Crypto's K-shaped market: why some assets explode and others go to zero

Transcript

You kind of just need risk assets anyway. Scarce risk assets that are going to outperform the debasement of fiat currency. And right now it's AI and crypto are the only things that do that over time. What's up everybody? It's LG Ducet here and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show that treats market chaos like a personality trait. For this holiday episode, we've got the head honcho. Kyle Reedhead is back on with me to give his 2026 predictions. What went right or wrong for crypto in 2025? This might be our most important guest of the holiday run internally at Milk Road. We chat with Kyle every single day and most of our direction for content comes from him. He is the brain that powers this engine. So maybe we can even squeeze out a little preview of what's to come on Milk Road this year

from Kyle. Today's episode is brought to you by Chain Link which links Web 3 to Wall Street Bridge sends stable coin payments instantly simple global friction-free and reserved ETFs the onchain equivalent of ETFs. Kyle, our shows are always some of the most popular ones, man. So let's get it done one more time this year. >> I'm excited. Let's do it. Last one. >> Okay. Zoom way out. zoom way out out into outer space. Kyle, 2025, a lot has happened for you. A lot has happened at Milk Road. Uh, and definitely a lot of h happened in crypto. What, let's be honest, what what surprised you? What's the thing that like you're like, I can't I still can't believe that that happened.

>> There's maybe a few things. One, I can't believe how much retail literally left this entire space. um we knew in 2023 2024 retail wasn't like fully here but they had spouts of coming in like you know when Trump was elected they're completely gone they don't exist basically right now and so that was a big surprise for me I didn't think they were going to just give up that easily though when you kind of think back it kind of makes sense right the the thing that really the theme that I realized from 2025 is we always thought the institutions were coming and then with Trump winning it was like the institutions are definitely coming and the institutions came for a couple assets, things that were on public markets and they didn't come for

anything else and that was a lie that everyone was told in this industry and the more I do digging the more I understand the industry the more I realize they're not here either because they actually just can't right we all got hyped that this was happening because we had these ETFs and blah blah and they bought Bitcoin they bought the ETFs they bought the DATs but they didn't buy anything else and so that was I kind of understood that and we've talked about that, but it was it was a bigger surprise than I thought. Um, and then the last thing is just how powerful AI was this year. I did not know in 2024 that AI was going to make such a difference this year and likely is is probably the reason for why retail is not here anymore because they're over in

in AI stocks and the AI craze. So, I didn't realize how much capital that was going to suck out of all markets in 2025 and it was crazy. So, it was um it was an interesting year. Look, I think ultimately it was a really good year for crypto. If you look under the hood and you understand what's going on, it just was a bad year for a lot of retail investors who either invested in the things that institutions couldn't buy, altcoins, uh or it was also a bad year because a lot of them just kind of left and the institutions didn't end up coming in. So, um it was a weird year, but ultimately like a really good year for adoption and for everything going on in the crypto space. Um just a difficult one for many. Is there anything you had to kind of hard pivot change your mind

on? Right? Because I think it's one of the most important parts is admitting maybe when something you thought is was is direly wrong. Is there anything that really stands out to you? You're like, man, like I really had to I really had to publicly or privately say, I got to I got to change my thesis a little bit. >> Thankfully, we were early this year, maybe even in 2024, where we really started saying, you know what, the capital's going to public markets, not the crypto markets. Um, and so we started buying Coinbase. We bought Robin Hood earlier this year in April which has been our probably our best performing asset. Uh we've bought Galaxy. Um and so I'm glad we did that and we were quite early to that. I didn't realize how right that thesis was going to be. So thankfully we size our

portfolio well where like we still held some altcoins mainly in the DeFi space and we thought you know these are revenue generating as the market structure bill comes and you know people start to wrap their heads around DeFi they'll come into the space. That was wrong. That did not happen whatsoever. Literally zero dollars worth of trady money came into altcoins this year. Um, so like we had the thesis sort of right in the sense that hey, it was all going to public markets. I just didn't think it was going to be a literal zero into alts, which is what it ended up being because we didn't get the market structure bill cuz the government shut down. So maybe we get it Q1, maybe then we start to get some institutional flows. Unsure. But that was one thing where we had to really we kind of lean

into it, but we didn't lean enough into it. And so I think now we fully understand it and have wrapped our heads around it. So there's that. Um AI obviously um it's way bigger than anyone ever thought. And so you know we now really focus on creating content around AI. We're bringing we just launched Milk AI the podcast. We've launched the newsletter. The pro side of it is coming out in um in Q1 of 2026. Um, and so just understanding how important that is and how much that wasn't just important as an investment, but it's going to change and already is changing the macro side of things. That was one thing where I had to really reframe my, let's say, investment thesis, um, and my the way I think about the world because holy that thing is really changing just so much. Um, so

