Weekly rollup: who bought the BTC ETF, CPI, meme coins and L2 activity

Transcript

guess who's back back again roaring Kitty's back tell a friend that's right the savior of the people the protector of retail investors and the guy who made GameStop go to the moon and took Wall Street down at the same time he's back he's come out of the Woodworks a few years after being offline and what happened oh baby did the markets go crazy both the stock markets and the meme coin Market markets we're going to tell you all about that and so much more in today's show gmgm what what milk World radio the easiest path to get smarter about crypto I'm Jay Hamilton joined by my co-host

Kyle reidhead and we believe that onchain is the next online this is the opportunity and we're here to help you capitalize crypto will go up more than 100x in both users and value over the next decade if you're listening to this right now you're extremely early and have an incredible opportunity to capitalize at milk Road our mission is to make you smarter about crypto that's why we're doing today's podcast and why we send you a daily newsletter for free but if you're ready level up as an investor then let me tell you about milk Ro Pro we crafted this resource for investors who are already smart enough about crypto and are looking for more actionable insights and how to invest successfully in one of the fastest growing Industries on Earth every week we break down the latest trends dive into tokenomics of popular and upand

cominging tokens and get into the nitty-gritty of market analysis all to help you invest smart smarter plus we have a private Discord Community for pro members it's like your backstage pass to the milk road crew exclusive insights Hot Tips and live amas with our team now if you're looking to level up as an investor then click the link in the show notes below and sign up to Pro today don't let this bull market opportunity slip through your fingers Jay it's gonna be a good episode we've got a lot to talk about not just memes although obviously GameStop and and memes is going to be a big one here but blockchain gaming is also here it's just not how most people think we'll cover what we're talking about there we've also got some news on who bought all these Bitcoin ETFs we've been covering this for forever now we know just who

are the institutions that are buying or is it retail it's a good one I'm excited about this one macro is heating up we've got some CPI numbers we'll discuss what all this means and what it means for your BS and we've just got so much more so it's gonna be a good episode I'm excited for today I'm very excited this is gonna be a good one let's start as we always do with the market watch starting with Bitcoin Kai what's going on with Bitcoin this past week so Bitcoin is up 7.6% on the week this basically all happened was it yesterday I guess with some of the CPI numbers which we'll talk about but it's currently sitting at 65,800 we're back or maybe we'll talk about it and what was exciting to see out of Bitcoin this week was as you mentioned a

lot of major institutions and Pension funds buying first we had the state of Wisconsin release that they bought a $100 million worth of bitco coin ETFs and Eric funis gave a great take here talking about how it's pretty unusual to see State Pension funds purchasing this type of risk asset this early nobody anticipated this coming in q1 right when the ETF was announced and released normally usually usually need to get some like Clarity and some regulatory Clarity and like approvals and I guess they were just real quick to make this happen so kudos to Wisconsin they're

quick Wisconsin don't think I ever thought Wisconsin would be the uh the leader here well is Wisconsin doing a lot for like Bitcoin regulation I feel like they're the they're the one state doing that I don't know for sure because obviously I'm not in the US but I'm pretty sure they're the ones that are doing it but maybe I'm maybe I'm missing something yeah you might be right you know Wisconsin they're they're kind of like Canada so I got a lot of love for them and then look Michael sailor jumped into the conversation here and pointed out that there are thousands of Pension funds in the US which manag 27 trillion in assets so they all going to be getting some of this milk that is for sure they'll be coming the endowments as well from universities there's a lot of

money out there that hasn't made their way and yet that will take time Jay's gonna list off a bunch that bought and by the way they didn't just buy this 100 million didn't just get put in like today this is over q1 so since the ETFs have launched all these big institutions are now basically they have to do their filings and so we're we're able to finally see who has bought the stuff it's funny when you're on chain you can see it live when you're in the trafi world which is what these ETFs are you got to wait for the earnings reports which is super annoying but who else is buying Jay yeah we got a a long list here starting with uh Millennium which is a uh a management fund bought two billion in Bitcoin across four different ETFs we got JP Morgan Chase second

largest bank in America we got Wells Fargo third largest bank in America we got a couple Canadian banks in here Bank of Montreal CIBC a long list of hedge funds I'm not even going to list UBS group AG Switzerland's largest bank got in on the party and the list goes on super exciting to see interesting there was over 500 holders of these ETFs which is 200 times the average for any new ETF so it just blew the record for ETFs so pretty wild to have this many big institutions already buying and holding this thing and we're just getting started let's go from bitcoin's glory to eth's sadness these days Kai what's going on in eth this past week yeah e is

actually down 63% on the week sitting at 2,956 a lot of the gas is the wrong term to use because you're GNA think I mean transactions I just mean a lot of the like hype and excitement from ethereum is is really getting pushed out I mean with the ETF next week is actually when we were going to hear the news around the approval but it's not looking too good and so I think a lot of people are getting um a little bit bored of this eth asset how many times have you thought in your head this is the last time we're going to see E's below 3,000 I think about it all the time it's crazy that it's this slow it's crazy it's totally crazy I I feel like every time it goes below 3,000 I'm like a this has got to be the last time and here we are

again just below 3,000 just a little bit Kai another chart that was shared a lot this week was the eth BTC ratio weekly close all-time lows since back in April 20 2021 yeah the BTC charts getting beat up not what was expected at least I didn't expect this and I think most people weren't really expecting this however like looking back it kind of makes sense the Bitcoin ETF obviously wasn't just about the meme or excitement around the ETF it was the flows and so of course those flows had Bitcoin to dominate and if you look at the next chart Jay I've got a chart of Bitcoin dominance which um continues to climb throughout the cycle I think a lot of people were calling for the Bitcoin dominance chart to have topped out months and months and months ago I even sort of thought that

