Why Bitcoin keeps showing strength: lockout rally and the four-year cycle

Transcript

But the thing I think it matters the most for crypto is the fundamental adoption of crypto. The institutional bull market in crypto, the the damn breaking from a regulatory perspective in crypto, the SEC allowing this innovation exemption which has taken the handcuffs off of the industry in many ways. And I think that the market is repricing that. >> What's up everybody? It's LGDA here and welcome to the Mail Grow Show, the daily crypto show that feels like Q4 is going to be the big one we've been waiting for, even if we say that every single year. Today is October 5th, 2026. You know what this coming Saturday is? Well, yes, it's Canadian Thanksgiving, where we share our favorite poutine recipes and prepare our igloos for the winter while enjoying a good old CFL game. But it's also the one-year anniversary of 1010, a day that will live in infamy on

name alone when the Golden Bull was horrifically interrupted in crypto. John and I live streamed that day, one of the first of many collaborations to come between us. And we've been running this channel every single day since then, keeping the dream alive. Today we're going to circle back on that and also talk about how crypto conditions are completely different now and why you should be just as frothy as Jon is and why some of these projections you're seeing on the timeline of like Bitcoin to all-time high by the end of the year. Well, maybe they'll come true or maybe the macro will prevent them from coming true. And if you want to see how Jon is building his crypto portfolio right now, including his full stable of delicious looking alts, all that is in Milkroad Pro. We'll be recording an extra 15 minute session at the end of this to

talk about his picks as well. It's called Milk Road Pro After Hours. So, if you're a pro member, make sure you stick around for that. And if you're a want to be pro member, it's just a dollar to join at the link below. And a reminder that our podcast today is free and that it wouldn't be possible without our partners at Nexo. The digital asset platform lets you trade, earn, and borrow all in one place. Keep an eye out for more information about them later in the show. John Bonjour. >> That's the most Canadian introduction to the show that I think we've ever had. So, thank you LG. Uh's too clean. It would it would have had to have a really bad accent on top. Bonjour.

>> That would have been Or I would have a French Canadian accent the whole time. >> Bonjour. Bonjour to you too, my friend. >> I could just talk like Selen Deion the whole time if you want. Make it even more Canadian. John, tell me uh I'll um The cryptos are they looking pretty good today? Yeah. >> This the first few seconds of this show are always the most awkward part of my week. So I'm I'm glad you're having fun, buddy. Uh >> listen, I think everybody listen everybody's having fun, man. This is like this is if we had a fear and greed index but of like a Jonno meter I feel like you'd be you'd be pretty high on it, right? Especially like compared in the context of the past like year since 1010 like this is you'd be at like a 9.8 out of 10 or something, right?

>> I don't think that a lot of people are having fun right now. Actually, I think a lot of people are scared. They're panicked. A lot of people in the equities markets are >> because they have stocks. They're scared because they have stocks, right? Yeah. >> And because the yields are going up and because everybody's wetting themselves. But in the crypto markets, we are in a bull market. And so I feel like the only person on the timeline right now who's like, "Yay, everything is going great." Um, I don't know how much of this is going to continue because I think until we get a resolution to the conflict in the straight of four moves and bond yields start to stabilize, the move index, which is the measure of volatility in the bond market, starts to stabilize, we could continue to see some uncertainty in in the risk asset

markets. I think that it's unlikely to see that happen prior to the US midterms or at least until we get much closer to the US midterms. So, it seems like October could have some turbulence for a lot of these markets. However, the bull market in crypto is still holding. It's holding strong. Bitcoin right now, as of time recording, is at 85,000. Ethereum is at 2,700. Um, so these are things you want to see. It's it's gained ground. It's held the ground. And since we had that big short squeeze in August, we haven't seen a meaningful turnaround in price action. We've seen some cool offs and some dips, but very minor ones, very small pullbacks. And then the altcoin space has just been ripping in a lot of different places. And so the the acceleration is continuing. The bull market strength is is holding in crypto.