I'd say those were the two big things that really caught my eye this year. And then you know what I would say is the last thing is I was quite bullish and still am bullish on DATs which is actually one of my predictions for 2026. Um we were very excited about it when it first happened. Um I did say that many will go to zero and will trade at a discount. I didn't think they would trade as bad as they currently are right now cuz they have all gotten completely wrecked this year. Um which I think is probably because of a learning curve more than anything. Um so we will get to what I think about DATs in 2026 but was definitely wrong on that this year. This is the biggest year ahead for crypto, AI, and the macro. But the real moves aren't in predictions. Join Milk Road

Pro today to see our live portfolio, buy, sell signals, and the AI investing portfolio, which launches in January. The link is below. One thing um to note as well is by the time people are listening to this, especially pro members, we did make or you guys, you and Martin and the team did make some pretty big changes to the Milk Road portfolio in recent weeks. That reflects a bit of your uh kind of changing alt thesis there. So, make sure people that are interested that make sure to check that out. Um, what changed for you inside Milk Road? Like everything that you're saying about how how the market changed? You change your mentality, things that surprised you? How did that reflect in terms of what Milk Road actually does dayto-day?

>> I mean, on a day-to-day, we still do the same thing, which is try to put out the best content we possibly can and try to really understand markets. What this this year did is really challenge how we think about markets, how we think about the crypto industry. And I think one of the things that we really came to a realization over the last few weeks, which you're going to see reflected in the coming year uh in our content, is just investing in crypto is too broad. That term doesn't make sense anymore, right? You can't just be like, I just invest in crypto, right? There's there's too many differences in what that is.

There's lending and and borrowing. There's trading. There's prediction markets. There's block space. There's stable coins. There's RWA coming on chain. There's, you know, deep and there's so many things just like the stock market, right? Saying you invest in crypto is like saying you invest in the stock market. And so what we're really realizing is there's a few big things that we truly believe in that are going to change the world for crypto. Most of it we don't think is actually going to be that big of a deal today. it's going to either take too long or it's actually we're not as bullish on as as many people think. And so what we need to do and what we've really focused on now and we've kind of consolidated a bit of our portfolio which is the changes you're talking about from a few weeks ago is really focusing on a few

really big trends that we think crypto is enabling and I would say more like blockchain is enabling. Um one of those is stable coins. To me, this is one of those things where it's very obvious that this is going to be a thing, right? There are many things in crypto that we just don't know for sure. Are we going to trade on dexes? Like, I would think so, but I don't fully know, right? Are we going to lend and borrow with DeFi? Are we going to Is going to work? Is Web3 gaming going to work? Like, these are still a bunch of unknowns. But stable coins are at $38 billion or $39 billion today. Um, you've got Scott Bessant saying it's going to three trillion in the next few years. You've got regulatory clarity on this already with the Genius Act passing in July. Um,

that 308 billion, by the way, that grew by 50% just this year, right? So, there was a mass and and it doubled in the last two years. So, this is huge growth in large numbers. It's not like growing from like a billion to two billion, right? It's growing from like 150 billion to 300 billion. These are these are big moves and I think that's going to happen again. like that is a clear obvious thing that crypto has created, right? Probably the first and only thing outside of Bitcoin. Um the second thing I would say that we're extremely bullish on and and excited about and and this happened a lot in 2025 at least started is the traditional finance world is moving onchain. What do I mean by that?