as well but I've always had this tread line here that I have up on this chart here which is this Blue Line This is each cycle of Bitcoin dominance and the one thing that I think a lot of people are missing in terms of the eth Bitcoin um ratio is every cycle the same thing happens Bitcoin dominates at the beginning of the cycle and then at the final stage of the bull run that is when eth and then all the alts and everything goes absolutely nuts and it outperforms and you can see it in this chart 12 months before the green line the green line is the top of the cycle C in each of the past three well past two cycles and then the expected one for this cycle 12 months before the end of the cycle is when all of a sudden Ethan all the alts

outperform Bitcoin we're not at that stage yet so I don't know why everyone is so like thinking this cycle is different it's actually not even it's completely on track and it looks like if it does touch that trend line I don't know if it will but if it does it's going to do it with about 12 months left of when the expected top of the cycle is so I think we're and I just did a podcast with defi dad early this week saying that we are about 50% of the way through the cycle which I I feel like is I mean my best guess anyway and so the L latter half of the cycle is generally when eth and the alts outperform and so I think we're tracking as usual it was the same thing like last cycle it wasn't until the end of 2020 early 2021 when

eth finally went nuts and that was for like eight months that's it right other than that Bitcoin was dominating the whole time so it's like I don't know people need to just like look at the charts and not just assume like people always just think oh well Etha performed Bitcoin last cycle so it must have done it the whole cycle and it's like no it didn't do it the whole cycle it actually only did it for like 12 months when you say that you think we're 50% of the way through the cycle do you mean in terms of price action or do you mean in terms of time that's a good question I mean in terms of time I actually don't mean either of those to be like specifically actually 50% what I see is that there's usually a first stage to a bull market

and then you have this sort of like midpoint where things sort of get choppy and we don't move much this happened in 2020 Summer as well before Michael saor bought and then once we get through that then things just take off and we go nuts now usually that price action is much more uh you have crazy pullbacks Etc it tends to be a bit shorter than the first half I call it halves it's not actually halfs in terms of time or in price it's just like there's sort of three phases to the bull market we're in the middle of it so I think that's why we call it that good question fine yeah just cuz when you say 50% through I'm thinking I'm like well this started at the end of last year if we're 50% through we're gonna be done by you know Q3 of this

year which I know you don't believe that we're gonna go we're actually at the end of this episode Kyle and I are going to talk about where are we in this cycle specifically and where do we think we're going to go we got some great takes on that so stick around for that but let's go to the darling altcoin of this cycle look all the green on this chart God that's so nice salana currently sitting at 160 it had a nice pump yesterday after the CPI news up 12.53% on the week of 1% on the day salana is going to just I mean I think our title last week was called bullish on salana or something like that which wasn't our plan it just sort of happened in the middle of recording and um yeah I'm just super super bullish on salana right now which

we're g to talk about why because when we get into the memec coin stuff when we get into a lot of things going on there's there's a reason why there's lots of reasons why let's go to some macro news no shortage of macro news this week with h CPI numbers coming out Kai what were the the impact of these CPI numbers yes so this is the big reason why we're mainly Green in the assets we just talked about except for eth obviously but so CPI numbers came in yesterday and it came in at 3.4% uh and so that was the expectations it's a little bit lower than it was last month but not much and so that is good people thought it was going to be higher or at least it has been going a little bit higher so for it to go down is good news

which made people go okay maybe it's not so bad after all but you still have a bunch of people saying well inflation's too high I don't think they're going to get it controlled and so rates won't go down and we're kind of screwed this is what everyone's talking about I actually just did a full Pro report um which comes out on Saturday so if you are a pro member you're going to get this full breakdown of where we're at in the cycle and then also how macro is impacting all this so highly recommend you go pro and check that out but basically I'll give you a quick summary here's what the FED needs to decide right now okay the FED is trying to fight inflation it doesn't want inflation to go higher okay which is currently at 3.4% that's not that bad their goal is 2% % they're at 3.4 it

used to be at like 8 n 10% okay like in 2021 when they were really worried and so we're down at 3.4 it's not terrible but the other thing is unemployment is rising it's almost at a number that has historically always called a recession and is historically always been the point at which the FED lowers rates we are one uh think it's 1% or whatever away from that so it's very very very close they also have the issue the FED of debt there's trillions of dollars in debt interest rates are at 5.25% and the amount of money they have to pay for this debt is just Absolut ludicrous and it means people with credit cards are going broke it means people with mortgages are going broke and it means the government itself who is the most in debt of anyone is going broke and so the FED has to decide okay

do we keep rates High to try to fight inflation or if we keep F uh rates too high then unemployment is going to go you know through the roof we're going to default on our debt and the whole economy is going to collapse and so which one are they going to decide they're obviously going to just go all right you know what 3.4 inflation not the end of the world let's not default on our debt and let's get everything else under control in the economy at least that's my opinion and so I think we are still on track for normal uh rates to to go down I think inflation like 3.4 is not that big of a deal and I think it just slowly continues to go down and and that's fine I think that's what people are starting to sniff out which is maybe why Markets started to

have a move but who knows honestly this could just be we've had a bunch of these little what's called like a bull trap where like it goes up everyone gets all excited we're back we're back and then it comes back down it's probably that I don't know that we're necessarily through the waters just yet just FYI so that's why you got to keep tuning in every week because we'll make sure you know what is going on because things happen so fast big news of this week first top story roaring kitty is back that's right Keith Gil also known as deep [ __ ] value on Reddit who is a key figure in the mem stock rally which happened back in January of 2021 he was the one that called that GameStop was undervalued it surged 400% there's a Netflix documentary on it if

you haven't watched it KY have you seen the Netflix documentary of course it's great great doc or I shouldn't say it's a documentary it's actually a movie a great movie so what happened as a result of roaring Kitty came back coming back well first up GameStop stock that's a mouthful GameStop stock was up 40% in pre-market trading it's up 140% in the past three weeks approaching a 1010 billion doll market cap is GameStop everybody the company that sells video games out of retail stores also AMC has gone up AMC is similar to GameStop sort of a Dying company known as a meme stock because lots of people have been making