I don't know if it goes forever, but I think we we'll see how we do through the rest of October here. But, you know, I feel like the only boy at the party who's having a good time right now, and I hope it continues, but um we we'll just we'll see how this plays out. >> Why are we a boy? We can't be a Aren't we men? Is this is this a child? Is this a child's game to you? All right, look. I'm the only man at the party having a good time. I'm also climbing the leaderboards in the Milk Road portfolio rankings, which feels great. And that's that's really fun. While everybody sits in cash and rings their hands about, oh no, the bond market's scary. I'm like fully deployed in crypto and just making bank every week. So, this is this is going great.

>> That's right. Yeah. If you want to see how those guys are uh positioning by trimming their positions, uh you can go check that out on Milk Road Pro as well as John continues his ascent from last now to second. This is like this is like when uh that video I keep seeing of Max Versstappen racing a 100 go-kart drivers on Instagram. I keep seeing this where he starts last and then he he just it's the whole thing is just how he's going to go to first. And I feel like that's what's happening with your uh portfolio right now. One John I one question I have for you John before we get into a lot of the great reasons to be bullish which you're always great at at highlighting for us.

I've been seeing from I wouldn't call them analysts like just TA people for a while now like a couple weeks and this is a natural reaction when we have such an extreme pump. I keep seeing these calls of like, well, there's gonna be a pull back to 77K for Bitcoin. Like, it's a nor and not even like it's a bad thing. Like, that's just a normal retest of this breakout. It's a normal thing that just happens. And one by one, I'm seeing those people who had called for that at some point in the last couple weeks be like, hey, you know what? I actually don't think that's going to happen. Why is that? Is it or is are things just way stronger? Like, is are Bitcoin, Ethereum, everything just holding way stronger than even even the biggest even bulls thought at this point?

It's because there's more buyers than sellers. Yeah. I So, I think that I was in that camp too when we initially had this huge short squeeze. We got so overbought so quickly that I thought what was going to happen, I told our community this too, that we would see some kind of a pullback. I was expecting to get to at least 74K, but we couldn't break 75K on any of those pullbacks and then we we gapped up even higher. Um, and so I'm still saying that, you know, until until we get like a meaningful pullback like below 755, I would say based on like the the recent price action of the last few months, the bears have shown no strength, no no will to to push the price back down. The bulls are in control. And I think you're right. I I do think it is the bulls are much more

so in control than I think a lot of people expected. And I think that we've had many years of choppy price action and kind of expecting, you know, three steps forward, two steps back, three steps forward, one step back, some version of that when whenever the price does move in a positive direction. We haven't seen that and I I don't know if we will. It's not to say that we're just going to go up forever and this lockout rally is going to continue, but the strength has been really encouraging. Um the bulls have just been kind of like just, you know, completely in control of the markets here. I I don't know when we will see some kind of a dip or pullback or what it'll look like or how far we'll go. But I I do think that we have gotten so far up on the charts here that we

have room to wiggle in a lot of directions before anything breaks the new market structure that we have established. That's why it was so important to get these like weekly and monthly candle closes is that it radically changes the market structure that we're in and establishes us firmly out of the prior bare trend that we've been in for several months and in a new bull trend. Um, and so it's still early days in establishing the price history of that new trend. But as long as we continue in this direction, I think that the strength continues and the bias has to be to the upside here. Like Dan Tapiro tweeted this morning that 100K for Bitcoin looks like a chip shot from here. It's like it's not the easiest like, you know, tap in a putt, but it's also not a long a long throw anymore.

So, um, yeah. So, it's just a lot of a lot of bullish momentum has happened here. We've reverted to the mean, so to speak, gotten back into the bull market here. And I think that you're just going to continue to see a lot of performance. This is also not just driven by sentiment and short squeeze and like, you know, fear and greed or whatever. This is driven by a lot of very strong fundamental drivers of adoption. A lot of very bullish regulatory signals that are leading to a ton of very bullish product launches, new new kinds of digital asset products coming to market rapidly almost every week. Like I said, I think on last week's podcast, we're just going to start seeing these new announcements and they're going to come so fast and there'll be so many of them.

