Why Bitcoin is stuck despite Saylor and ETF buying

Transcript

the the playbook that he's teaching Wall Street is that if you own Bitcoin, you can find different ways to monetize it. What's up everybody? It's LG Ducet here and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show that is going to long the longs and short the shorts and still can't decide what any of that means. Today's April 16th, 2026. All right, we're finally revealing another crucial part of what Milk Road has been doing in private for a long time, our weekly crypto research meeting. Every Thursday morning, the pro team gets together and discusses what matters most in crypto. And then that informs our research, our tweets, our podcast, our purchases. And from now on, we're going to be doing it right here in public. Today, we're going deep on Hyperlquid. We're talking about if lighter can ever hope to catch up to

them despite how much Martin wants to love it and is actually writing a pro report that's coming out today about it. And then we're going to swan dive into Michael Sailor's stretch and its success so far in the market. Today's episode is brought to you by Consensus Miami, where the next cycle starts. Some turn crypto tax chaos into confidence and Nexo. Earn interest, borrow and trade crypto. All right, everybody listening. Welcome to the first ever public milk road research meeting. We have these every week. We've been having them every week for a long time secretly and now it's public. So, you guys are going to hear what Kyle, Martin, and Sean really think about the market, which hopefully is not that different than what you see publicly or you see in Milk Road Pro, but we're going to find out today. Uh Kyle, let's start with you. We always go do these

and kind of go around the horn and and see what kind of your thoughts are on the market. A very green week. Is this going to continue? >> Yeah, I mean a very green week. Uh it talked about this on the AI podcast earlier this week, too, which is I think we overpriced the doomsday scenario. Uh and so everyone was kind of caught offside and you know, inflation was not as bad as we thought. The war seems to be not resolved, but like we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I think at least there's some sort of control there. And so, and then, you know, everything else looks pretty good in terms of the macro world. So, I think everyone had to come back into the market. Uh, S&P and NASDAQ are now back at all-time highs. So, everything looks good. The one thing I would say, though,

is, you know, the stock market's back at all time highs, but Bitcoin is still sitting below 75,000, which isn't that great. So, I'm very bullish on AI and in the AI world at the moment because that buildout is continuing. You know, TSMC had their earnings this morning and their margins and revenue were huge. And so there's still this tons of demand for for chips. So I think like that world is not stopping which is bullish overall for just the markets. For some reason though crypto is not playing ball. I do feel very bullish on Bitcoin though because of what Sailor is doing. The guy's buying more Bitcoin than he ever has this year. Um and I don't think that stopped because of his new product stretch which I'm sure we'll talk about later guys. Like I feel good about pockets of crypto but it's still not

really performing like equities. So I don't know. It's a It's a weird It's a world for crypto, but my guess is the four-ear cycle's broken and we're going to get all-time highs at some point. >> There we go. >> Martin, you're back at the top of the leaderboard in Milkroad Pro in our portfolios. John briefly held the poll position for a couple days last week, but Martin has has leapfrog back ahead, man. What do you think? You going to stay up there and and what do you do you concur with Kyle? You have a different take on what's going on. >> Why do you surprise OG? Um, >> up 20.7% Martin. Not bad. Not bad.

>> Well, I think I was more concerned about the situation in Iran than Kyle. And I guess I can feel it because I'm based in Europe and I I can feel the impact here. like my cousin is building his house and he said like hey all all the materials and everything just went nuts and I'm not going to sure that I will be able to you know finish my house anymore and it's like yes like in US you it's still not visible in the economy really and it might never will because you know US is oil exporter so they don't really care but like for Asia, Europe and like

everyone else I'm Still not 100% sure that we saw all the effects and like second order effects of what that shock cost, but we will see. Anyways, right now S&P, NASDAQ, all indices at the all-time highs. It it tells me like, okay, maybe the market is not seeing that as a high risk. So, probably also not be, you know, huge in cash. So I deployed some capital few weeks ago back into the markets because it's okay to be to be risk aware and sort of try to manage your risks but also I need to react what markets tells me and I don't want to be like you know extreme

contrarian and like S&P and like all the markets hitting all-time highs except crypto and I will be like no way guys this is going to still not resolved. I think we can still go down 10%. So yeah, it's I was more bearish than Kyle, but uh right now it seems like Marquette took it. We are now up again. So it seems it seems pretty good right now. >> So as we're going through this episode, just remember there's a difference between hearing ideas and actually seeing how they're being traded. Milk Road Pro gives you the portfolios, the buy and sell signals, the research, and direct access to our analysts making those moves. The link is below. Great, John. Um, you you and I have been doing episodes every Monday on uh on this show

on Milk Road on the main channel and we've got we've we started the last couple weeks up until this week with like the bearish take where John was like we're totally [ __ ] like you're you're screwed like everybody dooms doomsday and then this week we said like let's start with the optimistic take and that's been the that's been our best episode in a while. Um, so clearly people want to hear that. And also we timed it with having a clear turnaround in the market, but you're the one out of the three here, uh, who has had probably the most pessimistic kind of long-term view, especially since Martin flipped a lot more bullish a couple weeks ago. How do you feel right now?