memes about AMC and as a result retail investors love memes and memes is culture and that can make things pump so AMC has gone up as well and one of the reasons AMC has gone up is because royan Kitty is basically almost like every hour has been posting shorts from movies from famous movies on his Twitter that's all he's been posting is these shorts from famous movies as well as a couple of memes along the way which has sent everything going crazy what happened as a result of this GameStop and AMC trading was halted on a lot of different major stock platforms I know Robin Hood halted and many others halted trading

due to volatility but that's why we crypto because at the same time meme coins that represent these stocks gme AMC went up much more gme was up 380 per AMC went up, 1400% so these are the meme coins versus the meme stocks man this is such a mouthful to try to explain these differences here K am I explaining this well you're doing you're doing good let me just explain a little bit for people so first of all the stock is down like 40% since that high that it hit was yesterday when this happened so a bit of wildness in the in the meme stock world we don't really know what's going on yet with that is this even his account

what's his real plan here he's just been posting a bunch of [ __ ] either way people go they bought a bunch of this stock and um it's coming back down but we'll see what happens on the other front of it of course crypto steps in and they say hey well if there's meme stocks over here let's recreate them over on on chain now these don't actually represent the shares of gme or they are just random tokens that were minted on pump. fun they just have the same ticker name they have no affiliation to them whatsoever but of course this is how attention works on chain and when there's attention somewhere then those whatever the thing is is going to pump like crazy so these these went up like nuts Kitty which was a new one that was also made went up 20,000% in a matter of like I think a

couple hours after all this happened so just um a bit of Mania in the meme World which is kind of funny because rates are at 5.25% everyone said the GameStop thing was all because of low interest rates and so like that could never happen in a high interest rate world and we're in a high interest rate world and yet memes continue to be the focal point of markets which is pretty funny you mentioned that nobody really knows what roaring Kitty is up to and just to add a little bit more plot twist to this ongoing story which I'm sure will have much more to come if it is really Ryan Kitty he's going to be a big player on crypto Twitter for the foreseeable future but somebody is speculating that it's not Roan Kitty and that he actually

sold his Twitter account schomes who is a notorious dgen and [ __ ] poster posted shared a screenshot of a DM conversation with roren Kitty where he says would you be interested in selling this Twitter account and ran Kitty responded if you're serious then yes I would potentially entertain an offer now this was back in April look this is a screenshot anybody could Photoshop this and make this do we know this is real no we have no idea but a lot of speculation about look speculation from all sides what's going on here nobody knows do your own research and don't put all of your bags into GameStop AMC or the mem

coin versions of these socks okay talking about meme coins meme coin Mania is back I don't know if it ever ended it's just been continuing even though none of us thought it would keep up this run just got up on the screen here gme's meme coin is up 1,00% in the past seven days and you think 1,00% is a lot Kai let's look at the meme coins that are leading the way here over on most of these are on salana take us through a few of these mem coins what's going on yeah cat CER I guess is up 800 million per in the last 24 hours like what basically it means I think

it's gone from zero to a market cap of 405 million which is actually pretty heavy most of these are just small little [ __ ] things that are like two million market cap not even not even in the millions that one I don't know what happened but it it really did well there is one called dumb kitty which is a play again on the Roaring Kitty thing which is only a $39,000 market cap but it's up 2 2400 this is what's happening on chain right now guys is like we'll get to this chart in a second but pump. fund which is this new protocol on salana which basically allows anyone to Mint any token but you don't have to provide liquidity you just create the ticker and then the market decides if they want to buy it or not so it starts from basically nothing which

is great because you can't rug anyone uh because usually if you provide liquidity then you can just dump all your tokens and everyone that can't happen here so that's why there's so many of these new tokens starting because it's just so easy to do it there's no cost to do it and so anything that happens in the world becomes a meme coin immediately and now people can speculate on it it's a weird and wacky new thing but look at this Jay's got a chart up on the screen here from pump. fun they've had 2,985 New Meme coins in the last 36 hours this thing and it's happening every day that's 20 to 30,000 new tokens being launched every 36 hours on salana right now that was unheard of last cycle that was like the max amount of tokens we had last cycle now we have it

happening every single day I don't think people really are realizing how crazy this is and what this means but look I know it's weird wacky because it's all these meme coins but like just the fact that that's even possible is pretty nuts here's my question Kai is all of this actually sustainable real use cases of blockchain and crypt Tech or is this just degens moving their money around from previously it was a lot in nfts then it's moved to social 5 which we're actually going to talk about a second and obviously it's memes memes memes since the beginning yeah I mean like look right now this is definitely just DG's moving Capital around there's no debating that however the idea of tokenizing just culture and anything

that's happening in culture whether it be political stuff or it be things with royan Kitty or it be anything on Twitter it's just getting started right like we are only the crypto natives that are doing this what happens when every industry comes on here and so like every new actor and actress gets tokenized because they're launching a new movie and people want to speculate on it what happens when every musician and every song they have and every whatever all gets tokenized and people wanted to speculate on [ __ ] like it's like this is going to touch every area and we're going to tokenize everything and so like look I think we'll probably go up and then we'll come down at some point but then I think this isn't just going to be meme coins I think everything is gonna get tokenized and it's just a way to

represent value now is that only D that do it I'm I'm not sure but there's something here for sure yeah I can't wait to see the uh political debates between Trump and Biden this year and what will the watching the various Trump and the various Biden tokens during those debates will be hilarious news pumped off fun flipped salana in 24-hour Revenue this week flipped salana and remember pumped up fun is on salana so this is also bullish for salana like way to go salana so pump up fun has made 1.23 million in 24 hours that is actually unbelievable but I think one thing to note here is we want apps to

flip in their networks that is the whole point in this and if that's not happening then we failed as industry and so we should have tons of apps that is the goal is that we should have tons and tons of apps that are generating more Revenue than ethereum that are Jing more Revenue than salana Etc that is when we actually know that we've succeeded because people are actually using the apps so we want this it's the first time I think well I guess Unis swap has been higher Revenue than salana before but it's the first time a salana app has has flipped salana that's for sure speaking about apps gaining traction there's a lot happening in the socialy world Kai right right now what's your take on this you had an interesting take which I got up on screen from Ryan Connor and you were discussing this with the team