They're so bullish, the market's going to kind of go blind to it. Um, just because of how much is being unlocked here. The handcuffs are really finally coming off of the digital asset industry in a big way. So this bull run is just getting started. It's going to be one of the biggest and strongest bull markets we've seen in any asset class ever, but certainly in digital assets in crypto. And the promise that we have been moving towards for a decade in this industry is starting to actually materialize and and really come to market in the first time for the first time in real ways. So I'm just I'm extremely bullish here. The market is responding to that and I expect that that trend to continue. Just want to pause for a quick second to remind you all that the crypto bull market is back. I have been deploying

capital into altcoins that I think are going to do very well this bull market. Some of them are already up over 2x from where I entered. So if you want to see what's in my portfolio, what's on my watch list, and have access to me in Discord to ask questions 24 hours a day, join Milk Road Pro now. The link is in the description. It's just a dollar. I'll see you there. John, before we talk about things that are more realistic and more like act the things that I know you tie more uh let's call it realism too, I'm just going to stay on my my my CT retail riff for a second here and ask you about this thing that we've been seeing for a year. Okay, if people don't know what this is, this is a post from 4chan that was from years ago. I know

from uh from December 12th 2023 and it was somebody who had mapped out saying that u all-time lows to all-time highs 2015 to 2017 was,064 days then the high to the low was 364 and then it was a repeated pattern in the next market where it was lows to highs another 1,064 days highs to lows 364 days. And they had and somebody brought this up a year ago saying that October 6th would be the all-time high and people were started circulating this before October 6th and then it turned out to be true. Right? So that this all-time high was exactly the last all-time high was exactly 1,64 days after the previous or after the um after

the previous alltime after the low of that cycle. And what people have pointed out in the last couple days, including my friend Arsenic here last week, is that that low would be today if you kept following this pattern where the low from the cycle high to the c the following low, the bare market low would be today for the 364 days. Can it possibly be this simple? And also going to cycle lows today would mean like a 50% drop across everything. So, uh, no, it is not this simple.

>> Come on. >> I'm I'm sorry to tell you, you can't just, you know, it's astrology doesn't doesn't work for for market price action. Um, so look, okay, let's let's kind of unpack this a little bit. I think that we are still getting more information from the market this year about the cycle that we're currently in or are we starting a new one? And I don't think that's going to become clear until we get much more like many months more price of worth of price action um and just trading history behind us so that we can get a more complete picture of are we in a midcycle correction or are we at the end of a cycle and starting a new cycle. I think there's a strong argument to be made still that the lengthening cycle thesis that I've

been kind of like entertaining for the entire bull run since you know I think 2023 2024 there's a strong thesis that that could still be playing out here you know and like in the 2021 um 2022 bull run there was a a peak in I can't remember the exact month right now but there was a peak at 64k and then a many month pullback that was about 55% and then we went back to a new high at 69K. Now, by many metrics, onchain and others, the the high of the the bull market was at 64K. We didn't get to a new high and a lot of other metrics um of onchain activity at the 69K number, which was the the ultimate top for the cycle in November. Um but we did get a new high on price. I think that we could be

seeing something similar playing out here where we got to 126K and then we had this midcycle interruption, correction, slowdown, whatever you want to call it, of like this 55 50 55% pullback on Bitcoin and now we could be rising to a second peak, a new all-time high and actually seeing the the real peak of this this bull market. So, the you know, the ISM printing print keeps expanding. It's still over 55. It's uh been that way for seven or eight months now. Uh, and I think that we're we've been lagging global liquidity for a long time. Bitcoin is beginning to catch up to that. If that continues, that could pull us up much higher, too. It's, you know, there's a lot of things you can point to right now in macro that are much more bullish than just some of

these like big things that everyone's like screaming about and pointing at like bond market yields. So yeah, just there's a lot that goes into what drives market cycles and it's not as simple as like a simulation that we're living in or some time traveler going back on Reddit and posting about the future, right? Like that's not what's happening here. There are a lot of things that make up uh the the the macro trends that drive the economy and risk assets and assets like the digital asset class and Bitcoin. Um and those things the confluence of all of them is what produces the outcomes that you see on the chart and the price action you see.

