Why Ethereum could outperform Bitcoin from here

Transcript

See, the market doesn't necessarily move or react to things that are priced in, but it does move or react to things that happen that aren't priced in. >> What's up everybody? It's LG News here and welcome to the Milkro Show, the daily crypto show that asked about the Bitcoin bottom so many times that I think we actually missed it. Today is August 24th, 2026. What a difference a week makes. Just 7 days ago, I was asking John the exact same questions I've been asking him every Monday for like 6 months. When the hell is crypto going to bottom? And it kind of looks like it did without us noticing. We are up, ladies and gentlemen. And although we are nowhere near all-time highs, it turns out that John's core investing philosophy has held true. Buying fear is a good deal at any price. He always says

that. If you're new here, every Monday we sit down to flip the mic on the best crypto podcast host in the game to ask him his thoughts on the market, the macro, and of course, his portfolio allocation. And although today might feel like a victory lap, the current price action has left us with more questions than answers, and we'll dive into them on today's episode. And don't forget, you can talk to John directly every single day and even see his portfolio in Milkroad Pro. Our premium product has grown enormously this past year thanks to John and our other four analysts. And unfortunately, it means we're going to have to raise prices in just 2 days time for 25 bucks to $39 a month. A 60% increase. So, if you want to get this price, this historical price, you lock it in forever. You have until tomorrow at midnight. Just click

the link below to check it out. And a reminder that our podcast today is free and that it wouldn't be possible without our partners at saber.money, the stablecoin payments platform built for Asia. Keep an ear out for more information about them later in the show. God, I've been talking for 2 minutes. Nobody wants to hear from me. People want people want the victory lap from John. Although, did you say I told you so? I don't know. I don't think I think it's been a too too much of a violent move. John, >> I don't really do victory labs or I told you so. I'm happy with the price action we've seen. I mean, look, I wrote a lot about it. I mean, this is a big reason why I wrote the essay, right? is because everybody comes for the pumps and the price action and like all the attention

that that brings. But the point of writing the essay was to say like, hey, there is a much bigger underlying thesis happening on Ethereum and in crypto overall. And don't miss that just looking at the numbers and the pump. So yeah, like I'm happy with the price action, but to me that's the that's like a a footnote to the main story. Uh which is why I wrote the essay. Mhm. John, like like we it's amazing the timing of our shows because, you know, again, I feel like since like March, I don't know when we started doing these Monday episodes together, uh, but we've talked through everything that's happened. You know, it feels like we we've really we've really held hands through, uh, the Iran war, uh, and through the, and it's still going on, um, through the Clarity Act, up and down. And it felt like last

week there was some there was some energy brewing, but it was kind of hard to call that any kind of signal. But then, you know, you wake up Wednesday and cancer's been cured apparently, which and then and then hidden below that was Trump saying hyperlid, right? And now that almost feels like old news because, you know, that was only a pump. We saw Bitcoin go to like from 64 to 69 in that day. Now we're at 79 trying to break on 80. Man, is this is this the kind of violent swing we expected when we were talking about all that volatility being built up? Right. Not only did we talk about that, you talked about that with a lot of the guests on the show.

>> Okay. So, I'm going to break down a little bit of what I was seeing set up for this and and what triggered it, but I was flagging to our pro community for a long time, hey, Bitcoin's volatility is at historically low levels. It 94% of Bitcoin's history, it had been trading with more volatility than it was prior to this short squeeze that we saw. So, the volatility had dropped like well well below anything like in Bitcoin's history. It was an extreme amount of of just dead price action. There was very little volume, very little attention, very little activity. At the same time, open interest had been climbing. In other words, there was more capital speculating basically on more downside.

Um, this is a like a similar but inverse thing to what happened on October 10th. There was a ton of open interest and dropping volume, but everybody was betting that there was going to be this squeeze higher that we were going to go to over 150K, maybe beyond that. And so what happened in this situation was volatility dropped. Volume dropped. A lot of speculation came in and then there were these exogenous shocks. See, the market doesn't necessarily move or react to things that are priced in. But it does move or react to things that happen that aren't priced in. So like the market right now is very much betting against the Clarity Act passing.