earlier yeah so Ryan put out this tweet which I thought was quite interesting he just said blockchain gaming has taken off but the games are friend Tech meme coins pump. fun fantasy top drip house Etc he goes It's not taking your skins into another game that was skew morphic and I thought this was an interesting take is look there are games on blockchains it's just not the games we're all used to right it's not Call of Duty on the blockchain it's it's not NHL 2000 whatever like it is speculating on Twitter accounts and building a fantasy team of your favorite influencers right it is tokenizing politicians and betting on who's going to win on a daily basis based off of their interviews and things they're doing it is joining group chats

of influencers and speculating on which ones are going to give more value and thus more people are going to buy them it is this like weird games that are created based off social networks which is quite interesting and it makes sense right like over the last 10 years what's the biggest new innovation that we've had in this world social media right we didn't have that in 2000 to 2010 that came about like 2010 afterwards and it's become the biggest thing in our world over the last 10 15 years and now we have a way and so like influencers have become somewhat celebrities in some regard or at least have become just a very important part of many people's lives and so now we have like these games to like speculate on them and to create like teams around them and like do more with them it's kind of like

fantasy top you could think of sort of like fantasy football you love watching sports and so why not make some fun around the players on football and you make your own team and you bet against other people whatever this is the same sort of idea but with influencers it makes sense to me and it's weird it's very cringe for a lot of people but like there's a [ __ ] ton of people having fun and again I haven't really play I've done friend Tech I haven't played fantasy top much but I I see it and I I get why people are involved in it now a lot of it is just DG's trying to make some money and flip things so like it is what it is but like I think he's right is this take is like hey blockchain gaming is here it's just different than

what we all thought now that's not to say the other type of gaming is not gonna be here I think that him saying it's skoric yeah it's schor but it's it's probably still gonna happen like I'm still bullish on the old web through gaming that we've all thought was coming I think it's still coming I just think there's new iterations things that we never really thought just like when Facebook was invented we never really thought that um Angry Birds would be a game that existed that we'd play on our phones inside the social network and like as you do more things it would update it on your feed so your friends would know like who would have pictured that and it was very cringe for a while it became one of the most successful games ever so I don't know are we on to something here potentially yeah I think

the thing everybody needs to remember here is that what is crypto blockchain at the heart of it is it creates a value layer on the internet and what do you do when you create a value layer on the internet you allow new forms of gambling and speculation and what do gambling and speculation bring games that's a form of gaming basically and so yeah I think this is the new form of gaming that we're going to see on chain but as you said and I just want to double tap on it doesn't mean that traditional gaming like Mobile gaming casual games or gaming on your PS5 is not going to be brought on chain because and the simple

reason why of that is there's lots of black markets around the world where people are selling their skins and they're doing it in these totally janky Black Market ways well why wouldn't you want to bring that on chain and enable somebody to sell a skin to a global market instantly instant settlement in a secure way well of course that will happen it's just going to take a lot longer I want to bring up a an interesting take here on comparing friend Tech to Fantasy top Kai we've seen an incredible rise in fantasy top over the past month basically since they launched not even a month I think it's been like two weeks they launched at the beginning of may prch also had a similar hype crazy rise but then had a fall that

also is everybody knows now and they Rose during the bare Market they launched in August of last year and Rose for basically like a few months and then fell off a cliff French obviously is trying to make a comeback right now with their V2 do you think that fantasy top is another friend Tech that's going to have a rise and a fall here or do you think they've got something more sustainable so I I do ultimately yes so there's a couple points here actually so fantasy top I think is actually a bit more fun than something like frch frch didn't have the ability to scale we were flagging that from the very beginning after like 20 people held your keys or whatever it got super expensive for anyone to buy so it was so obvious that that wasn't going to be a scalable product they've made some changes so

does it work after that like maybe I don't know fantasy top definitely has more scalability to it it's a bit more fun but I still think it's just the reason why it's getting so much hype right now is because if you use fantasy top you can win gold distributions for the blast airdrop so I think that's where most of this is coming from so you always got to think about where the incentives are sure fantasy top might be a bit more fun but like it's not that great and I don't think it's this thing that's going to make it into like become mainstream like I don't think it's the next Angry Birds or whatever I just want to be clear on that I think it is a building block and a stepping St in the right direction but with I don't believe that this is going to be the next big

thing I could be wrong often times with new Innovations they're very cringe people used to think Instagram was really really weird when it first launched and now I mean it's just so normal Tik Tok everyone thought was super cringe now it's become like the biggest app in the world so like we always think new things are cringe but that said I think most of the activity that's happening in fantasy top right now is just completely because of blast now blast just announced that they're launching their airdrop on June 26th I believe the date is which means they've extended this a little bit further as supposed to come in May so now there's another month of speculation that can happen on fantasy top so I think this is really good for Fantasy top but I think once that blast air drop is done and they'll probably launch another season

so maybe this continues further but I think this is a quick you know few weeks to month or so thing that people play and then they they move on to the next thing speaking of blast blast is an L2 built on eth well you know it's happening across the E ecosystem with l2s all-time highs in week active addresses so even though I talked about the the beginning of the show eth price maybe not doing so great but active address is doing really well what's going on here Kai yeah I mean a lot of people I think are still fading eth and and I understand why it's um Bitcoin is in Limelight because it's got the ETF and so that's that's quite obvious and then Salon is kind of that new IT thing a bunch of the mem coins are on there and mem coins have done well so you know

it makes sense that salana would be a part of that and also salana was just so undervalued going into this bull market that it was obvious that it was going to come back we had put that call out to Pro members early last year as well and so eth sort of sits in the middle and I think the thing is eth had this Narrative of fees it was deflationary and had all these fees and so like if eth is more deflationary then that's super bullish and so that was where eth like eth did quite well during the bar Market versus Bitcoin it it really held very strong and no other token has ever done that in the bare market and so eth had a very bullish bare market then what happened is well we know we need to scale and so we were scaling through l2s