I think that we are going to take need several more months before we can confidently say that October 5th um or October 6th rather of 2025 actually was the peak of a cycle or was it just a midcycle correction like I know it sounds like way way after the fact to still be like question marks about this but you know we we should have if that if everything he was saying in there held true then today or tomorrow should be the low of this bare market and Bitcoin is trading at 85,000 um if we get towards the end of the year and we're like over 100k or around 100k, which we very well could be at this point. Like I said, that's not a a big stretch. I think that it forces a lot of people to re-evaluate things. And I'll shut up after this. But one more thing I

do want to say is that um the October 6th high of 126K or or that that crash right on October 10th that um in 2025 that marking the top from there to the bottom is an interesting thing to measure in terms of months because we got this low around like end of July be or end of June, beginning of July, but that was really a retest of the first like wick down that we did to 60K. Now, we did technically make a new low, but you're like looking at like 58K versus 60K. To me, it's a retest of a low that was already established. Or you could read the chart that way. And that's a very short bare market of October to February, right? So, that would be a point to say it's more of a midcycle

correction than a prolonged, you know, year-long bare market. This is all in the weeds and we can get lost talking about this for forever, which is fun. But ultimately, all you need to know is that it's not a simulation. It's not as simple as just a Reddit post, you know, with a number of days and like you can just set your calendar to it and forget about it. There's a lot more going on. As this asset class has matured, these macro things start to matter more. And these cycles are going to change. There'll still be cycles, but they're going to change. They're not going to go by a set number of days anymore. And all that's going to vary. And as we get more price action, we're going to learn more about that and have a better understanding of the the markets that we're investing in and what drives them.

And that's why I say it's important to invest in your education, not just in assets. What I mean you mentioned a lot of stuff that kind of factor in the macro there. Why and we've talked about this so much on the show but like why in this current condition where typical equities like a lot of the the equity market is getting not crushed but is at a standstill let's say is slowing down a lot. That's a super basic question. Why is crypto performing so well? like what what outside of this cyclicality, right? And even you're saying that's not really the cycle like that way that we see. It's not this four-year cycle thing. It's actually a bit of a different different uh prospect of kind of retesting a cycle low that

we're still in. But why with these current conditions, we're you know all pretty much all other assets are really suffering. Why is crypto doing well? So I studied economics at the University of Virginia and something that we would always have to do when we were writing answers to questions of economics or market activity is we'd have to include the phrase cetus parabus which means all else being equal. So what that means is that if you're looking at a market environment or an economic environment and you change something and you want to understand why something else does or does not change, it's just like in a an experiment you're doing in science class or in chemistry, you have an independent variable and a dependent variable. So it only works the experiment only works if you're holding all the other variables constant, right? So if you're varying 60

things at once, then you you're not really doing a proper experiment. So you have to say all else being equal, so I hold everything else constant. And that's what I think everybody is missing from this equation is that everything else is not equal. Set parabus does not apply. There are 60 million things varying all at once. There's the largest energy shock we've ever seen. But the thing I think it matters the most for crypto is the fundamental adoption of crypto. the institutional bull market in crypto, the the damn breaking from a regulatory perspective in crypto, the SEC allowing this innovation exemption which has taken the handcuffs off of the industry in many ways. And I think that the market is repricing that combined with the fact that for 6 to9 months or so, crypto has been the most oversold asset asset class in in the risk asset

space. And so it's just reverting to the mean. Like people forget that 85k is just a tiny bit over the the yearly average price of Bitcoin. And so it's not like Bitcoin has gone to some like huge outperformance like you know overvaluation. It's just sort of caught up to average for the last year of of price history. And if you look on the chart even further back it it's it's like for the last year and a half two years this is a pretty like Bitcoin's in an average place right now. So that's the way I view this. I think that there's a lot more going on than meets the eye. I think that the bond market selling off is not so much a it's it's partly people saying that they don't believe that the government is going to be able to pay their debts. It's mostly

just people saying, "I would rather have my capital in other places." Right now, they're deploying into um bonds and and supplying debt for the hyperscalers that are borrowing so much to build AI and do AI capex. They're buying risk assets. They're they're buying the S&P 500. They're buying well, not the S&P 500, but they're buying the the the few stocks that are performing really well and leading the S&P 500. and they're they're taking positions in crypto now too because all these fundamentals and um the the promise of the digital asset class is starting to materialize and people are positioning to take advantage of that. So there's just a lot more that goes into it than just saying like why is this happening while this is happening. There's there's a lot more at play. And I think this is just like you know what the market is telling you um

