GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that makes ghost pepper wings taste like baby food.
Here’s a taste of this week’s menu:
- 🔥 Zuck's biggest blunder wasn't the Metaverse.
- 🥵 Robinhood's next 30M customers aren't human.
- 🌶️ Want to trade ETF flows? Do the exact opposite.
Securitize is the platform institutions trust to tokenize their assets onchain. See what nine years of regulated tokenization looks like.
HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK 🔥
Zuck's biggest blunder wasn't the Metaverse 🤦
William Quigley (co-founder of Tether and WAX) told John that Mark Zuckerberg walking away from his stablecoin was the single biggest strategic mistake of his career.
… worse than the Metaverse faceplant - which he says would've been "swept under the rug" if the stablecoin shipped.
William’s view of it all: Zuck got dragged in front of Congress, had no passion, shrugged and quit, purely because he never understood what instant, fraud-proof payments across 2.5B Facebook and WhatsApp users would do for his business.
He thinks Amazon, Apple, Google and Alibaba all launch their own stablecoins once the CLARITY Act lands, following the 140-bank Open USD consortium playbook.
🎙️ Listen to the full episode here.
Robinhood's next 30M customers aren't human 🤖
Vincent (Milk Road's AI analyst) laid out a Robinhood thesis he says nobody else seems to have twigged to yet:
AI agents become the growth engine.
His view: Robinhood has ~30M funded customers, and if each one spins up even a single trading or spending agent, they've effectively doubled their customer base overnight, with every agent generating fees 24/7.
He pointed to the agentic credit card, agentic trading accounts and Robinhood Chain as puzzle pieces the market hasn't assembled yet, plus a McKinsey estimate of $1T in agent-orchestrated B2C revenue by 2030.
Vincent's been long since around $9-10, holds it in his Milk Road PRO portfolio, and is adding on dips.
🎙️ Listen to the full episode here.
Want to trade ETF flows? Do the exact opposite 🔄
Matt Crosby (Director of Research and Analytics at Bitcoin Magazine Pro) ran the backtest everyone's scared to see:
Buying peak ETF inflows and selling peak outflows would have left you down about 80%.
Flip the trade and you're up roughly 7x with zero leverage - and the same pattern shows up in GLD, so no, the "smart money" isn't good at timing this either.
Meanwhile his three favorite long-term bottom metrics (realized price ~$53K, long term holder realized price ~$50K, cumulative VDD ~$48-49K) are all converging near $50K, which would be a monster confluence signal.
His play until then: DCA and chill, average entry in the low $60Ks, and calling current prices "buy one, get one free satoshis."
🎙️ Listen to the full episode here.
THE RAILS BEHIND BLACKROCK'S ONCHAIN FUND
Assets still run on decades-old infrastructure:
Slow settlement, walled access, paperwork everywhere.
Tokenization fixes that but who’s actually doing it at an institutional scale?
With nearly nine years in the business, Securitize has become the platform institutions trust to bring assets onchain.
Here's why it stands out:
- BlackRock, Morgan Stanley & ARK Invest have all invested in Securitize
- NYSE, VanEck & BNY have chosen Securitize to tokenize their stocks.
- The only public pure-play in tokenization infrastructure
This isn't a crypto project waiting for TradFi to catch up. It's the regulated bridge that the largest asset managers in the world already build on.
See what nine years of regulated tokenization looks like.
HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK (P2) 🔥
Everyone's waiting for October, which is exactly why it won't come 🏃
John Gillen (host-and-sometimes-guest of the Milk Road Show) thinks the consensus Q4 bottom is too crowded to actually happen.
When Jan Van Eck is publicly saying the only debate at his $200B firm is when and how much Bitcoin to buy (not if) - that trade gets front-run, the same way ETF buyers front-ran the halving in 2024.
John's already been filling bids below $60K (including one at $58K he set back in February) and is sitting on 25.5% cash in the PRO portfolio as dry powder.
His line: this is the best risk-reward on Bitcoin and ETH we'll ever see, and you don't have until October to build your position.
🎙️ Listen to the full episode here.
Wafers don't grow on trees 🌳
Ben Bajarin (CEO of Creative Strategies) says the semiconductor industry would have needed 5-8 years of advance planning to meet today's AI demand.
(And it planned for none of it, because foundry economics punish overbuilding.)
Wafer output only grows single digits a year, so the industry is running at roughly 120% demand versus capacity with no quick fix.
The kicker: semis are set to cross $1T in annual revenue this year, four years ahead of schedule, and it's almost entirely price increases rather than more chips shipped.
He's still watching one thing above all - if hyperscalers can't show free cash flow inflecting positive, capex slows and the whole GPU-memory demand chain feels it.
🎙️ Listen to the full episode here.
BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪
Another crypto IPO! Securitize is now officially a public company under the ticker $SECZ. (great ticker tbh).*
Multicoin CIO: Stuck between two great assets? Use the regret minimization framework.
Tom Lee: This is "crypto spring" - not a recovery, not a bull market yet. Just spring.
Jordi Visser: Fund managers who dismiss AI without using it are making a massive mistake.
Which crypto exchanges publish proof of reserves? Bitget has been reporting monthly since December 2022.**
*this is sponsored content. **this is partner content.
See what nine years of regulated tokenization looks like.
MILKY MEMES 🤣