I mean the assets that exist in the financial world, they are moving onchain because they are better suited onchain. They can move faster, they can settle faster, they are cheaper to move around, there's no borders, all these different you can um you can have the Legos where you could like put the assets here and put them into these financial services over here, whereas you don't have that sort of like um ability in the trady world. And so the idea that real world or or real world assets is what people call it, but I just say traditional finance assets are moving on chain that is a a a secular trend that we fully believe in that might not align with a bunch of the other things that happen in crypto. Like just because we get Nvidia and Tesla and gold onchain doesn't mean that web 3 gaming is going to work out,

right? And so there's this clear idea that we used to think that just all, you know, one thing would go up, Bitcoin would go up and all tokens would go up. I no longer think that's the case. And so what we are going to do at Milk Road is really lean into a few very specific use cases or or trends if you want to call it secular trends and really lean into who are the companies or the protocols that are enabling that. What are their competitors? Who has the mo and like really try to understand just those specific things rather than all crypto. And so I think you're going to see us, we we already sort of do that, but I think we're going to lean into that much much further both in the crypto side with Milk Road crypto and also on the AI side with Mochro AI

because I think the same thing holds true in AI. There's so much in the AI space. How do you know what to invest in? How do you know what to look for? How do you know what's going to work? And like a bunch of it is also junk just like crypto, but there's a few things few use cases that are going to change the world in the next coming years. And we really want to be on top of all that. >> Kyle, you kind of gave us a little preview there, but this is this is holiday episodes. We are doing predictions for 2026 and you have five specifically that uh by this point will probably have appeared in the Milkro daily newsletter. So I mean you already kind of gave us one or two of them but but given give them to us more formally

what happens in the next 365 days. >> Yeah. So let me just um preface it first with I think this will be a good year for crypto but I once again and I've kind of said this for a while and I just sort of say this this doesn't mean that it's going to be a good year for all crypto assets. I think we are in um what I've described as like a K-shaped um economy for crypto tokens, meaning certain use cases and certain tokens or certain companies or protocols that are actually building real products that are within real secular trends that are changing the world that actually drive value back to their tokens. They will they will do well in 2026. Okay? and many many many others will do very bad

in 2026 just like they did very bad in 2025. So I just want to caveat that of like I am bullish on crypto in 2026 but I that does not mean I'm bullish on all tokens and in fact most tokens I'm actually not bullish on. So the first one is the trend I kind of just talked about which I think stable coin market cap is going to surpass $500 billion. So it's currently at 309 uh so that's like I don't know whatever that is 70 80% growth in 2026. So, it's going to grow even more than it did in 2025. Um, and then attached to that, uh, I would say that tokenized equities are going to have a big moment in 2026, and they're going to reach 50 billion. Um, right now, I think it's like it's under a billion. So, that would be crazy growth

if that happens. Certain things need to really work out for that to really happen. But, I think if we get that market structure bill in Q1, I think we're going to see it. We're going to see it happen. And, you know, you've already got Kraken playing in that space. Robin Hood in that space and then Coinbase launched token or not tokenized stocks, they launched stocks on Coinbase. Soon to follow that will be tokenized stocks. Um, and so I think those will be the three main drivers of of that. >> And then what were your other predictions, Kyle? You had a few others in there, uh, including one for earning reports. And I mean, you already kind of mentioned DATs, but please walk us through those.

>> Yeah, you want each one. Okay, so >> we want each one, man. We want each one. Yeah, give it give them give them give us each one. >> Okay, so there's the stable coins and equities. Then I think earnings reports and earnings calls um for tokens are going to become the norm in the crypto industry. So this is the norm in the public markets industry. This doesn't exist in crypto. I think you're going to see 2026 is the year that that becomes a big thing. Um and the reason why that's important is because that really matters for institutional adoption. I told you guys already institutions aren't coming in and buying alts. It's because they don't understand it because they don't actually talk about the financials of it. So that's going to come and it's going to be huge and a really big thing for the industry. that doesn't come, I'm

basically bearish on everything in crypto. Um, DATs are going to have a comeback year in 2026. Um, not all of them, but a few of them that have really built really solid teams and are sort of innovating. So, Micro Strategy, I think, is definitely going to have is going to come back so long as Bitcoin hits alltime highs, which is another one of my predictions. Both Bitcoin and ETH will hit all-time highs and uh the four-year cycle is dead. So, as a result of that, I think certain DATs will do well. micro strategy, probably your sharplink and BMR for the the ETH side of things. And then I think there'll be a new generation of DATs. Eric Jackson, who I've interviewed on this podcast before, and I just interviewed him on the Milk Road AI podcast. Um he's [snorts] launching one that has like AI