the proper valuations of these things are right now until we get some more certainty and uh a few of these macro headwinds clear up and then I think that the bull market and in equities and in in the AI space just will continue and go to new highs. >> I mean I think that that's a really good way to look at it. I think I think for a lot of people you're kind of simplifying it but also not simplifying it where I think a lot of people are always just going to pit them against each other even though it's like like you're saying it's like it's not really following this scientific experiment. Um, and you know, to your credit and and and a few other voices in the space, you know, you guys spent all summer saying if you're an AI, pivot to crypto, and probably for a lot of these

same factors that are now proving true as well, is that it's just like and and maybe it is as simple as like listen, some things get oversold, some things get overbought. It's kind of it, you know, like that. That doesn't have to be more complicated than that. Is that it's not cuz some things are bad and some things are good. It's that just the market gets really excited about some things and and and gets way less excited about other things. And if you can kind of learn to follow that, if you are that kind of swing trader rather than actually believing some of the stuff, um you know that that's another way to invest and to trade as well is just just look for stuff that has good fundamentals and buy it when everybody hates it and nobody cares, right? And there's major capitulations. And I'll go

back to your your kind of golden rule of investing of just like always buy that fear, right? Just always those red days. Doesn't matter the price. Just buy those insane red days. Buy the fear and greed in the single digits and long term, you know, you'll definitely do well with that formula. John, I want to ask you uh we can get a little bit more specific at this point in the show about like what latest developments in the crypto world are getting you really excited excited um amongst you know there's a lot happening right now in the I guess you call it a crypto conference world token 249 is this week last week Robin Hood had their their own little summit as well which was uh exciting for some asset classes and less exciting for others and and for other uh specific uh assets let's call it um and there's also

levered levered ETFs which I didn't even know about so I'd love to kick off with that. If you could tell me a little about a little bit more about um how they're going to let institutions uh play some perks. >> Okay. So, there are I'm just going to go in on this. So, there are a lot of things that >> take a deep breath. Take a deep breath. >> Thanks for taking a deep breath for me. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So, as of this morning, there have been a few announcements that I think are worthy of note. Um, like I said, the biggest one is the SEC kind of coming out with this innovation exemption and people responding by launching a bunch of new products and services. So, what do I mean by that? The innovation exemption that the SEC came out with was basically

saying, hey, for a 5-year window, you're allowed to tokenize stocks in the United States. They gave a lot of stipulations like only 75 stocks per exchange. like there's a lot of like rules around this but basically they have created a safe harbor a a a window for exemption from regulation for people to start launching tokenized stock products. Last week on Friday I did an interview with um AGM Antonio Martinez who is the head of growth at Bass and Matt Hogan of Bitwise to talk about how they're using these tokenized products um that Coinbase has offered to build new kinds of uh products called ATPs, automated token portfolios. So, we go into a lot of detail about the what they're doing, how this has been enabled, and why that matters. But then this morning, there

was an announcement from uh OKX and the New York Stock Exchange who have partnered um on on a tokenization project as well. They're going to be launching, I think it's 62 or 64, something like that, tokenized stocks on um X layer, which is OKX's Ethereum layer 2. Shout out to Ethereum um because everything is going to be tokenized and it's all going to be on Ethereum. But that's a sidebar. But that's another thing that's that was announced this morning, which is the New York Stock Exchange beginning to move onchain and tokenizing itself for the first time. And and so that's going to be happening. The other thing the SEC approved was for a long time they've been limiting the amount of leverage that you're allowed to get on an ETF project. So um that that's been something that has been applied for many many times but constantly been rejected.

Um I think this morning for the first time the SEC has announced an approval for the their first um 3x levered Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs which introduces more leverage. And just like you said, perpetuals are starting to become more welcome and adopted. Robin Hood made some announcements about how they're expanding that offering on their platform. That's coming um I think to the US as well because the CFTC has publicly said that they want to work to bring things like Hyperlid lighter and other per um products into the United States. So all of this is very bullish. All of this is what you're seeing is the regulatory uh landscape shifting and making room for the innovations of of products and and technologies that the digital asset space makes possible starting to come into the United States for the first time. So all of these

things are very fundamentally bullish and they like this all just hit this morning mostly like the these announcements about the leveraged ETFs and the the New York Stock Exchange OKX partnership on on Xlayer. So yeah, there's just a lot of this that's happening and it's going to keep accelerating. And what what it ultimately amounts to and this is why it matters is that it's more access to more market participants with more capital and honestly more leverage um around digital asset products and um products that run on digital asset layers and blockchain ecosystem. So yeah, it's all just very bullish and it's it's going to continue and I'm just I'm really excited about it because I'm I'm long as hell LG and it's it's working out pretty good.