>> I have the most bullish long-term view, first of all, of everybody. What is what is long-term and long-term view? There's short, mid, and long term. Okay, let's just put it that way. short is like months, mid is like a year or two, and long is like 20 years. >> Whatever whatever measuring stick you want to use on this, I'm very bullish on Bitcoin, digital assets overall, Ethereum, all these different things. Um, look, I think where we are right now is I'm still in this I'm just sused out in general, right? We're sitting on the other side of what is like a 99th percentile move in the positive direction from the S&P 500. It's easy to get euphoric. It's easy to say the bull runs back. It's easy to say that, you know, we're going to Valhalla and up only and we're just going to yeet to

infinity, right? But just because we're over 7,000 on the S&P 500 doesn't necessarily mean that the the prior market structure of the the last year and more uh just gets thrown out the window. And I still don't think we've seen confirmation. So like Bitcoin, for example, is still not over 75K and the the bare market resistance ban is still above us right now. So Bitcoin hasn't even on technical metrics yet flipped back into a bull market. So, I'm kind of waiting for confirmation on that. Same thing with the S&P 500, right? Like, we're not going to just see, you know, another 10 days of up only price action from that either. There's going to be a pullback. The market's going to figure some of this out. I think this is all positive, but I think it's a little bit of a mean reversion, right? We've seen a

lot of weakness from the S&P for a long time. There's been a ton of uncertainty from the the conflict in that situation, but it seems like the market is now expecting this to resolve, and so I think we're seeing some positive momentum as a result of that. I agree with Kyle's observation. the bull run is much stronger than most people have thought throughout this period of uh you know bearishness and weakness um in sentiment and in price action. So I do think that we have a lot more reason to be bullish than most people think. But it's a little bit too soon for me to like completely flip bullish and say we're going up only here. Um so I'm just still waiting for confirmation on a lot of things particularly when it comes to digital assets. You know, Ethereum's not over 2400. And Bitcoin's not over the

the bare market resistance band, which is around like 78K, 79K somewhere in there. Basically, if Bitcoin Bitcoin spent like two weeks above 80K, I'd feel more comfortable saying the bull runs back on. But right now, it's to me just like a really sharp V-shaped recovery, which the S&P has done before. But we'll see whether or not it holds or if it's just sweeping the highs before rolling over. >> Here's the S&P. Okay, look at it roll down and then all of a sudden Vshape. Same thing it did last year. Same thing it did the year before that. Like it is >> fine. And if it keeps going that's great.

>> I mean >> there there's this is what the fiat system does. This is why people are bullish on Bitcoin is because this is fiat system right here. It it only works this way. These assets have to go up. >> This is exactly what makes me nervous. Everyone's like, "Oh, it only goes up. It's never going to roll over. It's never going to roll." Like >> you want me to zoom this chart out even further? >> Then it'll just tell you that 100% it only just goes up. Look at >> Why don't you zoom it back to the.com bubble? Why don't you do that? See how it looks. >> Look at this chart. It's ridiculous. But anyway, it Bitcoin is the thing that just does not like everything else looks fantastic. The chart of crypto though, you know, just does not look that great.

And uh I don't know. At some point, it's probably going to bounce back, but I just don't know when that's going to be. >> Wow. Kyle, are you willing to to put down some kind of hyperlid bet on this? Because I think that's what we want to talk about today, too, is talk about hyperlid. Uh >> yeah, you know what? Let's let's go there right now. Martin, >> yeah, >> you you wrote a big report about Hyperlid. I think you're writing one on Lighter, which is its main competitor this week. Hyperl has been on my watch list, which by the way, we just launched watch list at Milk Road Pro. So, I think you can actually go see not just our portfolios, but you can see what our watch lists are now. Um, so for pro members, that's a new feature that's I think it's launching today. Anyway, hype

is on my watch list. It has been I feel like for forever and I just can't get myself to buy it because I always think I need to wait for it to go lower. And I have multiple people in our Discord community, our pro members that chirp me every day saying, "When are you going to buy hype?" And I never do. What's your thoughts, Martin? Like, should we be buying this thing now? Is it uh is it overvalued, undervalued? Like, is it got a lot of room to grow? What are you thinking? I think now you you have that you know I don't know how it's called but like you miss something and now you just want you are too afraid to jump on that. Yeah, that's not the right word.

>> It's not FOMO because if I had FOMO I'd just be buying it, right? So it's like >> let me put it this way. I think right now what works in crypto is stable coins and per exposure if you don't have exposure to uh neither you you are doing something wrong. Um you know you might get exposure to stable coins through sky or a but if you don't have exposure to pers at all you are cooked um because like per just from first principles okay per just a great product it's something that people just want to use leverage like we can see all the numbers like look at Robin Hood look at

I don't know Coinbase look at per volumes look at options volumes like all these vehicles are just instrument struments for leverage. So people love leverage and okay we we finally moved from trading meme coins because this is still a casino but it's really hard to get some real edge there but if you are like trading oil or something you can have some edge so it's a different thing and I think it also attracts like more sophisticated players um and per right now it the market leader is hyper liquid and so you have a creel reader in a booming sector and they also have a

huge buybacks. So you are not waiting for someone else coming in and buying your bags. They are just buying back like 50 million per months. And the thing that I like about Hyperlid is that its business model and its product don't rely just on crypto, right? So, like what we just talked about is, hey, equities are back at all-time highs. Uh, crypto is kind of still, you know, Bitcoin's at like 70, not even 75,000 still. Okay, it looks like [ __ ] but Hyperliquid is now monetizing things outside of crypto, right? This is kind of like the reason why I like Sky so much is it's it's business and its revenue. It's not impacted by crypto volatility, right? It's a completely different thing. It's bringing credit on chain and and creating like a tokenized