If it does pass, that could be another major bullish catalyst because the market is positioned for it to fail. the market was not positioned for Scott Besson to come out and say I'm going to start shortening the duration of the treasury's curve by doing increased buybacks of long duration assets and and you know the repurchase program of issuing shorter duration buying back longer duration and then nobody was prepared for Trump to step up to a microphone in the white house and say hyperlquid. So all of this created this situation where there was this sudden catalyst of attention and speculation on the future appreciation of these assets at a time when there was a huge amount of shorts in place. And so we saw I think it was over $4 billion of liquidation. Largest single dollar move in uh for a weekly

candle in Bitcoin's history. 500 billion half a trillion dollars of market cap added to the crypto market cap overall in a matter of a couple of days. And this is the biggest thing LG the price action is holding. We haven't like cratered back down immediately. In other words, sellers did not step in to dump their bags. We've seen actually spot volumes pick up and increase to support this across ETFs across the the spot volume markets. Um on Bitcoin, on Ethereum, on everything else. So, it seems like this move is, you know, the shorts just got wrecked. Bears just got slaughtered. Um and it it seems to be holding. I'm not sure where we go from here. Like you said, we're testing this 80K resistance level. There's a huge sell wall there from from certain players in the market taking profits,

but it's not clear yet if we'll we'll, you know, break that or or come down. I I think either way, you're looking for what happens next from here. You're looking for a flip of 82 83K into support because that would put us over the bull market um support band. That would put us into a technical bull market on Bitcoin. or you're looking for a higher low. Meaning, if we get rejected at 80K and come down, we want to see bulls step in and support at 74K, at 71K, somewhere in there, 70K before we go back and retrace the whole move. And then that would be confirmation of a bullish uptrend. And I think that's bullish for Bitcoin here. But yeah, just absolutely unprecedented price action.

Um, and it's it's comes from the fact that everybody, and I've been saying this on this channel, on these episodes for months, this asset class, crypto asset class, has been the least um the the one that's gotten the least attention, the least amount of comprehension, and the least amount of capital speculation and investment activity of any kind. And it's been poised for a major move like this for a long time. And we've been calling for that for so long, we kind of just like thought it was never going to happen until October. And that's what the markets does. It catches everybody by surprise. And that's how you've seen this massive pump up. Um, so yeah, it's just it's a really exciting time to be in crypto. It has been before this, it will be after this. Um, but yeah, this price action is really historic and just

an incredible market event to witness happen in real time. If you are not already a Milk Road Pro member, now is the time. On August 26th, the price of Milkroad Pro is going up. Monthly goes from 25 bucks a month to 39 bucks a month and annual goes from 250 to 299. And here's why. Milk Road Pro used to just be one paid newsletter and one portfolio. Now, it is a complete platform. There's proprietary analysis and a full panel of five analysts, each with their own portfolio, their own research, their own trades, and you get full access to it in real time. This is going to have all the information and notifications you need to stay up to date, up to the minute with their research and with their moves in the market. And the results have been insane. Melvin's portfolio alone launched in February. It's up over 45%

since. If you'd put 10 grand in behind his moves, you'd be sitting on over four grand of gains today. Five months of Milk Road Pro costs just $125 over that same period of time. The ROI on that investment speaks for itself. If you join before midnight on August 25th, you keep today's prices locked in for as long as you are a member and we hope you will stay a member because we love our community. Uh but that's it. After that, it's gone. So get in on this today. Lock in this price on Milk Road Pro. Link is in the description. I'll see you there. >> Is the bottom in? Wasn't the Did we Did we touch that bottom? Whatever day it was in like late June >> or July 2nd, I think it was. I don't know what day it was. Yeah, some something around there.

>> I think it was We hit 58K in May. We hit uh 60K just barely through 60K in February. So, this is the debate that's going to happen. Now, if the bottom is in, we haven't confirmed that yet. Honestly, we just need more time, more price action. I don't have a crystal ball, but what I'm telling you is that if if we don't make a new lower low here, and that's that seems to be what's happening. the the indicator you would look at to see is this going to hold. The indicator to watch is is spot volume coming in to pick up and and buy this and support this dip. Right now it is. Right now that bid is holding. That may not last forever. That market may turn.

I don't know if that's going to hold. We may see, you know, a bullish trend continue for a while and we might see another dip in September, October. Who knows, right? I can't tell you for sure. However, if this does hold, that's a huge change because that means that the bottom is in, the bottom is behind us. the the bottom in May, I believe it was, would then just be a retest of the initial bottom that was put in in February. So, you could argue Bitcoin I mean, people won't, but you could make an argument that Bitcoin bottomed in February. Um, and that would be a huge change to what the market had been expecting. The four-year cycle theory gets reevaluated. There's a whole like Bob Lucas, who's the guy who was like one of the original like proponents of the four-year cycle thesis, came in off

the beach on his vacation to check the markets because of how much this changed market structure for Bitcoin here. This is a huge huge scandal. So again, none of this is confirmed. We're watching to learn here, and this is something I've been trying to say to our audience this whole time. I end every episode with stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish. You invest with your capital, but you also invest in your education. This cycle, crypto has behaved much differently than prior cycles. There's a huge opportunity here for education, for understanding, for learning from the information the market is continuing to give us. That helps update your investment thesis, helps make you a smarter investor, and will pay off in future cycles, future investing environments that you find yourself into in this asset class and others because you'll understand more of what drives these dynamics, what drives market

behavior, and how you want to position your capital accordingly. So, this is a great time to be investing in education and just paying attention to the information we're getting from the market cuz it's surprising everybody, even the experts, and and nobody has seen anything like this before. >> And it's a good time to be listening to Milk Road, too. John podcast is popping off with John John at the helm. So, big shout out to you. You took over. Listen, I just I just need to shout out this part. Okay. Few I have a few things to say and a few things to ask you. I have a lot I have a lot to say today. Um and and to ask. First of all, just to talk about bottoming from the price right now, which is 79,400 to go back to the lowest low, which was