Isn't this just more gambling for people? >> Uh, you know, you could use the word gambling. You could use speculation. You could say >> access, you don't leverage trade. You stay away from leverage trade. You you do not do it. So why why would it make you excited that the SEC is letting a lot of other people and institutions do it? >> I think it's it's less that I'm I mean, look, I I think that you can use leverage in a responsible way. Most people don't. And this is what I think is important to understand about this, right? A lot of these products, these financial derivatives, they came about as a way for people to manage risk and to mitigate risk, not to take on a lot more of it, right? So like if you're a oil producer in Texas and you happen to have

to hold a huge amount of oil on your balance sheet like while you're doing business, you need some sort of financial derivative to sort of hedge out the price volatility of that asset. So if you're like holding a huge amount of it for business, you have to you you want a an option or a short contract on oil's price so you can balance out that volatility. And this helps you get stability in your operations and conduct your business and minimize and mitigate a lot of risks from holding an asset so much of an asset that's volatile. However, if you just want to go 100x long in the price of oil because of a tweet that came out that day, that's a much different use case for the product and it is a much different kind of financial behavior.

>> That's gambling. Yeah, >> exactly. So, that's >> So, I think that financial derivatives in finance are very important if used properly, but it's just like a chainsaw. If if you're a lumberjack and you use that, you you're using that in a productive way. If you give a chainsaw to a baby, you know, there's that meme online of them giving an AK-47 to a monkey. Um, that's dangerous and I I caution people against that. Not because I think that people aren't responsible enough to make their own decisions, but because there is a huge risk of using a powerful tool uh or misusing a powerful financial tool and financial product.

And I think that people for the most part don't need these things, right? Like you don't need a huge amount of leverage. You don't need to take that much risk with your capital. You can just take a long view and be patient. And that's kind of what I advocate for. But um regardless though of whether or not people are using the leverage, the thing that's important to note is the adoption, the access, the new products, the new services um and the the fundamental value of the asset class is increasing. Um whether or not they're using the leverage ETFs or not, it's just like there there's more capital, more access. Um and that's all very bullish for the whole the whole industry. You know, one of the weird things about crypto is that the longer you're in it, the more accounts you seem to end up with. You buy in one place,

trade somewhere else, earn yield somewhere else, and if you actually need capital, you end up having to sell something that you probably wanted to keep. That's why we at Milkroad are partnering with Nexo. These guys keep the whole thing under one account. You can buy, trade crypto, earn interest on what you already hold, and even borrow against your capital without having to sell it. All in one spot, all in one account, all on Nexo. So, if you need liquidity, but you don't want to give up your position, or you're already holding crypto and you want to be able to do more with it, I think Nexo is worth your time. We love working with them. I think you will, too. Tell them Milk Road sent you. Does leverage trading suppress price in crypto? Because one thing that I see often, right, when we do have

these mass moves either direction is, oh, all these shorts were liquidated. All these longs were liquidated, right? And even people sharing analysis on Twitter last week be like, oh, all the shorts in this region that we're in now, they're all gone now, right? So could take off because they're not trying to suppress it. So is it a a how do how do how do leverage how does leverage and purpose how do they factor into price action? And B, is it used to manipulate the market at times to misdirect the market into thinking, oh, there's so many shorts, don't go long. You know what I mean? Like, don't buy now. Is that how do you view that?