yield form of that. Um, and so Hyperlink was kind of similar. like it's now, you know, it used to be just pers on what, Bitcoin, ETH, etc. Now it's pers on oil, pers on everything else. And so it's like it's moved past the crypto world, which is like the one thesis that I absolutely love. And then obviously, like you said, the other thing is is is buybacks. >> Is it growing? >> No, it's not. It's going sideways. That's my lately. Yeah, >> that's my issue. Why? Why? Why is it not growing? Is it competition or just no new net peers? >> Yeah, that's what I think. like they are struggling to grow from here. Uh because the recent growth lever was HIP3 which was that anyone can build front end and just bring you know your own assets

through the hyperlquid you can trade there. So that was the the big boom with real world assets like oil and silver. Um but now what's next? What's what what what's next catalyst? Um I think they are bringing prediction markets to hyper liquid as well. Um I think the same road map will is on the on lighter light later lighter road map as well. So you start with burps then you bring spot then you you bring uh other builders you invite other builders into the ecosystem to build on top of you and then you have prediction markets and pretty much everything else. But I am not sizing up w with hype and the reason is that I believe that lighter is a better product

because if you use hyperlquid yes it's market leader today they have much more liquidity uh much much higher open interest but the thing is if I'm probably a a big hedge fund or asset manager and I'm thinking about using hyperlquid then I have two trust assumptions. One is I need to believe that their validators are uh you know behaving honestly and follow the rules which I have no way to verify. So I hope that no one is stealing and it like everything goes as it should but I have no idea. And the second is if I bridge my money to hyperlquid, I'm always

hoping that there will there will always be some bridge how I can uh withdraw my money back. And you know if I'm a big big money manager, those might be like two big issues that might stop me by deploying capital on hyperlquid. And then you have something like lighter which is built on top of ethereum. So I can keep my native Ethereum on Ethereum mainet and lighter will just see ah okay this guy has Ethereum on the mainet so I can just issue I I can just give you credit on our layer 2 and even if our sequencer goes off or something you can always and because they also post uh ZK proofs to the Ethereum you can always

come back to Ethereum and say hey uh their sequencer went off here are all the proofs so can you just rebuild the whole blockchain again and return me my money. Yes, we can. So like the trust assumptions are pretty much zero here. You believe in Ethereum security which is you know the best in the industry by a long shot. And second thing is there is no bridge there. So it's it's built in the smart contract. So I will be able to withdraw my money anytime I want and there is no one who could ever block me my money. If you think from that perspective, lighter is simply just a better product. But right now it's not it's not seen in the numbers yet. I hold

both in my portfolio by the way. >> Hyperlid is 10.7 billion market cap but fully diluted value of 43 billion. What uh >> that's that's Martin pouring water. Not taking a piss for anybody listening. Okay. He's pouring water that are audio only. >> You don't know that. It's off camera. A lot of things he is on camera. >> Who knows? Yeah. We didn't see it. We He hasn't moved, but that doesn't mean anything. Go ahead, Kyle. >> So 10 10.7 billion market cap, 43 billion FTV for hyperlquid. Where should that be valued, Martin? Higher or lower?

>> You know what's the problem is like are you ask like 10 billion uh sounds good, but 40 billion so sounds not good. So it's like I don't I don't know their token schedule if there obviously there are some blessings for the team. I think they don't have any investors, but I don't know. And that's the problem with like pretty much all crypto tokens that are not that they still have some tokens unlocked because you don't know how much is going to be in circulation in one like in two years or something. So, >> well, that's the issue with Lighter here, right? Like Lighter's market cap 268 million FTV 1 billion, right? So, there's 750 million tokens that need to come in supply. When are those coming

out? I don't want >> like you can think about it like it's FDV is 1.5 billion and I am willing to buy it at 1.5 billion. I'm assuming that FDV I'm not looking at market cap >> the like >> right >> I talk about about why I'm so bullish here in my report despite all these token unlocks and I said like many times to myself I'm never going to buy token that's going to have a huge future unlocks but this time it's it's different because if you go and learn more about the team behind lighter and who are the founders backing this team, you will be like, "Okay, I I want to be

in that trade as well because those are just, you know, funders fund who who never who barely invest in crypto and they invested in into later." That guy who started later, he was handpicked by um CEO of Citadel who is you know the biggest market maker. He was recruited by him at 18 because he was just super smart guy and he was represent he was studying hard work and and then he also knows Vlad and Vlad from CEO from Robin Hood. He's now adviser to lighter. Then you have Tom Lee who is you know interviewing um Vlad uh from Lighter during their investors call because I

guess they are cooking something together. So like those are so many things and like if I am you know Tom Lee or if I'm Vlastennf and I'm associating my name with that company and I invest and those guys they invested last round when they were raising funds were at 1.5 billion and they all invested at that valuation and now we are like 50% below that valuation. So like it tells me these gigab brains were okay to give him money at 1.5 billion and now it's sitting at 1 billion. So either these guys are not as smart as they look or there is something wrong or it's huge opportunity right now. So