July 1st, um, where we put in almost almost broke below 57, we would need to drop another 27%. Which does not seem like a lot in a sense compar considering what happened after 1010 in a short amount of time. So, it's not impossible. That being said, it does seem unlikely. And I know one of your favorites, Ben Cowan, yesterday, you know, tweeted about how the bottom may have been in and he was the one saying like, "Wait, wait, wait until until we see it on that." And again, this is just my my my retail brain observing here. September is historically weak. People always say that. People, especially we have seven days left this month. People always like to say September is weak. It's a midterm year, blah blah blah. So, there's all these factors. So, it's a definitely a wait and see. And what I've learned is

crypto is that it can go up just as quickly as it can go down. So, I'm cautious. Um, I do want to ask you in a minute about um what the strategy is from here because you are still sitting on a big pile of cash in your your Milk Road Pro portfolio. And I'd ask you every week about when are you going to deploy that, right, into more ETH or Bitcoin or into alts, right? And and I feel like you're probably in the same boat as as maybe me and a lot of other people listening is like, did I miss my chance to get in at historical lows for these things? And that's that's a big question for everybody to tackle in the next couple weeks. I have one more joke uh thing thing to say though before we get to real questions is that a month

and a half ago, two months ago, we we joked about how I am the top signal for a podcast. And as you guys who have been listening to the show for years may recall there was a completely different person who used to start who started the show and used to host it. He's still around. Uh he's still our boss Jay Hamilton. Um and and you know he led this podcast through the last bull and then we decided to do a little switcheroo. kind of came in off Milkro DJ and came into this and John and I started splitting hosting duties um with me doing the bulk of it starting literally the first week of October days before 1010 uh and then I I was your I was your bare market buddy you know and we decided to make our AI stocks podcast full-time late June so the end of June

it was like June 26th is was my last show that I hosted here other than these Monday shows with you and again people are like why is LG still talking was the last show I hosted with you and oh no I still host shows with you but it was the last interview I did for the show and that was so far that has been the top on Micron and all and a couple days off the bottom for Bitcoin. So when I become the host of a show run away from that industry or sector okay so I'm going to I'm going to ride I'm going to ride AI stocks here as they dip. They look terrible today. I'll be on that for a while and then I'm sure we'll start a new podcast that I'll be at the helm and whatever that is.

Pokemon cards, I don't know what. Just run away. >> Thank you for your sacrifice, LG. >> It's it's it's what I do, you know. I'm like it's like when your when your when your starter blows up, you know, in the first inning or whatever, and then I come in, you know, and I'm just the innings eater in the middle and then and then we and then the team catches up and then we bring in a closer, which is you to actually win the game, you know. So, I'm just I'm just the emergency guy. >> I want to go back to your question about what to do with cash. You're right. You do have a pretty sizable cash position. I think a lot of members of our community are asking me questions about this. By the way, I'm getting peppered with questions now. The Discord is

lighting up. I I answer one question, I get a follow-up immediately from someone else. Um, whenever I post something like a research note, update about the price action. I'm trying to do that like pretty often here because it's it's moving a lot and the as as things unfold, people want to know what what's going on. But every time I post something, I'm getting like five or six different comments. So, I'm going through as fast as I can and as often as I can to try to stay up with the community on this because there's so much happening in the alt space is going crazy. Um, but okay. So, what I'm thinking with my cash position, I I have a really large concentration in Bitcoin and Ethereum. And by the way, I'll say this again because this is important, too. Before you get into a situation

like this, it helps if you've already accumulated your position so you're not caught off sides when a move like this happens. You need to be in the market and holding. And there's an opportunity cost for holding an asset that's in a bare market. But the way you get paid off is when that asset rips out of its bare market, you catch all of that move. And that's the compensation that you get for that. So I always buy when there's extreme fear on Bitcoin. I like to say buying fear is a good deal at any price because if you believe in the asset longterm, which I do on Bitcoin and Ethereum, then okay, everybody's panic selling today. I know that it might dip more and I have to be aware of that and okay with that. But if I just keep buying on the way down, suddenly I look