and so like this was kind of obvious to people that are in the the system here but basically now that we've scaled right with EIP 4844 which we covered a bunch blob space we've called it that has scaled l2s and it has allowed for l2s to be very very cheap and so l2s are succeeding Bas is crushing it arbitrum optimism all these l2s are doing really really well they've got a bunch of apps they've got a bunch of users there it's at alltime high so cool but the problem is is now they're almost giving no fees back to ethereum and so what it looks like to people who don't really think too deep into this is like is failing right eth now is not a deflationary asset over the last few weeks it has actually been inflationary still so it's not burning enough eth to remain

deflationary and people are like okay well what's happening then the l2s are stealing all the the fees and there's just no demand for eth anymore and I think that that is a bit shortsighted I think what's really happening here is like Tech always sort of works his way if we think about how the internet worked we had the internet it was in dialup if those are that are listening or too young and they don't know what dialup is it's where you actually had to connect your internet into your phone provider and like you couldn't use your phone when you were using your internet it was very slow it took tens of seconds to load a web page at least it took days to download a song which is just wild to think of but anyway wait poll question for the week who here remembers dialup who who has

used dialup who which one of our listeners have used dialup I want to know if you used do you know what this sound is and so basically what happened with this was we built the internet it wasn't very good it wasn't very scalable but there wasn't a lot of people using it so it didn't actually matter then all of a sudden like Napster launched and people started downloading music and were like okay this thing is super slow it doesn't really work and so they they built cable right the Broadband moment for the internet and so all of a sudden they had all this cable all brought in but there wasn't enough users it wasn't getting used and then it took a little bit of time and new apps were built like YouTube Etc like oh we can have video streaming now and it can be immediate

because we have Broadband moment right that what couldn't happen before on the dialup moment all of a sudden all these new apps came and then the internet became kind of slow game like [ __ ] the internet's not fast enough for what we need for these new apps new Innovations so then we had fiber optics right and it's like the supply and demand of the technology just continues to go back and forth that's what's happening right now with ethereum is we built ethereum it worked really well years ago and then all of a sudden we had all this demand these new apps and they were like okay [ __ ] now we don't have enough supply of block space so then we created l2s and we created blob space and all of a sudden boom now we have all this supply of block space that's really really

cheap there's not enough demand for it but that will come right we just need to innovate we need these new apps coinbase is doing a good job in this with base and so more and more apps will come more and more users will come and that will fill up the blob space again and eth will eventually go deflationary but instead it will be deflationary when it's facilitating billions of transactions instead of before it was deflationary at just millions of transactions so we just need to wait for the demand to catch up and so I think the scaling solution and what ethereum is doing all makes sense it's all good people are just kind of a bit shortsighted there but the idea of eth being deflationary yet still allowing for billions of transactions to um be executed through layer twos still exists we're just in that like middle period

where the demand needs to catch up so it'll happen just takes time thanks for the uh internet history lesson there Kai and tying that all into the future of the onchain world I was a Napster Maxi back in the day I love Napster download some Nelly and Tupac Sean Parker sh out what's up my man hope you're doing all right let's go to the next big story sticking within the E ethereum ecosystem which is lens lens has launched an L2 their own L2 called lens Network and they've done it on top of ZK the ZK sync stack couple of takes here first off lens was previously on polygon they could have decided to

use polygon's cdk their Tech stack and built on the air but they decided to switch over to ZK sync they believe in ZK clearly but they moved from one ZK provider to another and this kind of shows I wonder if we're going to see is ZK sync the next big Powerhouse that's going to build an ecosystem the same way that optimism is building the super chain and arbitrum is building arbitrum orbit polygon obviously building agair what do you think is happening here Kai yeah so actually before I get into that I mean the one interesting thing that brings up here is social continues to be the Hot Topics we just talked about social fi and how other people are gaming that then you've got lens Network which is a new social media platform I

mean we didn't talk about farcast today but that continues to be sort of a Hot Topic in the space as well so it's interesting that social media just continues to be decentralized social or social F whatever you want to call it continues to be the like push forward for these apps consumer-based apps I don't think people had on their radar last cycle that it was going to be social apps but it makes complete sense right what's been the biggest thing over the last 10 years and 15 years so that's interesting number one lens has been done pretty well I think I don't know if you have the numbers Jay but it's like what 100,000 or so active users maybe monthly yeah let me take a look at these numbers here monthly new profiles has gotten as high as 880,000 back at the beginning of uh the year down around uh

20,000 per month right now active users got as high as 60,000 so look we don't talk a ton about lens forecaster definitely gets more attention than lens does it's happening over there there's there's definitely activity they've got some some cool things either way to go back to your question there around you know the super chains or whatever you want to call these things zky is a little bit late to the party right I mean optimism arbitrum polygon really were the three kind of main ones zky has been later just to like go live in terms of their own chain but they obviously have some really really good technology pretty bullish on what zky is doing and I think now they're at a point where they can start to get their business development team to start finding more people to launch using their Tech stack I do think they'll become a big player

in the space the one interesting take from all this is polygon continues to see people leave polygon they were the darling of last cycle if you guys weren't here last cycle polygon or the madic token anyway went from it was one of the best tokens of the entire cycle it was like madic BNB and salana were like the three big ones and the one thing paulon made so much money and they spent so much money bringing in all the big Brands launching getting all the big apps polygon was like the IT thing in 2021 I guess they had Starbucks and Nike and like I don't even know and Disney and meta yeah and then meta backtracked and left and then Starbucks has well we don't really know what they're doing but

it seems they've left as well it's like a lot of the big Brands which by the way polygon paid these Brands to build on them they didn't just come and do it because starbu like I want to do this it was no no no I'll test this because I'm getting paid millions of dollars by polygon to do it so they spent a lot of money most of those didn't work out which is like fairly I guess normal right startups fail a lot of them so like it kind of makes sense but there was a lot of apps in that that were crypto native that were also on polygon that are beginning to move off lend is one of them so yeah I don't know what's going on over on polygon I mean they are they have a big team they're building a lot of things their Tech is