couple things but I'm bullish. >> You you um John I guess do you have anything to add on pers? I don't know if you're buying Hyperlquid at all. >> I assume not. >> Why are you laughing? I could be I You have no idea. I could be totally a DJ and nobody would know. >> Freaking right. >> Uh no. So I think that uh prediction markets so I think all markets are prediction markets. And I think that the the market is now beginning to realize the power of these as a product. Um and but I think you know everyone's always known this for a long time. Markets are forward-looking. They're information generating engines as well as risk distribution and capital aggregation methods. But I think that the the problem for me is that there's not really a moat around what Hyperl is, but

people are gonna eat me alive for saying this, but there isn't a clear moat around what Hyperlid is offering in terms of prediction markets other than the loyalty from the community and people's preference for um for trading there and the fact that they have so much liquidity on their platform that's that's making that a great place to go to express these ideas. I think that it's it's one of those things where I think they've got a great product. They found product market fit. They're defending their mo. They they've got a loyal community and user base, but it also seems to me like something that's going to get at some point get folded in or incorporated into other financial um platforms and products and services will just be another thing that's offered. Um and so to me, it's a little bit too soon to tell for sure what the long-term like

what the how this all this plays out, where this ends up, if it just ends up as something you can do on Robin Hood, etc. But I I think it's it's a huge um a huge emerging financial primitive that is yet to be fully incorporated into the financial marketplace. >> Yeah, I think you're definitely going to be able to do these on like Robin Hood and Coinbase soon for sure. I mean, you already kind of can already. >> Can you do it on Coinbase? I don't know if they have perks, but >> I think they actually but but it's just like Hyperlid has so much so many more users and so much more liquidity that most people go there still. >> The way we build wealth is changing. Stocks, savings accounts, real estate, that playbook is getting rewritten in real time. Nexo is the platform built

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That's sum.com. Milkroad listeners can also unlock 20% off their first year subscription with code milkroad 20. >> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Let's let's you talked about Tom Lee. I want to have a conversation around Sailor cuz he's getting some some a lot of conversation right now, which is like the one thing that's actually making me kind of bullish on Bitcoin. I just want to know what you guys have. So, let me just show this chart first cuz it's insane. Okay, so this is a chart I just made this morning of Sailor's basically accumulation of Bitcoin year-over-year. The red one here is this year. So, it's the fastest that he's ever accumulated Bitcoin so far. It's like 108 108,000 Bitcoin in by midappril. So it was 107,000 by the end of April last year.

So he's already outpacing that. And he's outpacing it not because he's really diluting and selling Micro Strategy shares. He's done a little bit of that, but I think he hasn't tapped that ATM for a couple weeks now, maybe even more than that. It's through his stretch product which is basically a preferred a preferred share that he's got where um yield seekers can come basically give their capital to Michael Sailor get 11.5% APY and he goes and buys Bitcoin with that right and then he's got like you know $2.25 billion of cash just kind of reserved away to pay out those dividends. Um and it's absolutely ripping but every time that that those shares those stretch shares which are at $100 go above 100 he can tap the ATM on those. And I think this week so far he's already tapped 1.8 billion just from

Monday and Tuesday of this week to buy more Bitcoin. So like it is an absolute money printer. Now obviously there's risk to it and we don't need to go into that whole conversation unless we want to. Um but he's buying so much damn Bitcoin right now that it's crazy the price is not moving a lot more than it currently is. Have you guys looked into this? Do you think that this is going to continue and we're going to go much higher as a result? um because he's buying more than double the amount of Bitcoin that's mined every day right now and he's accelerating which is crazy. So what do we think?

>> I think two points for me. One is the fact that Sailor is buying like crazy and the Bitcoin is still not moving is probably showing that the Bitcoin is quite weak because we have this one huge buyer and probably no one else buying it. Well, we also had a billion inflow so far in April from the ETFs. So, it's not the only buyer. >> Maybe it's starting now, but you know, until now, not really. And like, >> yeah, >> this shows something like if you have long long-term horizon, like you know, Bitcoin will will do just fine in couple years, so don't worry. But it just shows me that I'm quite surprised that there are not new buyers even for Bitcoin.

That's kind of surprising. And second thing is it's great that you see you show the chart how sailor is accumulating but you you didn't show chart how much it cost him because right now he is buying but the cost of that capital that he's using to to get for these buys are are pretty high. 12% that's pretty insane. So, like, you know, if I want to buy more Bitcoin, I can, but like, am I willing to borrow money for 10% or 15% or 20%. Like, you know, that's that's that's the game he's playing here. And 12% right now, that's pretty steep.

>> Yeah. I mean, he's not technically borrowing it for 12 11.5%. Like, it's not like this is like he can get liquidated or something on this. Like, he can lower that rate at any time he wants to, right? Um, he's it's a it's a variable rate that they set each month. So, it's it's a bit more nuanced than that, but I I I see what you're saying for sure. Um, it is a worry to me that it's still not going up when he's buying this much. That just seems wild to me. Either it's like, okay, they're running out of supply here and this thing's got to go much higher very soon, which is kind of what I'm leaning towards if it continues down this path. I just like, what's the next catalyst for Bitcoin?