like a genius on the way back up. And there will be a way back up at some point, right? So, um, you know, I looked like an idiot kind of for the last eight months, but now I'm I've lapped several people. I'm the top performing Milk Road Pro analyst for several months now. I think going back six months here. Okay, I'm getting lost in the weeds here. The point is this. I bought on the way down. So, I have a position in the majors that I want. Now, I still have a cast position. And people are asking me a lot, what am I doing to deploy with it? Here's what I would tell you. right now where we are this move on Bitcoin could still just be a bare market retest of bare market resistance. So because we haven't broken 82K which is the 50we

moving average and flip that into support technically on a technical basis on the technicals on the chart we haven't seen the bulls take full control of this market yet. So, the risk to buying at 82 or 83K, if we get like a weekly or two weeks of weekly candles above 82K, the risk of um Bitcoin going down again drops a lot and the likelihood is then to the upside that we'll see continuation of price price action into the 90s or to 100K. So, you have more confidence to deploy capital at that point. However, at 79K, we're like right now while we're having this conversation, Bitcoin is is trying to break through 80K and it's bumping its head on that resistance. until we get through there. It's not confirmed yet.

So, it's it's risky deploying into this buying into resistance here, right? Um I'm kind of waiting for one of two things to happen. I'm waiting for that 82 83K to take positions and alts or I'm waiting for a lower high or a higher low. Sorry, a higher low, meaning we get rejected off of 80K. We don't break through this resistance and then we come down and find support from the bulls at 74, at 71, somewhere in that range. I think that might be what happens in the short term. Um I I do think we'll see a kind of like a return to the low 70s here from Bitcoin at some point. I don't know when, but that would be the dip to buy. I think if you're sitting in capital. So I don't think there's any reason right now if you miss this huge move to go chasing this pump until it

confirms we're in a bull market, but you know, give it a minute to cool, let some smoke clear, and then if we get a dip into the low 70s again, that's when I would move with size because that might be the only dip you get. This might just get away from us here. So, that's kind of >> I have never felt so much FOMO for Bitcoin and Ethereum when they're down 60% from all-time highs, you know, or whatever they're at. I It's 40% now, but I'm saying, you know what I mean? It's like that's what's so funny, right? Is that a lot of people, a lot of people were buying in the hundreds ETH in the 4Ks, right? And then still now this move is making you rethink it. This move was so violent, John, that and so unexpected to be this quick that it's really making

a lot of us like like short-term question what you've been doing this whole time and should you just empty your clip right into this and it's just a few days. Um but I think I think this is it's funny. It's it's positive news. You have liquidations to the upside which we've only had liquidations to the downside for months. 1010 largest liquidation ever. But this is also one of the largest liquidations ever, but for shorts. Um, and yet it's painful in some way. And it keeps you up at night that you stared at Bitcoin at 58 and 60 and 61 and 63, listen to you talk for hours, didn't do anything. You know, like I I I'm just saying that it's like

I didn't I forgot how painful crypto could be to the upside as well to the downside. And it's amazing how quickly you're reminded of that feeling. Crypto has a way of finding the max pain for everybody even when it's doing something positive. I'll say this. Um what I will say about this is this is a very real thing. I think sometimes you want to manage your capital to manage your emotions. So what I mean by that is if you feel like you are underallocated. If you were DCAing and thought you had much longer to buy and now you have a whole bunch of capital that's not in the market. Something to do to help kind of control those emotions is take five or 10% of whatever capital you kind of want to put into the market and get a little bit of exposure because not because

that'll get your whole position in, but because that'll help calm some of those emotions and that'll help you come up with a plan for the rest of the capital that makes you feel a little bit more comfortable. But I think there are a lot of people who are feeling that way. The other thing too is the mania and alts has been out of control. Like XRP went from a dollar to a$150 in like two days. So like the volume on these things has been wild. every alt on the board has moved a huge amount and people are also wondering like, "Oh my god, what alt dos I get? I'm missing all of this and like there's just FOMO everywhere." So, I would tell anybody who's who's like looking at Bitcoin or anything else, these are really underowned assets.