trading. So instead of just buying Bitcoin or just buying ETH, it like it buys both and then it it hedges basically whenever um they think there's going to be pullbacks and stuff and it does this via AI. Um, I think things like that that are sort of the net new version are going to be a big thing and so that's why I think they're going to come back in in 2026. The last one is around institutional adoption of of crypto will accelerate in 2026. Uh, and that's going to be due to the market structure bill which gosh I hope comes in Q1. [laughter] Uh, and then I guess one other thing on that I think that institutional adoption being that acceleration of that I think Coinbase and Galaxy will be seen as the front runners sort of stewarding the institutions into the space. we saw it

really with this Coinbase announcement which I'm sure we'll talk about in a second um that came out um in mid December um and they they're launching some really cool stuff around like um basically tokenization as a service. So if you want to bring anything on chain, you can tokenize it with Coinbase. If you want to launch a stablecoin, they have stablecoin as a service, right? Um so they're basically building the infrastructure for any institution to be able to do anything in crypto. Um and so I think them and Galaxy are going to really lead that charge. Kyle, between I got to take two of these predictions and kind of pit them against each other for a second. Between your stable coin prediction of reaching 500 billion, so a 70% increase roughly, and your all-time highs for Bitcoin and ETH, which is most likely to happen and why? What would

drive either of those to hit that? >> Yeah, good question. Um, I think that I mean I think both are going to happen because if what happens with stable coins happens it's very it would be hard for ETH at least obviously stable coins under Bitcoin be very difficult to see ETH not go up in price as a result of that right if we get another doubling in the stable coin industry that is massive that's like three years straight of doubling right um and so and most of that obviously is is on Ethereum and so um I would say the stablecoin thing though is the most clear mainly because we already have the regulatory clarity for it and it is now a race. I talk about like the AI race a lot um and how like these companies have to go after it

that has started with stable coins. The cat the what is it? The rabbit's out of the bag. The cats out of the bag. How do you say it? >> Rabbit's out of the hat. Cats out of the bag. >> Rabbit's [laughter] so that that is uh already exists for for stable coins. Um, and the other thing that's that why I would say has the better chance is it doesn't really matter what happens in the macro world, right? Um, if it's bullish macro in a in a risk-on environment or a riskoff environment, stable coins will gain adoption, right? Um, because, you know, if there's if if there it's if it's a bad year and rates go up, it's even better business for Circle and Tether. And so many other companies are going to really want to get into that. And if it's a good year in terms of macro and rates go down,

well, same thing, right? They're still going to it means crypto is going to do well, which means stable coins are only going to do better. So, I I think stable coins kind of win in either scenario. Um, but I do think we're going to have a good year on the macro side. So, I think Bitcoin and E will both do well, too. Stable coins are the biggest use case in crypto right now. But, let's be real, using them on chain is still way too complex. That's exactly the problem Bridge is solving. Recently acquired by Stripe. Yep, that's Stripe. Bridge helps businesses send, store, accept, and launch stable coins instantly. Explore the future of global financial infrastructure at milkroad.com/bridge.

Sure, tokenized financial products are the future, but there is a big sticking point. They all need to speak to each other. This is a tough problem to solve, but chain link does exactly that. It's the universal language for financial markets, linking Wall Street to web 3, banks to blockchain, and so much more. see how Chainlink is licking the world by going to milkroad.com/chainlink. I do want to talk about Coinbase, too, because we're recording this shortly after they had their big announcement on the 17th. But before we get to that, I want to finish one more question for you on these predictions. Um, you know, at Milk Road, a big part for us, a big part of our content is narrative, right? Like what what is driving, you know, and even what you just said, part of that is narrative and also actual adoption. I feel like we're starting to shift in