mainly good I just um people don't tend to want to stick around on polygon so it's a bit bearish for polygon in my opinion yeah I think that like what's interesting to me is that polygon has been so good at BD from a Enterprise standpoint but has struggled and sure those Enterprises have come and left it doesn't mean they're not going to come back but that's unfortunate you spent so much money to get them and then they left but they've struggled to get the current Crypton native Market the current Crypton native Market is not bullish on polygon the way that they're bullish on other l2s yeah I agree I mean I've been saying for a while I'm not super bullish at some point polygon probably gets like it hasn't had Mo like madic or whatever hasn't really moved much this cycle so like at some point

it'll have its moment but yeah it's been a struggle so far for them I think they do have one of the exchanges is it Kraken that's launching an L2 with polygon or is it um okx one of them is but I can't I think I think you're right I think it might be okx I think it might Bex all right let's go to in case you missed it our segment where we keep you quickly up to date on the major things that happened this past week first of all in case you missed it El Salvador has mined over 400 Bitcoin since 2021 using power from a volcano in El Salvador this what this is this is wild to think about and so smart like Els Salvador so they they make Bitcoin legal

tender they buy a bunch of Bitcoin and then they announce they're going to buy Bitcoin every day one Bitcoin per day every single day since I don't know how long it's been now and then they also set up a freaking Miner that is using the geothermal power from their volcanoes to mine Bitcoin 474 Bitcoin that is like 300 and something million dollars that is not a small amount for a small country so very very very impressive what they are doing with their Bitcoin strategy they also have launched a a Bitcoin Bond it's like a nation state Bond but it's like backed by Bitcoin I'm not sure exactly how it works but they're doing some really really cool stuff and I think other countries need to pay attention because that's just just wild bullish on El Salvador next up in case you missed it Vanguard one of the largest funds in the

world over I think about 10 trillion under management seven trillion okay wow very accurate thank you for that that update Vanguard has appointed a new CEO and and if you guys remember we talked about the old CEO at Vanguard a few months ago on the show why because he was not a fan of Bitcoin and Vanguard easily could have launched a Bitcoin ETF along with everybody else and they decided not to which was a pretty big statement being so anti- Bitcoin when so many other large funds were getting in on the party and turn to be pretty bad considering how good the Bitcoin ETFs worked right one of the most successful launches ever in ETF so Vanguard looks kind of stupid right and they don't want look stupid anymore so what did they do

they have appointed a new CEO who is Bitcoin friendly not only is he Bitcoin friendly he was actually the lead at Black Rock on their Bitcoin ETF so Vanguard very likely getting into the BTC ETF mix to be clear though he did say they are still not launching a Bitcoin ETF yesterday but I feel like he kind of has to say that he can't just come in be like all right we're changing this thing like right away like there was a bunch of customers and stuff F didn't want it so he's got to like play on the on that side of the table first and then I think he'll switch at some point but let's see in case you missed it tornado cash lead developer alexe perv was found guilty and has been sentenced to 64 months in prison by a

Dutch Court this is a sad one Kai I hate to see this look this developer developed tornado cash as a open- source app to allow people to move money in a private way he did not intend to develop an app for nefarious purposes or to support any form of terrorism or money laundering that was not his purpose but because he developed this platform which allowed this moneya laundering to happen the Dutch court has found him guilty and he is going to prison for quite a while he's been in prison since uh August of 2022 so he's already served quite a bit of this sentence but you got to remember vital

used tornado cash to send money to Ukraine to support their War efforts when that war first started so it's not like tornado cash was only used for money laundering it was used for a lot of good purposes too yeah just hate to see it he has since appealed this conviction no surprise he should be I mean think about how many Technologies are used to Aid bunch of bad things social media is used every day for terrorism you know we're g to ban social media now the internet is used every single day for people to communicate about terrorism and about moneya laundering and about everything that happens everyone uses their phones to do everything in the world were you gon to ban phones in the internet now no that's absolutely ridiculous like wake up

people I like it when you get heated like that Kai bring bring more of the heat you know bring the spice that's what we like the spicy milk that sounds gross I don't know what spicy milk spicy milk you talking that would be awful that would be awful okay in case you missed it ripples CEO and tether's CEO got into a bit of a boxing match o online this week first off it started when Brad glaring housee who's the CEO of Ripple went on a podcast and basically said that the US I'll give you exact quote he said tether is an interesting one the US government is going after them that is clear to me and a lot of people came out and said oh

Ripple CEO is against tether and is really trying to put a spotlight on them let's remember right now Ripple is in the process of launching their own stable coin so people are like okay this is just a CEO trying to take down one of his competitors in a pre-launch marketing effort and what do you think the tether CEO did he came out with a long Twitter post saying that an uninformed CEO didn't even name him an uninformed CEO has basically been putting out negative and misinformation about us and we are fully complying compliant fully working with regulat regulators and then I really hoping this would go towards you know more heat like

put them in the ring like get these guys against each other but that ended up kind of being the end because then the CEO Ripple came back and said that kind of backtracked on his comments and said that tether is very important and he believes in them so all for nothing all right let's go to agree disagree we got some tweets that were put in our Discord this week from our community and a lot around where we're at in the current cycle Kai I'm going to read a few here rather than our typical where I read one at a time let me read a few about where we're at in cycle and then I'll let you jump in first up zerox jpeg says I think it's entirely possible and arguably likely that crypto has topped for this

cycle next Mr bibbles says why is everyone thinking we have 8 to 12 month bull run then back to bear it's far more likely we have a slower more sustainable multi-year bull market with 2 to 3mon consolidation periods like we're seeing now then some blow off the top bull run with a two-year bear again it's a real real asset class now with institutional support assume it's going to repeat to assume it's going to repeat the same blow off the top as retail driven markets of the past is short-sighted in my opinion this run is driven by institutional money Kai what do you think where are we at I think the first one of that we've already topped out is just wildly wrong I'll just say that I