Like, nobody owns any ETH. Nobody owns any Bitcoin and they're two of the best assets in the market. If you if you need to get a small position to help calm your own emotions so you can think more clearly about the rest of your capital, don't stop yourself from doing that because it might be worth the investment of just take 5% of whatever you want, get a little bit of the the positions you're looking at and then just, you know, think a little bit more clearly about it from there. But yeah, man, it's it's the the FOMO is intense. And the other thing too, this is not limited to retail. Institutions have been feeling this for a long time, but now retail is feeling it because of this price movement. But the the breathless breakneck speed that re that institutions have been moving at to get

into digital assets to to move products and services uh to market in this asset class has been like relentless and I'm sure this is going to cause just as much panic on their side as as on the retail side. So everybody's feeling FOMO right now. Try to use that to um try to quell that if it's a problem for you and then try to use that to your advantage um where you can in your portfolio and and and take advantage of that because you know the market's coming to you now if you're in crypto. So, it's a good time. >> Mhm. Good time. Good time to exercise that patience as well, I think. And like you're saying, you feel that FOMO, maybe allocate a little bit. If you have anything left, too, you know, if you if you had something left, maybe maybe a lot of people were just being way more

patient than we were and actually buying buying the whole time. Um, John, I do want to talk about this uh essay you put out another fantastic essay uh absolutely lighting up X over the weekend. Another wartime Ethereum essay, kind of like the follow-up to your last one. uh both about ETH and also just generally about u digital assets and about about crypto overall. Um you know your main message for the last few weeks or last few months was if you're in AI pivot to crypto. U very obvious in for the last seven days but you know we need to zoom out to be fair. What why why should somebody's next dollar go into crypto rather than AI at this point?

because I think AI for the most part those trades the easy money on those trades is pretty well played out. I think everybody has figured out memory and micron are important. I think everybody uh knows that this is going to be a huge thing. I think a ton of capital is allocated to it. And so I just feel like it's one of those things where it's like I'm not saying short AI. I'm not saying that the trade won't continue to work. I'm not saying that there won't still be performance there. And I'm not saying the S&P won't get to 8,000, right? It it it all this is going to continue to play out. But it's just that like what is going to be the scale of that move and the speed of it because I think a lot of these trades in the AI um space right now are going through a a

period of digestion, of cooling, of sideways chop. Um there may be some pullbacks in some of these things and and that's just part of market dynamics, right? Like it doesn't matter how strong the fundamental thesis is, at some point there's only so much capital to go around. Um, and I think the the reason I've been saying if you're an AI pivot to crypto is exactly for the reason that nobody uh there's been very little volume, very little speculation, very little attention on the digital assets space in the whole industry overall. At the same time, the fundamentals have never been stronger and they're accelerating, not not declining. So, that's been something I've been trying to pound the table on because crypto is the opportunity where where where you can get ahead of the next big move in the market as opposed to chasing a a

move that's already played out that everybody every every investor everywhere has already figured out and allocated to. So, that's a little bit of the thesis there, but I think Jordy Viser is a great example of this. Jordy was buying Micron at like $100 all the way down to 60 bucks and then, you know, that balloon to like almost a thousand. Um it's digesting now, but like there's huge huge runup in in Micron. Now Jordy is pounding the table on Bitcoin and Ethereum and saying this is where the next trade is. This digital scarcity thesis makes a lot of sense. I wrote about this extensively in the article.

And the reason I wanted to write another wartime Ethereum article about this was exactly for this reason of like don't just look at the pump. Don't just come chasing the numbers on the screen and the green candles. Although that feels good and it's fun and you know we're here to make money. I'm not saying anybody should like not be here to make money, but understanding the bigger thesis at play in digital assets is much more valuable, I think, than the short-term pump. And so, I talked a lot about this huge super cycle in tokenization that Vlad Tennv talked about and wrote an article about. And then I also talked about the rise of the Agentic commerce, Agentic AI or Agentic Finance and how that's accelerating and already becoming a huge market and on pace to become, you know, 100x from where it is and how that drives volume

value um to digital assets like Ethereum and that ecosystem overall. And people need to kind of understand these things because trillions of dollars of capital, trillions of new agentic users. It kind of like overwhelms the mind and it's a little bit like hard for people to contextualize what that actually means and how big of a change that is to the marketplace. So I wanted to write a little bit about that and help people understand why now is a good time to be pivoting back to crypto from wherever you are and to just educate yourself about the space and come up with a thesis that makes sense for you. You know, one thing we've talked about a lot on this show is that crypto is quickly becoming a huge part of the global payments infrastructure. And nowhere is that more obvious than in Asia. But if

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>> How much of this how much of your thesis depends on Scott Bessant and this increased liquidity? Like, what if this liquidity doesn't materialize? >> I think that there's a very low chance that the liquidity won't materialize. In a press conference this weekend, President Trump threatened to use the US military against the bond market if necessary. And I don't know what that means, but I can tell you this, it means liquidity is coming, baby. Um, so that's gonna happen. Scott Besson is speaking at 2 PM this afternoon. There's going to be, you know, announcements there. Uh, Kevin Worsh is talking Friday at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium that the the central banks do every year. I I'm expecting, this is generally what I'm expecting because this is what's been signaled. Worsh has his um his task forces at the Fed to