Does the like the Genius Act sort of? I guess that helps. It it definitely helps. It's not just an Ethereum based thing. Um, but it helps. What do you What do you think, John? I see you laughing over there. >> I think you guys are completely missing this. First of all, >> uh, bit there is no second best. Bitcoin is digital capital and is digital credit. So, he's look, he's he's found, look, okay, this this what you got to understand about this. Everybody look at this being like that's what he says. He calls it digital credit that STRC, but it's not digital credit. It's a preferred equity. And this is what I think Martin is is getting at here. He's paying 11% but it's something he is choosing to do. The market he can suspend that payment if he if he chooses to if he can't make that payment. Um so

everybody's taking whatever risk and they're taking and buying that. But that's not the the point here. This is look okay. The reason he's not walking up the order books is he's doing this not on the spot markets but OTC. So he's intentionally trying to accumulate as much Bitcoin as he can without radically impacting the price. That is not a bearish thing. It just means that he is now he's now becoming, you know, the central bank of Bitcoin effectively. He's accumulating more and more of the spot supply, but he's trying not to radically shift the price. So that's intentional and it's a deliberate market strategy and a lot of major accumulators do that. So that's nothing unusual. Um, the next major catalyst for Bitcoin will probably be the Clarity Act and the resolution of the war. But I think all this is is beside the point. The second

and third order impacts of what he's done is what's so important to understand here. The the history of how we got here is important as well. Michael Sailor realized that Micro Strategy was effectively a zombie company and he was going to get eaten alive slowly by Microsoft over time back in 2020. In August, I think of 2020, he begins buying Bitcoin. Then he starts issuing MSTR to buy more Bitcoin. That's reflected in those charts that you have there. What he's doing now is he's iterated on a lot of other different kinds of financial instruments and products to bring to market until he found product market fit. STRC is the one that's allowing him to accumulate.

Like I said in the recent episode that went semiviral, he's accumulating with bull market size during a Bitcoin bare market. That is a huge change. And the second and third impacts of that is what people aren't seeing, what retail is missing. So let me explain what I mean by this. So what he did was he launched all these there's stream and stretch and strife and strike and all but none of them >> products or something like that. >> Exactly. He's got a whole suite of these but the one that found product market fit is stretch. The reason this is such a big deal is he's now straddling the volatility curve. So if you want a lot of volatility and upside, you can buy MSTR. It's going to have more performance than it's going to outperform Bitcoin, more beta to Bitcoin in a Bitcoin bull run, but it's also

going to be way more volatile. But if you want low volatility, Stretch has basically no volatility. It's an equity product with like a 1 to 2% something like that V rating, but it has a 12% um payout on it. And that's what he's found as product market fit in the market. There's a huge demand for that. The reason this matters so much is that who that demand is from is what's causing the problem here. It's from people who are clients of Morgan Stanley, of Black Rockck, of of Franklin Templeton, of all these of Schwab, right? A lot of capital is coming into Micro Strategy, but it's who it's coming from is the big deal. So now what you're seeing is this like big push from Wall Street to react to this to bring out products to compete with

Stretch to keep those clients and that capital at those firms. That's what he's doing here that's shaking this up so much. The the thing that's such a big uh change in the marketplace to me is how all these other institutions are being forced to respond to Sailor himself. So Goldman Sachs has launched a Bitcoin income ETF product. Black Rockck is launching a Bitcoin income ETF product. Morgan Stanley is trying to tokenize their whole firm. They've launched their spot uh Bitcoin products. Those are the best performing Morgan Stanley ETFs they've ever had in the history of their company. Uh Schwab Crypto is launching.

Temp Franklin Crypto is launching. Franklin Templeton bought out a company is launching their own crypto platform. All these major Wall Street institutions are being forced to come to the market with their own products to try to compete with Mic Micro Strategy because he has found a new kind of product market fit with Bitcoin as digital capital offering digital credit. Sorry, I just love doing a Michael Sailor impression. It's the most fun thing in the world. Um, but but that's the thing everyone's missing right now is that it's not just the fact that he's buying Bitcoin with bull market size in a bare market. He's forcing all of the rest of Wall Street. All of them are forced.

Yes. And and that's the big unlock. So this is what I'm saying that the the a lot of people like I did this great interview with Michael Naidal recently and he has all this analysis on why he's still a little bit bearish, thinks we're going to go down. But I think a mistake that a lot of analysts are making right now is they're looking for the next marginal buyer of Bitcoin to be the same next marginal buyer that it was during the last bull run. And that's not going to be the case. It's going to be different kinds of capital, different kinds of net marginal buyers coming in. They're going to be coming in indirectly through a lot of these new products that are being offered. So that's what I think is so bullish here. And that's what I think everybody's missing by saying, you know, he's he's not moving

the price and it's not it's not changing things right now. It is changing things radically and Wall Street's never going to be the same. >> Yeah. And I guess he's also just buying this, putting it in a little vault, and he's not I mean, hopefully he's not selling it, right? And so like whenever the excitement comes back, I mean, Bitcoin is the most reflexive asset probably in the world. And he's now taken he's got a what he's getting by the end of this month, he's going to have 800,000 Bitcoin. So that and that none of that's getting sold, right, which is crazy. So, um I think it like that's what I mean. There's a big setup here coming if we get whatever that catalyst is. And and I don't know when that comes, but I I would imagine it's actually going to come pretty soon here

>> when everyone else is sort of building the the other products like similar products or like competitive products to sailor. They are using the same kind of financial engineering or they are just like a >> is a great question. They're using well so like I haven't read the perspectives for the Goldman Sachs filing actually. This is something I'd like to talk to James Safeford about, but Black Rockck's filing for their Bitcoin income ETP. Um, is using a covered call strategy. Um, so they're basically using options to capitalize on the volatility of Bitcoin and then passing on the the income that they're generating from that to users.