think there's just no way anyone who thinks that just is not paying attention to macro in global liquidity which is what moves these Cycles so I just I think that's just so far off although I know a lot of people are saying this this is again why I have this Pro report coming out on Saturday which I almost titled is this the top of the crypto cycle I think we ended up changing it but it was something around that but I don't think that's the case at all in terms of the second one of thinks it's actually going to be a bit longer I actually tend to sort of agree with this one he's basically saying okay well institutions are here so we're not going to have this like crazy Mayhem like we've had previously it'll be a slower steadier grind upwards I don't think

that that's the case either because even institution money is still pretty damn stupid and they still fomo and not to mention retail goes will come into this at some point too and that's really stupid money and so they're going to fomo and so F's going to happen no matter what it's just how every every Cycle Works I think as I said in the beginning I think we're about halfway through I think we haven't had the crazy moment yet and I think that's still to come though I lean to this Mr bibbles guy the second part because I do think his point of like it's a real asset class now which what I take from this is more less with the institutional support but it's more that there's actual real use cases and there's people coming into the space because they like just need to use this stuff whether it be stable

coins or different apps or like just different onchain stuff like the bidle fund from Black Rock like there's a lot of things you can out do onchain that just weren't possible before and I think every time that more use cases come on chain it sort of like raises the like the bottom of where we can be in terms of prices for at least this is not true of all crypto assets this is true of like Bitcoin this is true of probably Ethan salana Etc because those are the ones actually getting used and so I do think we have less volatility than previously but I don't think that this is like going to be some nice controlled cycle where it still goes four years but it's like in this very nice way because institutions are here like if anything they're going to try and make this thing

a bit crazier and institutions foaming against other institutions is going to create some craziness we got to remember these asset as much as this is a real asset class because Bitcoin has an ETF it's still freaking tiny and so if ethereum ETF gets approved yeah institutions are going to buy that thing but the thing is only worth 400 billion which means as institutions start to fo in this ETF this thing is going to get crazy and move way faster than we've ever realized it's not like an approval for an ETF of an asset that's 10 you know trillion or something the thing is 400 billion I think it's going to be very similar to other Cycles to be completely honest I think we're still tracking some point late next year but I just don't think we have as bad as a bare Market in certain assets I think

every other asset 99% of them get completely wrecked just like they have in every other cycle I just want to keep making that clear if you're holding some IBU Shinu whatever or some shitty little kitty token or whatever you will get wrecked in the bare Market 100% you just might not have as aggressive of a bare market for Bitcoin and maybe e in Sal I love this point of the bull cycle because this is the point of the bull cycle when you're going to see tweets like this every single day and everybody is going to have a hot take on where we're at in the cycle some hot take on what the price is going to go to here's the thing you got to remember nobody [ __ ] knows these are all thoughts these are all just people trying to get

a lot of attention look that tweet about saying that we're at the top of the cycle I wonder if J even believes that or if he's just that's a great tweet to get a lot of attention and cause a lot of virality on Twitter so I think you got to remember if you're an influencer in order to get attention you need to take you need to take a stance on either side and you can't take the middle stance so expect to see a lot of this but don't trust at all where are we in the cycle is the right question to be asking you do want to be looking at the the numbers and trying to figure this out I just don't think now is the moment where it really matters it's the next price move up now we're in waters where we're really in price discovery that is

when we're questioning we're not in price Discovery and only one asset has really beat alltime highs and it's barely and it's actually below it right now so like no we're not in price Discovery pretty obvious we're not at the top unless crypto is dead then okay fine then why are we even talking about this just get out but if we all think crypto is here to stay you got to wait until in price Discovery before you start worrying about are we at the top and usually it's going to take a bunch more pullbacks and aggressive pumps before we get to that point okay next up we got a take from cred I'm just going to read a part of this tweet who he's talking about all this controversy about the disagreement of where we are at in the cycle are we at the top are we just

beginning are we in the middle and he says one of the reasons why there's so much difference in a disagreement is that the conventional risk curve trade of BTC to eth to large caps to midcaps to [ __ ] has been unprofitable barbel portfolio of BTC plus memes has dominated yeah this take is very common and it's like people are not looking at charts from back in previous Cycles because the Bitcoin into eth into large caps into midcaps into [ __ ] happened at the end of 2020 and then at the end of 2020 is when people moved into eth and then people moved into large caps and we had altcoin season and then people moved in nfts and that was during 2021 onwards till we topped out November 2021 we're not there yet we're just not

there and in terms of this barbell strategy what worked in 2020 at the early stage of the bll market was Bitcoin and defi because that was when yield farming was first uh introduced and you had defi summer and defi was nuts that's where you had these thousands and thousands of percent gains and so yeah the barbell strategy back then was what was the new use case Okay Defi and then what was the main one that drives markets Bitcoin and then at the end the once we hit that 50% through the cycle and then we have that last year left that's when we did the eth and the large caps and the mid caps Etc we're still not at that point yet and so again you have Bitcoin which leads the way because it's about global liquidity and it's the main one one so it's driving it

and then what was the barbell strategy it's not defi this time because well that was invented four years ago who cares about that it was mem coins right meme coins on salana where it's cost nothing to trade that was the new Big invention is tokenization of everything and so yeah you buy the new innovation and the big thing but at some point in this cycle I still believe we'll have the same thing that happened in the last two cycles which is we'll move into eth into large caps I don't think we've really had alt season just yet I think that we had this meme coin season and yes some alts did well Tia but that was because a bunch of people want to steak to get aird drops we had like I don't know some of the other big ones but like it's been kind of small and quiet I

think we still have that moment I think we're just we're not there yet in the cycle if you look at timing we're not at the 2021 period yet that's Q3 Q4 of this year and onwards so I don't know why everyone's missing that it took me a bit I think to grasp that as well but I think it's just because I was I keep seeing these tweets I was like yeah they're right and then I was like wait a minute they're not actually right at all so I don't know that's my take great take B leonitis had a great post if you're watching on YouTube you'll be able to see the meme I'll read it out to you he's got a bear and a bull and the bear says it might be over and the bear owns BTC soul and hit big on Soul meme