re-evaluate the Fed's reaction function and justify them, holding rates constant until they're able to work themselves around to a rate cut, not a rate hike, which is still not fully priced in, I don't think. And Scott Besson has signaled that he's willing to spend money out of the TGA, the Treasury General account, which has like I think around $900 billion of capital in it right now, um to support the bond market and add liquidity. and he's doubling his longdated repurchasing agreements, as I already said, which shortens the duration of the US's outstanding debt and effectively increases the liquidity in the markets. Whether or not he's actually doing a capital injection isn't what's important. It's important that the policy signal, the structural direction is that the Federal Reserve is going to give us lower cost of borrowing

because that's what lower interest rates means. It makes capital cheaper. and the the Treasury Department, Scott Besson, is signaling that he's going to pro be pro providing that liquidity to the markets. They're doing this through the bond markets, but really the end result is that the the marginal dollar is able to go seek risk and support the bull run in the equities markets and in the risk asset markets. And you're also going to see the debasement trade come back and gold and Bitcoin have both responded in in that way as well. So, I think generally speaking, there's not I they're they're not going to like suddenly change their mind, be like, never mind, we want to crash the markets before midterms. I think this is going to continue this bull run, extend it into 2027. It's going to be supportive for all markets. But I do think that

Bitcoin, crypto, Ethereum specifically are poised to benefit from all of these factors from the additional liquidity, from the lower cost of borrowing, from the rise of tokenization and the proliferation of agentic finance. All of that creates a nexus of of value around the Ethereum network and the Ethereum asset and crypto generally, right? There's going to be lots of beta to this trade and and lots of performance in in other places in crypto. It's not just all going to be on Ethereum. Salana will do well. Bitcoin will do well on down the list. But that's sort of the the the perfect storm that I'm seeing here. And that's some of what I wanted to spell out because, you know, everybody will pay attention when this giant green candle comes back. And so that's kind of what I wanted to communicate of like, hey, this is what you should actually

know, not just number go up, you know, we win moon, you know. >> John, I one question I want to ask you about this too and and and naturally you're you're you're you know, massive ETH bull and I think you have the biggest ETH bull coming on the show uh this week. Um and I'll let you announce that a little bit later, but there there is there is no bigger one than the the guest you you've managed to secure for for the show. Um how does ETH perform against Bitcoin? Right. And that's something and your guest coming up posted a chart this weekend as well showing be like listen we're due to break out of a 10-year uh downtrend of ETH versus Bitcoin. Ever since my time in in the space people been like the flipping is coming uh of of ETH is flip Bitcoin which last cycle John was

majorly disappointing. and did not we couldn't even we barely ETH barely just top ticked a little bit above all-time highs uh and really whereas Bitcoin went you know almost 2xed off alltime highs. So what is the case this time and you've already explained it but I think it's always good revisiting it. How how what makes you so confident that that ETH is finally ready for its moment here? >> Well on this whole ETH BTC ratio chart and this whole flipping conversation I and I think a lot of other investors in the digital asset space have kind of learned that it's best to not pound the table too hard on this. Um, I'm not going to sit here dogmatically and tell you that Ethereum is going to flip Bitcoin this cycle or anything like that is going to happen. However, there are distinct value drivers for ETH as an

asset versus Bitcoin as an asset. And I think that's appreciable, right? Like the important thing is to just understand that not all digital assets are created equal. Not all of them have the same kind of tokconomics. Not all of them have the same revenue drivers or value drivers. So there's much different um qualities that every digital asset has. And there's distinctives between them. And there's reason to think, this may not be what plays out, but there's reason to think that Ethereum's strong value drivers may cause it to to perform stronger than Bitcoins here. Um, like I said, the the tokenization, stable coins, Aentic Finance, all of those are happening in smart contract platform ecosystems. The lion share of all of those still is on Ethereum and has continued to be on Ethereum. So, it's still holding that dominance there. Um,

but what I would say is on that ETH BTC chart, it's been in a downtrend for 10 years. Ethereum has broken out of that downtrend, but you know, there could be a while before that starts to resolve into a sustained change in in dynamic there. It could be a false breakout. We could, you know, retest the downtrend before we continue higher. So, I I I'm not like, you know, running around screaming, oh my gosh, ETH is going to flip Bitcoin. It's happening this week. But I think that there is has been a lot of attention on the fact that that downtrend has been broken and the distinct value drivers to Ethereum seem very strong right now. So there might be a period of of strong performance from Ethereum relative to the rest of the digital asset class. Um and that's you know it's got it's got a tension and

it's worth monitoring too because that would be a big change if Ethereum does start to lead in performance over Bitcoin. That's a huge change in market dynamics in the crypto space overall and it's something to be mindful of and pay attention to what regardless of of which assets you do or don't like in the crypto space. It would be a huge change. does how much does the um and this this could be a question that uh maybe more the dgens are asking but also people who use exchanges are asking too how do the and this is not really an L2L1 debate question this is more a institutional L2 question for you that one of the biggest um pieces of news I guess or one of the biggest uh attention grabbers of the