when 2026 actually starts, we're going to be looking ahead to midterms. And you're talking about regulatory clarity. How much do you think passing these bills gets rushed through so that there are more uh so the you know current government can have a more positive midterm uh result? >> I don't know that they're going to rush any of this through. Um I think I mean they've already got the the clarity or the the Genius Act on the stablecoin side of things. Problem is I don't think it actually like goes into law until like 2027 or something. Um, but the good news is is like the companies that want to push on the edge of that, they can already start building and be complacent, like Coinbase is doing that already based off the act, even if it's not in law. Um, so it holds

back some institutions, like the really big ones, from being able to do anything, but many others are are fine to lean into that. Um, I do think that they will get this this um clarity act in in the market bill in before that. Um, but I don't know if they'll rush it for that specific reason. >> Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Let's jump over to Coinbase. So yesterday, but by the time we're listening, you guys are listening to this, it'll be a little later. Coinbase had their massive announcement. They announced uh stock trading. They announced a whole new Coinbase Advisor, which is like an AI platform. They announced derivatives. So many new products for them. Is Coinbase, did they become more competitive with these new products? And are you still bullish Coinbase going into the new year?

>> Yeah, absolutely. Um, yes, they do become more competitive. Uh, I think, look, it's an obvious trend. As I said, retail has left crypto. There's no doubt about that. And so if Coinbase wants to keep them on, they need to give them other assets to to trade, right? But what I think is going to happen, so so yes, they now can compete with Robin Hood. They can compete with Kraken, um, and I don't know, there's a few others that allow you to trade kind of everything. This is one of the big secular trends that that we see as well. I talked about stable coins and sort of like tokenized assets, um, or or traditional finance assets coming on chain. The other thing is the everything trading app, right? Coinbase, Robin Hood, um I think Revolute, New Bank, they're all sort of going in this direction of one place, one app. You do

everything in there. You get paid in there from your company. Um you save in there. You get loans in there. You trade in there. You do prediction markets in there. You do sports betting in there. You do everything all in one spot. You probably eventually get your mortgages and things in there. Like, I don't know, but it's going to be everything. And that is the route both Robin Hood and Coinbase are taking. And so, I think that is a big trend we're going to see. Um, and so I'm bullish on Coinbase for that, but I'm actually that's not the main reason I'm bullish on them. Robin Hood probably has the edge on that side of things. They've got way more users, way more things you can trade today. They've had obviously stocks for a long time. Um, a better UX. What I'm really bullish on Coinbase for that I think

most people are missing and why I think Coinbase still needs to be repriced from where it is today is it is building the infrastructure or the software of the new financial world. Right? So right now every institution in the world is learning about what they can do to integrate blockchain into their business. Right? Every bank is launching stable coins. Uh every fintech is launching stable coins. Every company is starting to tokenize their funds and tokenize their assets whether that's their stock or their, you know, their trading fund or their whatever it is. Everything is getting their dollars. Um you're tokenizing gold. You're tokenizing everything. And what Coinbase is building is the infrastructure to do all of that. They custody most of the world's crypto today for institutions.

They now allow you a one-stop service to just like tokenize your own equity or your own product, like whatever it is you want to tokenize. You just go to Coinbase and it's immediately compliant. It's essentially free to do and it happens in a second. It's a very hard thing for an institution to do this on their own. So that is why we don't have that crazy exponential adoption yet. Coinbase has now solved that. You want to launch a stable coin, also a hard thing to do. You got to get liquidity. You got to have the on andoff frames. You got to do all these things. Yet every fintech and every bank wants to do this. Well, now you can do it with a click of a button on Coinbase, right?

So, what they are doing is literally building an entire new financial system. They call it they said they're going to update the financial system and it's it's for institutions. It's for retail to trade everything. It's for businesses, right? They have Coinbase business that they talked about in their in their announcement, which is you can now do invoicing, you can do payments through there, right? Uh and then you can save and you can do you know you can get yield you can do all these different things as a company. Um and the beautiful thing of it is it solves a big problem in the financial system which is payments and invoicing and doing all this stuff globally right for people that live in different countries.

Coinbase because it's on chain a lot of it is onchain uh and they integrate with things on chain it allows you to to kind of remove the borders and make it all faster and cheaper. So I can see the what they are trying to build and to me that is going to be revolutionary and is going to be way bigger probably way bigger than what they're doing on the on the everything trading app side of things and there's no competition over there. There's tons of competition on the trading app but on what they're building for this layer of of institutions to to move on chain there's not much competition today. >> We just had John Dagustinino who's the head of strategy for institutions on the show literally earlier today. I I interviewed him and asked him these same same questions.

