EU's crypto rulebook), which has a hard compliance deadline on July 1st.
Then there's the digital euro, a government-issued digital currency (a CBDC, or central bank digital currency) that an EU parliamentary committee just voted to advance.
Stack on a new UK Digital ID program (which John sees as a surveillance ramp), and Europe looks like it's getting hit with one big clampdown.
Then, over in the U.S., the sting lands closer to home for crypto folks…
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THE WAR YOU DIDN'T KNOW YOU WERE IN (P2) ⚔️
The CLARITY Act (the bill meant to finally hand crypto clear rules in America) is dead in John's view - ground down by heavy lobbying.
What showed up instead?
Illinois just became the first state to tax people for simply moving their crypto.
His view on all of it is the same: as tech gets more powerful, central authorities use it to claw back control, mostly over information and money.
John points to an Economist report in which Senator Mark Warner relayed that a top U.S. cyber commander told him Anthropic's "Mythos" AI model had "broken into almost all of our classified systems, not in weeks, but in hours."
Days later, the U.S. moved to restrict foreign access to those frontier models.
John's takeaway: governments now treat advanced AI as too dangerous to leave loose, so the market will hunt for open-source versions no government can switch off.
This is where Ethereum comes in.
John argues all this centralization creates demand for a different kind of nation, one built on code instead of borders.
A setup where smart contracts enforce the rules automatically, so you trust the code instead of a government or a middleman. In his view, ETH is becoming that escape hatch.
And it seems like the folks building out the Ethereum ecosystem realize this too.
On June 22nd a new group called Ethlabs launched with 50+ backers and a chunk of talent leaving the Ethereum Foundation, with a mandate to grow adoption and make ETH "the currency of the internet."
John wraps on valuation, pushing back on the take that ETH is worthless because it doesn't run buybacks like a company.
A base-layer blockchain is a macro asset / public utility for global settlement.
Now, that’s just about all I can squeeze into this here article - and I’ve left plenty on the table.
The full framework, John’s deeper macro-asset case, and the rallying cry behind why he says "Ethereum has no king," can be found in his full article.
Go read it to get the complete picture, here!
NEXT 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 🍪
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Bold: CZ just proposed freezing Satoshi's Bitcoin when quantum arrives.
Matt Hougan: "I think crypto is pricing in the fact that no one cares about it." (ouch, Matt!).
Mike Novogratz: "Great markets, great bubbles end with something symbolic." What ends this one? Maybe SpaceX. Maybe all three mega-IPOs together…
Your Bitcoin can hand you cash without selling a single sat → That's Ledn's whole pitch, and our full review breaks down everything you need to know about the platform.
*this is sponsored content.
MILKY MEMES 🤣
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