>> So, first I want to say something I forgot to say, which is that unis swap is also enabling a lot of the chain trading for these tokenized products on Xlayer. So, nobody has enough unis swap. Um, >> was it some kind of unis swap plug, man? They're not a sponsor. >> It sure is a plug, and they're not a sponsor, but they should be. Um, >> get your ass over here, unis swap. Hayden, come on, man. John wants to talk to you. Wants about V4 hooks. Everybody wants to know about that >> Me, too. Yeah. Uh, my DMs are open. Okay. So, but to answer your question, I I don't think that they're used to manipulate the markets. I think that some people look at that maybe more than they should. I think that leverage helps you a lot in a bullish period because

people get levered up. They It makes the bull run go further faster than it should and you can get like extended an overvaluation of price. Um, but it also, you know, can also present a lot of headwinds and challenges when people get liquidated and you get cascading liquidations and that can really reverse the markets quickly. So, it's not good or bad. It helps you in a bull market. It hurts you in a bare market and it's it's just dangerous to get too much leverage in either direction because the market has a way of making everybody feel the max amount of pain. And uh yeah, so I don't know. I don't like you could say it's manipulation. It's all just it's all just markets, man. I don't I don't think it's fair to say that it's like a a tool of manipulation, but it is a powerful tool and it can be misused.

And so that's why I think people should use a lot of caution uh when they're evaluating whether or not they want to use those products, >> right? Okay. Okay. So, not not too much not too much to read into kind of what I'm saying. Depends. John doesn't want to talk about the dark parts. John doesn't want to talk about all the secrets. John is like, "Listen, just listen. There's X stocks now. Get excited." I think that the thing to focus on right now is stuff like um like Q& that we talked about last week, like the fundamental adoption that we're seeing and like the New York Stock Exchange tokenizing things. This is the thing to pay attention to and I don't I don't think you need to get super speculative in small caps right now. I don't think you need to get super like den with

leverage right now. I think the important thing to do right now and what I'm trying to model in my portfolio and what I'm trying to preach to the audience that we have and our community at Milk Road is just like get positioned right now and be patient because if we are going into a new bullish leg of you know an existing bull market or starting the next leg of a new bull market or the first leg of a new bull market either way the the lowest hanging fruit here is to just get positioned in some of the majors in crypto and the midcaps that are that are performing really well like a unis swap for example or you know aerodrome is going to have a big uh announcement of, you know, integrating Aerodrome and VOD Drrome and they're doing a whole bunch of stuff. There's

there's tons of these projects, though, right? Like it's it would fill the whole hour if we were going to talk about all of them, but they're they're building really great things. They're getting fundamental adoption. The market hasn't caught up yet to how powerful what they're building is and how valuable their their assets are. So I think this is the time to just be positioned and be patient and let all of this play out because as the regulators give clarity as these new products and services come to market that has a forcing function that makes other market participants have to react and compete and launch new products and it just gets better and better for all users in the market and it gets more and more bullish for the asset class overall. So I think it's just a great time to be patient and watch. But I'm the reason I'm so long on

this is that Bitcoin is in a bull market. it is starting a new bull market and I don't really care so much if we have some some wiggles and turbulence in getting started here. I would rather just be positioned and be patient and you know if I end up having to stomach a 15 a 20 a 25% drop here. I really am not going to blink one way or the other. I'm just going to keep adding to the position and waiting for it to play out because the fundamentals are getting stronger. The bull run is getting stronger and there's there's no reason to really like get too tied up about oh midterms are a month away so we're having some uncertainty here. take a longer view and just be patient and you'll you're gonna do much better in the market than trying to, you know,

overtrade your book and outsmart yourself here. >> John, if there was a 15% drop from here, the timeline would be in shambles, >> but you'd be a buyer. But you would be a buyer. >> You think it' be all right? >> Absolutely. Yeah. I don't think that would be that bad. And like it honestly wouldn't be that unexpected. like at some point between now and the end of the year. I just really don't see it being realistic that we just go straight up with no breaks for 6 months solid, you know? Like there's got to be some kind of like, all right, we're going to take a breather here somewhere. Um I don't know when it's going to come. I I've been expecting it to come. It hasn't come. Maybe it won't come. But if it doesn't, my bags are packed. If it does I'll