But a lot of this kind of comes down to Sailor's fundamental assumption, which is that Bitcoin tends to go up. Um, and so, you know, if Bitcoin crashes to $8,000, Sailor has problems. But if you kind of assume that the dollar keeps depreciating in value against Bitcoin, which it it should, you know, it's like betting on gravity continuing to work, um he he should be fine for 50 years. The the playbook that he's teaching Wall Street is that if you own Bitcoin, you can find different ways to monetize it. And that's the key thing, right, is it used to be you just own Bitcoin and you hope it goes up. And Michael Sailor's like, "No, no, no. you own Bitcoin and you can do things that allow you to monetize if you do proper financial engineering like you're talking about with options and different things like

that. And so like that is a good lesson and then you think about well what about Tom Lee right Tom Lee owns I don't know how much ETH but like close to 4% of the entire supply. He's still just running the Micro Strategy playbook. When does he go and do the stretch playbook now that he knows this thing works? because he's got a [ __ ] ton of another digital asset very similar to to Bitcoin, except he can actually get native yield from it around 3%. So, he can do what Sailor's doing with Stretch, but actually even something even different. Um, and he could even, you know, there's more he could do with it with DeFi as well. So, like that's the thing that I'm wondering is when does Tom Lee make a move or or does he make a move? I think he probably

does. Um, because he could run the same playbook here and then that's huge for ETH. So, I don't know when he's going to do it, but my my guess is something's coming soon with that. >> So, I want to say something about Ethereum here. You said that, you know, Michael Sailor's accumulating a lot of Bitcoin and that's just going to be diamondhanded forever and it's coming off the market. Similar thing is happening with Ethereum. There are a lot of people aggressively accumulating that. Tomley's now got over 4% of the ETH supply. He's applying this and bringing this out in a lot of different ways. He's launched this um proprietary Maven staking solution, which you know, Black Rockck has launched their staking uh Ethereum product, ETHB. there's a lot of other staking uh Ethereum ETPs coming to market. I I agree with you. There's a lot of other things that can be done

with digital asset treasury companies around Ethereum as an asset and in the ETH ecosystem. Those things haven't come to market yet, but I think once we see a lot of capital, enthusiasm, interest, return, there's a lot of opportunity to come to market with products there too. And the same thing you described before, there's no ETH to go around, right? Like people have got people have gotten a lot of the supply of Ethereum off the markets. the the amount that's available on exchanges is near historic lows. Um, so I'm very bullish on this setup here overall for digital assets because once this huge like, you know, apocalyptic sentiment level we've had changes and people start to see the value and some of the price action starts to come back, people are going to realize there's an enormous amount of opportunity that the market has been missing and mispricing

here and we're going to, you know, like I said, yeet to Valhalla pretty quickly. So, I'm I'm very bullish on what the future holds for for >> yeet. Are you using the word yeet, John? Are you in a suit and then also saying yeet? >> Look, we do a lot of things here, okay? This is a secret research meeting and uh no wheels apply. All right, >> that's awesome. >> Wow. Who's got the birds chirping? That's what I want to know. Who's some birds started chirping as this happened? Is it can't be sirens in the background? >> Those are sirens. Oh, you know, I think it might be here. It's probably where I live. LG's out west in the forest in the mountains just like chilling and John's just like fighting to stay alive in in New York City >> and [ __ ] so he doesn't get yeah he

doesn't get run over by the kids running around there >> if I say yeed on this street man the seniors here are going to be so confused >> so either way we are we are quite bullish on the two largest assets in crypto uh ETH and ETH and Bitcoin you know it's funny last year and I I'm so mad I didn't follow this but last year when when dots became a thing, I remember saying when you know they were picking up in terms of how much they were all buying and it was accelerating and I was like the moment that stops accelerate accelerating when the rate of change comes back the other way and we decelerate that's the time to take profits and sell and I never did that and it exactly played out that way. As soon as Micro Strategy and Tom Lee and

Joseph Shalom couldn't buy any more ETH in Bitcoin or like slowed down their buys, you know, we went down 50 60 whatever it was percent. And I was like, [ __ ] I knew that that was it. Someone was talking about on a video. I think it was Tiki, actually. You guys know Ty, the I think that's his name. He he was talking about that and I was like, man, I had that same thesis and I just honestly never even looked at or thought about it. But, uh, now we're starting to see it accelerate again. That's that's generally a a good thing for for bull market vibes. What else? What else is going on? One thing I was looking at is um well, two things. You know, you talked about prediction markets or not prediction markets, per Martin, are they at all-time highs in terms of use? Have

you looked at like the usage of them? Is it growing in terms of users and that or it's kind of you said flat, right? >> It's flat. Yeah. >> Yeah. I was looking at the stable coin chart recently in terms of supply which just hit um all-time highs over 320 billion but the transaction volume is just going berserk the last few months so that's really cool to see obviously a lot of that happening on Ethereum and then prediction markets is going absolutely berserk too in Q1 prediction markets hit 60 well 58 billion in volumes just in Q1 last year it hit about 50 billion in the entire year so pred prediction markets are also going through the roof. Now, that's not like a lot of transactions or anything on chain. So, I don't think it really

impacts something like Ether or any of that that much unless some of the onchain prediction markets start to pick up, but a lot of the use cases that we have in crypto are starting to really take off, right? Um, which is really cool. And then you have that happening at the same time as the most important assets, Bitcoin and ETH, are also being financially engineered in various different ways. And so there's like there is a really good setup here in terms of both adoption and accumulation, right? Um which is which is pretty cool. So um I don't know. I'm I'm pretty bullish coming out of this crazy war um which never had me that bearish to begin with. So yeah. Anything else you guys want to want to add?