>> Um and he gave some very interesting insight just to detract for a second where he said that you know we don't expect institutions to just come in and use all these products with us but by doing simple things that they need to do on chain and giving them the opportunity to do that we hope to eventually basically win the rest of their business. So he doesn't think that all these institutions are going to start trading stocks tomorrow on Coinbase but if they start using some of the other applications on there eventually maybe they will and want to use Coinbase as a one-stop shop. Right? So, kind of like what you're saying that that's that's their kind of endgame is to eventually roll out all these products, start to bring in those clients a little bit more and then eventually win all all of their

business. >> You think of it like how Microsoft sort of built the software layer for companies, right, for your email and your your teams and your like all the things like we don't use it at at Milk Road obviously because this is Microsoft and it's old uh boomer stuff, but like every corporation in the world does, right? and it really touches a lot of the operational things that they do in their company. That's basically what Coinbase is doing on the financial side for companies, right? Um and so a lot of people don't understand that because it's this hasn't been done before, right? Um we haven't changed the financial system in a freaking long time. Uh and so Coinbase is doing that and I think a lot of people are kind of sleeping on that and don't fully grasp

that yet, but you can if you if you understand what they're doing it like it's pretty big. >> Absolutely. So, you mentioned AI a little bit and obviously Kyle, you've been hosting quite a few or a handful of interviews over on the Milk Road AI channel. Um, I'd love to know at this point, obviously, you really pushed internally at Milk Road for us to get going on AI. Man, we need AI channel. We got the newsletter, we've got the YouTube Pro is starting very shortly. Pro the AI Pro portfolio will be incorporated into the regular Milk Road All Access Pro portfolio. I mean at this point give me a preview of how you see us uh and and just the AI AI world I guess developing in 2026 uh and that what that means for investors.

>> Yeah. So the reason we needed to launch Milk AI is not cuz we're pivoting away from crypto. By no means are we doing that but we see that there are two very massive trends happening in the world right now. And it is the integration of blockchain right basically tokenizing everything and and creating a new financial system. And it's the integration of artificial intelligence into everything we do digitally and everything we do in the physical world. And so those two trends which do feed off of each other in some ways are probably the two fastest horses right now in terms of like technologies getting adoption, right? And it's very important to own assets in both of those, right? Um and it allows you a little bit of diversification. They're

all sort of risk on tech assets. So, it's not a ton of diversification, I would say. But in this type of world where we are in a debasement uh, you know, the the big debasement trade as everyone talks about, you kind of just need risk assets anyway. Scarce risk assets that are going to outperform the debasement of fiat currency. And right now, it's AI and crypto are the only things that do that over time. So, it was really important for us to one be able to understand both because what's happening with crypto is changing the world, right? and changing the macro environment. Stable coins are really going to change how treasuries work and how company or countries all work together. So that's [clears throat] a big deal that's going to change the the the structure of the global economy and so is AI. It's going to completely

change the the labor markets. It's going to completely change everything. And so it's really important to understand both from an investment but also just in terms of where the world's going. So it was really important for us to add that into the mix of the things that we discuss. When I look at 2026, what's going to happen? So much happened in 2025. I think it was the year that everyone realized, holy AI is actually here and things are happening. There are two really big things that I think are coming in the AI space that will hit in 2026 that are going to be a big deal. The first is um autonomous robotics, right? The best way to explain this, I know there's the humanoid robots. I don't think that's coming in 2026, but fully self-driving vehicles, which is just another robot robot. Um that is coming in 2026. I think that's

going to be live across the US. Not in every country, but in many countries. And cars are literally going to be driving themselves. It already does today, but you have to pay attention. So, it's not a breakout app just yet. But here's the thing. There's 8 billion or sorry, 8 million Tesla cars on the road right now. Tesla's by far the the farthest ahead on fully self-driving. Um, because they actually have a neural network, an actual AI, not the LAR systems. And so, every single car that's driving on the road right now, Tesla, they are learning together. It's it's processing that data and then making these cars better. So cars are already seven times better. These FSD is already seven times better than a human driver.