last two months has been Robin Hood launching its own chain right and like you already mentioned Vlad Tennv has come out and is very supportive. Even yet, there's an interview that dropped last night. He's he literally acknowledg he's acknowledging the trenches that are happening on his chain. Something that Brian Armstrong uh has has really struggled to do properly. Um and this again, this is not a DJ question. What I'm asking though is is we're we're setting up almost for a little war in the trenches between the base and the Robin Hood chain. Uh Inc. from Kraken is is starting to get some rumors around it. Um, is this does that I'm assuming that this is all really good for Ethereum, right? That you're seeing a lot of major exchanges, things

that people really use actively um and even Robin Hood still launching its own chain that that is a must be a really positive signal for Ethereum outside of all the institutional uh side as well. >> Something that people really misunderstand about this is that yes, both Robin Hood and Coinbase are building on Ethereum. Yes, they brought millions of new users into crypto and into Ethereum specifically, but the fact that they are the center of culture, the center of the economic activity means that Ethereum stands to capture the second and third order effects of this, which means that as human beings start to do more transactions on chain, as more uh assets come on chain, they are going to come to Ethereum. And so the

rise of tokenization is going to bring more capital, more assets, more stable coin demand, more users, and then more AI users and then that goes from a few million users that have been onboarded by Robin Hood and co I mean a few million like there's 30 million in each, right? There's a lot of users, right? There's millions of people using Ethereum now because of Coinbase and Robin Hood. But the AI agents that those people create to trade for them to take to conduct, you know, uh, commerce and economic activity on their behalf will also be through some of these platforms. And that's also going to be on on Ethereum as well. And so I I think this is just like one of the trade-offs that Ethereum made strategically, which is to capture the overall market share of tokenization, stable coins, and AI

payments and and aentic finance and keep that center of gravity in the Ethereum ecosystem because it's going to accelerate and grow. So, in the short term, Ethereum is only charging a few thousand dollars to to Robin Hood to to run the Robin Hood chain and to conduct all this, you know, all this trenching and all this stuff that's happening on Robin Hood on ETH and to get the security from ETH. However, the the trade-off is that now Ethereum becomes the base layer, the globally global globally trusted neutral settlement layer for all of this next century of finance potentially. Um, and that's a a pretty good deal. So that's that's kind of how you like look at these things and evaluate which you know who's winning now versus later. What's the trade-offs on all these things? Um I think it's

just all exciting. It's it's all prototypes right now. It's all like happening slowly and developing. But you know I'm having the CEO of wallet connect on and she talks a lot about how to reduce friction for human users for this and like 93% of the volume that they're seeing is still on Ethereum mainet. So the strategy is working like I I just but it it in the short term it's like ah Robin Hood's just you know having all fun having all the fun and making all the money and it's not going back to ETH. It is all coming to ETH and that is I think lost on a lot of people. Oh yeah, absolutely. And even something like Bass, which which we don't hear too much about about anymore, is it still has $6 billion in in TVL, right? So, not nothing. And something that you would

expect to grow if you're going to go into major institutional um or not retail uh run as well because that they ch change the Coinbase app into being the base app, right? So, they give you access to all those apps and and clearly something that Robin Hood sees a lot of potential in uh with having their own chain and and and you could argue that Robin Hood was calling this pivot uh AI to crypto uh thing months ago by launching their own chain, right? I think no, but really, why would you do that in the middle of the bare market like when everybody when AI stocks are ripping at the all-time high? It literally launched end of June, right?

So, clearly something that that Vlad Tennov and his team were aware of. Um John, I want to go kind of zoom back out to um our earlier conversation and and this is something you kind of mentioned in your essay as well or kind of touched on a few times. We're see many of us caught off guard by such a violent move in the crypto markets in the last five six days. You mentioned the four-year cycle. It's something that's going to be really hard to put to bed one way or another. Um because we are going to keep talking about that at least for the next 5 weeks until there is this you know one-year bare market confirmation or not. if there is another one. Let's say that it is the end of the four-year cycle. Let's say we bottomed um in in on July 1st and like you said the true

bottom or the real bottom maybe was in February. What replaces it? Because that has been our only true structure in crypto forever. So what what be what comes after that? What kind of cyclicality do we have after that if any? >> This is a huge question you just asked me at the end of this episode. I could talk for an hour and a half about this one thing right here. >> Maybe that's next week. Maybe that's next week's topic. Maybe we could cover that next Monday and maybe you can just allude to it here. >> I I'll try to give you the short version on this. I think that unfortunately the only way you're going to have confidence on answering some of these questions is in hindsight. So like when when you know in February when somebody asked me like does this mean the four four year cycle

is over? When are you going to finally admit that the four-ear cycle thesis was correct? I was like give me a year to get some price action on this because like it's impossible to tell what is going to play out here. If we see this year end with Bitcoin over 100K, then the question is did we start a new bull market or did we see a lengthening of the prior bull market? And you know to your question, what is the driver of this? I would say it's the same thing. I would say if you look at the ISM, if you look at the gold copper ratio, the ISM PMI manufacturing survey, these are historical indicators of accelerating economic activity of the accelerating business cycle. That hasn't happened.