>> Yeah, I'll get exposure to prediction markets, is it? >> No, not yet. Well, there is. So there are some like onchain ones like uh is it Miad uh Mirid Markets or something? There's like another one called Rain a few but like none of them are remotely close to what's going on with Poly Market and Kalshi. Do you guys think they'll actually launch a token or are they going to go public? >> Well, hold on. If I can interject as the former host and writer of Milkroad DJ, just to be clear about a couple things here is that the the anticipation of a token to me is what I would attribute a lot of volume to. And I think that that is something really to keep in mind.

John said everything's a prediction market in a way. Sure, it's the only way you can get access to like betting on freaking who's going to say what in a speech, but I would say that a lot of volume uh people automated, but no one's expecting to provide liquidity. >> It doesn't mean they won't. It doesn't mean they won't and it doesn't mean poly market will billion 60 billion volume. >> They could and will bet on >> Kelsey is not a crypto company. I don't think anyone's like farming a token on Kelsey. That makes no sense. It's like, well, why are we talking about on the show then? >> What do you mean still prediction market?

>> This is like >> Yeah, but this is a crypto show. Isn't this a >> But isn't this a crypto show? Why are we talking about this stuff if it's not crypto? >> Because prediction markets were invented through crypto companies sort of. And it uses stable coins sort of and there are becoming onchain versions of it which might be even better than the offchain versions. Binance wallet just integrated a onchain prediction market for example. So like it it's starting any any financial product and any financial instrument is getting put onchain, right? So if you have a financial asset, it's getting tokenized. If you have a financial service, whether it's per or prediction markets or whatever, it's moving on chain and it all works better and lives better on chain, right? So I think anything that's happening in the

financial space that is growing and is important, you should think, okay, how are we going to wrap that and put that on chain or how are we going to reconfigure that and put it on chain? Because that's really what's happening. Like one one example is like stretch. We just talked about it. There's already DeFi versions of Stretch. So wrapped versions of Stretch on Ethereum. 300 million worth. That's how much it's it's it's uh there is already in like a matter of of weeks, we've put $300 million of tokenized stretch onchain on Ethereum. It's crazy. And then Pendle has launched their version of fixed yield for Stretch and it's got 100 million already. So like anything that's happening in the financial market that is relevant, you want to go and look, okay, what's the opportunity on chain?

it's going to move there cuz it's like I I was writing a a post this morning and I was like financial assets live better on chain just like information lives better online right information on a piece of paper is useless information online can do way more right it's way more functional it can distribute way faster um it's way more uh has way more use cases the same thing is is true with financial assets moving on chain so anything that's financial you got to figure out where's that going to go on chain that's how you can get ahead of it. So if prediction markets are going to become the next big thing, which currently, you know, 60 billion and a quarter is huge, you want to be thinking about, okay, what are we going to do with that on chain? Same with, you know, anything else. Wall Street is here, the

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I've got a few other things to say before the other two guys say something is that one thing to note for Poly Market and Kalshi is that their volume is different in terms of sectors. 75% of Koshi's volume is sports whereas it's only like 40% for Poly Market. The other 30% like there's a huge chunk of Poly Market that is politics and 10% of it is just Trump as a category. So there's definitely a delineation between what they're being used for and maybe what they're targeting and where Cali is advertising I would say. Um, and the other thing too is that with the launch of HIPP HIP4, um, I think that that's a really big thing to watch because I wonder how much they're going to be how much Hyperlid wants to eat into that volume as well.

Um, and how big of a piece of the pie Hyperl is has existed for so long as the dominant force in its per sector um that now I wonder how they're going to approach trying to get a piece of the pie or if it's just natively going to come to them. But I'll let the other guys give their analysis there, too. Uh no, something I was going to say is you could just go on Poly Market and make a uh a prediction market about whether Koshi is going to launch a token and then go on Koshei and make a prediction market about whether or not Poly Market is going to launch a token. Uh and then you know you've you've cornered the universe. Um so one thing I think is interesting about this is the power of predicted market predictive markets in forecasting the future accurately. I

think that, you know, I'm gonna get these numbers wrong, but it's somewhere around like 90% accuracy of of poly market prediction markets up to like it's like 86% accuracy up to one month out from the actual event. Um, and this is just like the statistics so far, but the reason I think that's so powerful is that that's much better than traditional metrics of like expert forecasts or polling or any other thing. Um, and so you're you're seeing a lot of predictive power that's like really reliable and accurate from these these information generating machines, these prediction markets. That's a whole another piece of of uh information and just opportunity utility that these are creating that I don't think has been figured out how to be quite captured, monetized by the markets yet. So that's something I'm

thinking about a lot is like how are you going to use you're you're creating these prediction markets to get information. It's pretty reliable historically now and pretty far out in advance. So, how is the market going to find ways to make that a product or a service or charge for that, monetize that? I think that's an interesting thing that could come out of this too that nobody's quite figured out yet as well, which is kind of what I was saying before about like the market has found these new financial primitives that have emerged from these digital asset companies and use cases and it's still figuring out how to incorporate these and it's still maturing. Um, but that's something I'm watching as well because I think it's it's a a huge opportunity that the market hasn't figured out how to monetize yet or productize yet. I