>> What do you consider a breather, though? Cuz I would say like even back to my question that I asked like 20 minutes ago. No, but I mean that I mean it that it's like this time now is what a lot of people thought would be the breather as in a you know a little pullback to like 77K or whatever like 15% or or 10 10ish% let's say but that hasn't transpired because you're saying it's like there's more buyers and sellers like there's a lot of strength here. There's it was oversold and now it's it's being bought back up. So a even any little dips those those dips just get scooped up across the board. So, is this something I guess what I'm asking though is that like is is could you consider this the current breather? And I'm talking like on a week-to-eek basis right now, right? So,

this isn't this isn't the long-term thing we're talking about. John's positioning for months and months, years. So, this is a very granular question, but could you say that this has been the breather? Just going sideways and holding here is the breather because the natural direction is up. >> That's what's been happening since August. What keeps happening is we we chop a little bit in a tight range and kind of go sideways and the volatility compresses and then we explode higher. That's what happens in bull markets. That's what's been happening since August. Um and so it's it's a very strong possibility that that's what continues to happen. I've seen a lot of people posted on Twitter saying the exact same thing of like, hey, before we had this first move up, we had this low volatility and then we exploded higher

and then we did the same thing again. And it's not quite stair steps, but it's it's a little bit like that. Um and that could be exactly what happens. we just kind of like have some some calmness in the market. Look, for the last couple of weeks, Ethereum has been around 2700, 2,600, 2,700. Um, and Bitcoin has been like between 83, 85, 86. It got up to 87, but it's staying in this tight range and we're right in the middle of the range right now. So, um, that could be what plays out here. We just kind of chop in this tight range and then take the next step up. Um, and the market may never really give you a good entry on these things. And I don't think you're going to get good entries on altcoins again. Like even if Bitcoin does go back to 80K to 70K, right? like you're still

not going to get huge collapses in the altcoin market because so many new kinds of ETF products have come to market. So many people have like understood what the thesis is on these things and so many people are positioning for a longer term view and we've already had the the tourists shaken out of crypto and digital assets with the the six to nine months of like deep bearish fear that we've had. So the only people are left are me and the cockroaches and like full fanatic zealots who believe in this stuff and believe in these assets and this asset class. So, I think you're going to see uh a starvation of selling and you're going to see like a really hard This is what they call a lockout rally, right? Which is what we've been in where it just it chops a little bit, but it never really gives an actual dip

and you never really get a clean, clear, good entry on anything and it just keeps climbing higher. Um, and just all coins keep popping off like, you know, 100 100% candles all over the place. So, it's a it's a really nice time, man. I'm I'm a happy man at the party. How about that? Does that work, LG? And everybody else is sad. >> No, I'm not sad. If you're in if you're in the crypto trade with me right now, you're doing pretty well, you know, but everybody else is scared. Look, you know, the other thing that people saying is that we could see a 10% pullback in the S&P 500, in the equity space, in the AI trade, and that could bring some kind of a dip to to crypto and Bitcoin, but it hasn't yet, so maybe it won't.

>> Okay, John. Uh I I I my next question for you is about your positions and your portfolio and because you even added a lot even more. You used your payday last week and your remaining cash to fully deploy your 0% cash now. John is fully positioned for this. Uh but I want to ask you about that and we're going to jump to to Milkwood Pro after hours to do that. Uh so if you guys want to check that out, just click the link below. It's a dollar to to to watch it. It's a little 15-minute session we do at the end of our episodes together uh where we pull up John's portfolio and actually look through the positions and talk through them. I also want to talk to you about some of your positions that I guess some people would say have cooled, but rather I would say they've cooled

because they've stopped going straight up. So, what the hell, John? Uh, so we're going to talk about a few of those. They're up 500%. Why would they stop there? It's unfair. Uh, you know, but we we'll take a look at those uh in after hours. So, if you guys join us for that, otherwise um we'll be right back here on Monday for more John and and John's here every day to talk more crypto with some fantastic guests. >> Thanks, LG. >> Thanks for listening to Milk Road. If you enjoyed the show, make sure you like and subscribe. And if you're struggling to find winners in the market, that's exactly what Milkro Pro is built for. Our analysts have called some of the biggest winners early, and Pro lets you see what they're buying next, every trade they make, and the research behind every position. Check out Milkroad Pro

at the link below. Everything you hear on Milkroad is forformational purposes only. These are our personal opinions, not financial advice, and we may own some of the investments we talk about. Always do your own research and make the decisions that are right for you. See you next time.