It's been delayed until recently. So, we've seen seven months now of rising um ISM PMI surveys and the gold copper ratio moving in the right direction. So, it's a sign that the economic acceleration that was supposed to come on that four-year cadence got delayed and extended because of the the Treasury changing how they're refinancing things. I'm talking a lot about a lot of macro things here, but the gist of it is the the the the drivers of of of the the crypto cryptoear cycle have not changed. The timing of them have shifted. And a lot of people thought that the cryptoear cycle was tied to the having cycle. It just happened to line up with these macro cycles that have actually been driving all of this. And so what it

might do is it might confirm that, you know, in analysis there's something called spurious correlation, meaning that two things can appear to be moving together, but they're not impacting each other. It's just like a a coincidence. So it's you it's a mistake to assume that correlation holds because it's just, you know, an illusion in the charts. But what this might do if this plays out, right, is it might show that, okay, the calendar isn't what's driving Bitcoin. The having cycle isn't what's driving Bitcoin's price. It's really the larger macroeconomic landscape and the liquidity factors and business conditions around that business cycle conditions rather around that that are driving whether or not capital is seeking exposure to Bitcoin for for one thesis or another one reason or another.

But it's just again it gets back to the same question. I think it's an opportunity to learn because there's there's different analysts are going to have different answers to this question as we get towards the end of the year. You know, look, if Bitcoin goes back down to 55K in October, fine. you know, maybe maybe it all just worked out exactly right and you know, maybe the four cycle works exactly. But if Bitcoin is closer to 100K by October, November or over 100K by the end of the year, which again, we're sitting at 80K right now. It's not an insane, it's not out of the possib of possibility today. Could look crazy tomorrow, but today looks like it could be possible. So that changes a lot of analysis for for me, for other people. And that's something I'm really interested in because seeing the whole industry have to re-evaluate

some of these major prior assumptions would be a great opportunity to learn um and and something I'd be really excited about. But it's the four-ear cycle thing has always been something that's bothered me because >> I've been like pounding the table on the like the bull run is going to continue and then we got the bull run in the alt season but it just was in the equities markets not in crypto. Now seems like it might be coming back. Anyway, I could ramp like I said I could talk about this for an hour because there's just so much that goes into answering this kind of a question. Um, but the gist of it is that I think the macro conditions that drive all markets are also driving the Bitcoin valuation. And I think this might be something that gives people um a different kind of understanding of

crypto valuations and the drivers of this market going forward. And that's an exciting thing. So, I'm I'm really curious to see how this plays out. This is going to be a really exciting second half of the year and and Q4. So, I'm I'm really looking forward to this. >> Last question for you. What's the price of Bitcoin in a week today when we're recording the same episode? >> Oh, this is how you do me. Oh, man. Um, Bitcoin in a week. Uh, look, it looks bullish. I'm going to say we're we're going to be over 82K. Like, if I had to call right now a coin toss between we we break the bull market or we don't, break back into a bull market or we don't, it looks like we're going for it. So, I'm going to say that the FOMO wins and we we go back into a technical bull market.

I don't know if we hold, but I think we can get over 82K. >> Beautiful. Okay. Well, we'll see how that holds out over a week. And again, not financial advice. Um, and I'll say it again. Listen, guys. John is still sitting on a huge pile of cash. Let's check Let's check in on your cash cuz your cash is actually it's going to be less now uh percentage-wise. It was 30%, now it's 21% because the rest of your holdings uh have grown immensely. John's portfolio is up like 20 25% this week alone. Uh if you want to check out what is in there and also most importantly you want to get access to John ask him any questions that you want see his updates in Milkroad Pro which he posts very often. He was very active this weekend with thoughts about Bitcoin and and and ETH and and a lot of other

stuff. Um that is on Milk Road Pro and the price is going up tomorrow night at midnight Eastern. So get in at this price. It will never be this price again. Uh and if you lock it in, you have it forever. So good for you if you want to get in before it goes up 60%. John, thank you for your thoughts. Uh, always a pleasure to chat and uh, I'll see you next week at 82K, man. >> Thank you, LG. I'll talk to you soon. >> 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 Milk Road 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 Milk Road 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.