think they both perbs and prediction markets hit a certain threshold where it makes sense for some people to try arbitrage those markets. So I can do some trade using my you know traditional broker and then hedge against it on pers and like uh keep the profit. The same is true for um prediction markets. I can bet you know who is going to win Champions League on prediction markets and then hedge against it using DraftKings or you know whatever. So that's already like because when you have millions of dollars liquidity there you can start doing these kind of things

and the more liquidity is there the more things it will just happen and then obviously like the more it's online it's like faster and easier to like move around. So that's like the end game. That's that will be the winning product. It's not going to be like, you know, I I need to go to a branch here, open my like uh betting account, and then like go there and like give them money to fund my account or set. No, like the future is online for sure and onchain. Um but I also want to like so I'm super bullish on like prediction markets for sure. I think that that's the killing product also per the point I want to make is right now there's poly market and ksh sheet both are valued tens of

billions of dollars and I think I said that on our meeting couple of weeks ago I think they don't have any mode right now they are the leaders but I used the analogy of unis swap who was around when defi summer uh took off in 2021 one unis swap was pretty much like default choice for anyone who wanted to trade some tokens. So right now today if you want to make some uh prediction bet you go to poly market or or khei that's your default choice today but like in the future you don't really care where who is originating your your bat. So you will go to something like cow swap who

is just an aggregator for all dexes in crypto and use that because the only thing that matters to you is I want to bet that Bayern Munich is going to win Champions League and I only want to bet where who gives me the best price for my bet. I don't care if if it's on Khi Poly Market anywhere. So >> why would anyone bet on soccer? Oh man. >> Like can we say can we just after all that or what? >> After all that >> he called it soccer too. That was such a nice touch.

>> It was sick game yesterday by Bayern Munich and Real Madrid. But I I know you guys have not watching Champions League but it's good game. >> Actually I fun fact I've only been to two soccer games in my life like professional ones. Both were Champions League games. So there you go. >> That is such a fun fact. Thank you for sharing with the class. >> All right, I got to jump. I got to go to a meeting, guys. But uh >> Oh, he gets he gets roasted. He gets absolutely freaking last place starts tripping first place. Gets roasted and then disappears. Classic.

>> Look, I am in last place. I'm not going to tell you guys why, but if you're pull you got Oh, you got to zoom in, Kyle. Don't show them all the trades. Zoom in before I show the screen. >> What? Oh, >> zoom in. Zoom in a bit. Go for it. Here we go. There we go. Yeah. Here we go. Here's a portfolio. Got to read it out for the people on audio only. Kyle's last. >> Martin's in first. >> Yeah. >> John's in second. Melvin's in third. Vincent's in fourth. And I'm sitting here down in the basement. >> You're very close to Vincent. You're very close to getting to Vincent. Okay. And Melvin is very close to John now. So, just a couple battles going on.

>> I I just My two biggest assets are are sleepers. That's that's what's going on. >> Any takes on Tesla? They have earnings in like week or something. I'm thinking >> why you put it on me? What the hell? >> Yeah. Look, um, so their earnings are not going to be great. I don't think. Um, but if you look at the chart, it looks incredible. I actually just put a tweet about this. Let me just um pull that back up. The chart looks good because I think it it's sold off enough now. Everyone already knows their earnings because they already released this stuff, so it doesn't even matter anymore. So it broke through this and then also if you if you zoom out which looks like yeah right here every time it bounces off this trend line it goes up like 150% to 200%. And it's done it for

the last 3 years. So it just bounced off that then broke through the down uh downward trend line. So like on a technical standpoint it looks very very good. It earnings are going to come out but I think that was already priced in and we're kind of looking through it now. What we're expecting is do they launch something with robo taxis? like is that going to come and their semis and we're kind of waiting for that and it's supposed to happen in April. Production of the Robbo taxis or cyber cabs were supposed to start in April so we'll see. We've got two weeks. Maybe they're going to announce it all at their earnings um which is coming up. I'm not sure. So it's all eyes on that. But otherwise like they continue to cook like they're putting out a lot of new features. They figured out their um

their uh their next chip version. So there's like a lot of good things coming. But it just it's all about timelines right now. And I just I don't know when it's going to happen, but the moment they launch, it's going to explode. I just don't know when that's going to come. So, I don't have any insights. I don't have any alpha. But for me, I don't really care. This is why I'm saying is like my portfolio is, you know, I'm a long-term investor and I've bought a lot in an asset that I think is going to do well over time. Uh, and this is true of multiple assets in my portfolio. The question is when. Uh, but I'm happy to wait and let it let it play out.

Melvin though trips me on my Tesla because it's down. But that's because he's got the, you know, he's shiny new toy syndrome. He's over here and then he's over here and he's over here. If it's not up every 24 hours, he's going to sell it. No, I'm totally kidding. Melvin. >> Wow. Wow. >> Guy Guy's off this week and can't and isn't even here. So, I'm I'm tripping. >> The only thing that make Kyle skip a different meeting or be late for is talk about Tesla. That's the only thing that could keep him here. Anything else he was like, it's not even cryptoreated, but anything anything Tesla's like, "Okay, yeah, I'll be late to the other meeting." Yeah. All right. We'll wrap up here. Thanks, guys. >> Want insights on what's moving crypto markets and how we're trading each event? Subscribe to our channel and join

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