coins and then the bull says we are so early the bear the bull owns eth and is waiting for nfts to come back I I really like this and this actually basically goes further about what I was just saying which is again this happened last cycle if you were in defi in 201 20 which most people were not but if you were you made so much money in the summer of 2020 before Bitcoin was above 10,000 Bitcoin was still Michael Sor hadn't bought yet Bitcoin was still 50% from its all-time high and yet defi summer was going off and people were making thousands of x's and so those people were like okay we're pretty far into the cycle this is getting a bit crazy right but most people who weren't in defi which was a lot of people at that point they were like nothing's

happened I don't even know what crypto is yet right retail's not here Etc except it's just again there's so many people that are in crypto we have more crypto natives this time and so we're sitting here playing around with these dumb fantasy tops and meme coins and whatever thinking this has been a crazy cycle and yet you go talk to anyone in the real world and they're like What's crypto I thought the thing died in 2021 right and so if you did well Bitcoin so that's great but it is it's still early but those people are thinking it's it's late and then yeah if you've been holding eth unfortunately which is a big crowd of people they are like yeah nothing's moving nothing's happened which sucks for those people I think they'll still have their moment I don't know about the waiting for nfts to come

back that one is still the one that I'm like yeah I don't know about that but um I think eth l2s reaking I think that narrative is all to play Still let's see that's just my guess it's all a matter of perspective and that's exactly what you get caught up in as you go through these Cycles is you only know your own perspective and as a result of Twitter's algorithm and the algorithms of all these major social media platforms we all live in Echo Chambers where all we hear is our own perspective repeated to us and it causes us to miss what others are seeing and what others what others believe is happen that's a great point and actually to add to that the other problem is that crypto is very tribalism right there are people who only watch

the salon ecosystem and only watch the ethereum ecosystem and only watch the Bitcoin ecosystem and so the problem is like it's weird that people do that they don't look like if you like crypto just like crypto I don't know why you got to go in like one ecosystem it doesn't really make any sense but that is the problem is that people get their news or people tweet out like there are people bull posting eth that just like they've never even looked at salana still and I'm just like what are you guys tweeting about right now like do you even they're like eth is the only smart contract platform and is the only thing I'm just like what are you not paying attention to what's happening like and I'm like wow they're lost in their world and then there's people in salana that are like oh eth is [ __ ] and this and that and

Bitcoin who bitcoiners don't even know that Ethan Sal are even like building apps they think it's still just like whatever it was before like it's so weird that people are in this but that's the problem is they're in their own lane they think their own thing because they don't see the rest of it and so their timelines and their cycle is just so different than someone else's so you need to make sure you're getting your news from people who are looking at all the ecosystems and aren't stuck in one lane because they're just missing a lot and um it can lead you in in very wrong directions I would say last one of the week qw says about 10,000 tokens are launched daily on pumped up fun that's about one token every 10 seconds the term meme coin has

a silly connotation and leads to poor conclusions the big unlock of crypto is and always has been enabling anyone to tokenize anything we hit this like in the middle of the middle of the show which is I mean I completely agree it's like we're just going to tokenize we're tokenizing dollars we're tokenizing bonds and treasuries we are tokenizing real estate we are tokenizing memes we are tokenizing companies we are tokenizing freaking everything and what comes from that is anyone's guess at this point we all ideas of oh it could be this type of game or this type of defi app or this whatever I think the things that are really going to take off we don't have a damn clue and no one's even thought of and it hasn't maybe

someone's making it right now in their basement I have no idea but it's important to pay attention to these things like meme coins and fantasy top because like there's something there I don't think it's those things I don't think Kitty ticker like kitty token is going to be the next big thing or fany top or friend Tech but there's things coming from that that going to be used in the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and eventually the big thing will exist like Facebook was not the first social media app there was many apps before it Facebook just combined a lot of different things and then also lucked out that the phone launched around the same time and so like it made sense and it worked out that way but there was 50 to 100 social apps that came before it and many of

them built off one another and then finally it was like okay everything all worked together in one and boom it took off that's what's going to happen in crypto but it might be tomorrow and it might be five years from now I don't know well the thing you have to the thing you have to remember is that it's very easy to create a meme coin to tokenize culture it's the easiest thing to do right now to tokenize a meme everyone loves cats cats are huge on the internet no debate there I don't love you don't love cats really oh cat terrible like you dislike cats okay I don't dislike cats okay that's a good point I don't I don't love cats really trying to get you and say you dislike cats so the whole whole internet of cat

lovers could come after you but it's easy to tokenize these things is my point what is much harder to tokenize is all the other assets that exist in in various forms from uh the real world carbon credit assets that are used in very important ways to manage climate change to IP that is used to manage pH tical and all the science IP that exists like all these things are they're very difficult to tokenize but you got to believe that they're going to become tokenized and when they do we're going to the Moon there's no doubt there's no doubt it's all happening Kai That's a Wrap on today's show as always thanks

for drinking your milk thanks for putting some milk out for your cat too I'm kidding I know you don't have a cat and thanks everybody for listening in we appreciate you all we hope you all had a great week hope you have a great weekend coming up make sure you check out this weekend's Pro report because as Kai said the question that is on everyone's mind right now is where are we at in this cycle are we at the top are we in the middle is it just the beginning well we're going to give you a deep dive with all the charts and all the analysis you need to understand where we believe we are at so that you have confidence in your Investments until next week keep drinking your milk whether it's soy almond or oat we love it all enjoy have a great weekend y'all thank you for

listening to milk Road radio the easiest path to get smarter about crypto if you like this episode share it and hit subscribe or follow so you don't miss out on the next one there's also a link in the description to our free 5minute daily newsletter where we simplify crypto for you well making you laugh and if you're willing to step up your crypto investing game then we'll leave a link to milk Road Pro as well your number one resource to help you invest successfully in crypto one final note this podcast is for educational Purp is only and nothing we say is financial advice crypto is risky so you should never invest more than you're willing to lose thank you friends and we'll see you in the next one