Okay. Now the funny thing is is only 500,000 people use FSD today. Okay. There's 8 million Tesla cars. Only 500,000 of them are actually using it. I've talked to a bunch of Tesla drivers and they don't even realize how good FSD is because it's only been about the last year that it's really picked up. Elon's already got fully self-driving vehicles in Austin. They launched last week. So the robo robo taxis, there's no one in there. There's not even like a supervisor, nothing. And that is going to scale. What he's already said is there's a few states right now where you can finally not have to pay attention while you're sitting in the in the front seat of the car on the Tesla. So it literally just drives you from point A to point B and you can text on your

phone, you can be on your laptop, you could host a podcast if you want at LG. And I think maybe we should do that uh next year. I'm actually buying a Tesla that comes in next month and I I'm serious. I'm going to do this. I'm going to host a podcast in the Tesla while it drives me. somewhere. Anyway, the the thing that's interesting about AI is that there's 8 million cars driving right now and so it's learning at such a a fast rate, an accelerated rate that right now it's seven times better than a human driver. Next month it'll be eight. The next month it'll be 9 or 10. And so by the end of 2026, it's not even going to be comparable of a human driver versus FSD. And the thing is is that just changes the world so so so much when all of a sudden you don't need to

drive your car right now. People when they go to buy a car and there's millions of cars sold every year, they have to think, "Do I want to buy a Honda or a Ford or whatever?" And they look at these stupid little features, EV, everyone thinks Tesla's just an EV company. What they don't understand is the moment that this thing has unsupervised, fully self-driving cars and people are starting to take pictures on TikTok of their car driving them somewhere and they don't have to pay attention, it's going to go viral and it's going to be one of those years where you have like an upgrade of hardware, right? Meaning people are just going to go and buy these cars even if they don't need a new car because it's so much better. It's like when the iPhone came, didn't matter if you just bought a Nokia phone or a flip phone or

whatever, you were getting an iPhone no matter if that thing was 6 months old. That's about to happen in cars, which is has not happened in a very long time. That's going to completely flip Uber up on its head because Ubers are now in robo taxis by the end of 2026 are going to cost you like a tenth of the price that an Uber costs today. So big change is coming and that's autonomous robotics is going to be the big thing in 2026. Tesla, of course, at the front of that. So we're extremely bullish on that. That is just going to change the world so much and I think it's going to be a weird weird time. Uh, the other thing I think that's going to happen is AI is now getting really good. We've got checkouts built into to Chatg GPT and we've got agents. So, I think what's

going to happen is Apple or maybe it's a Google phone or whatever, but I think what's going to happen is these hardware phones are going to start allowing, you know, right now you talk to Siri and it's Siri's the dumbest thing you've ever spoken to. Siri's about to get very smart and be able to do a lot of things for you. I think in 2026, you're going to be able to just look at your phone and say, [snorts] "Hey, I don't want to say it because my phone will start beeping, but hey, whatever. [laughter] Can you get me a pizza from Domino's right now?" And it'll be like, "Sure. Do you want me to order it right away? What did you want on your pizza?" And I'll say, "I want pepperoni." And boom, it'll just do it and it'll pay for it. And then it'll just show up in my house. And

I never actually had to open up my phone and go to the Domino's website or to GBT or anything. I'll just literally talk to my phone. That I think is going to be a killer app that launches next year. And that is also going to force people to upgrade their phones. So, we're gonna have a big hardware year because most people's phones, if they're three years uh ago, there's no difference in a three-year-old phone versus the phone today, really. But when this app comes out, it will need the Apple intelligence and the new chips. And so, you will have to go get a new phone if you want to be able to do that. And so, I think those are going to be the two big things that happen in AI next year. Um, and that's big for both hardware and the AI world.

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>> Exactly. >> All right, Kyle. Well, I mean, that's a great preview. We'll probably clip that and put on the AI channel as well. And I think uh we're very lucky to have you over on that side as well to be hosting some some podcasts. So, make sure you guys check that out. Uh Kyle, I don't want to go too long. We've done we've we've already done a lot of great content here. A really great show. Uh one thing, I don't know if you knew this. I don't know if I told you this. Maybe it's a little secret, but at the end of these episodes, the prediction episodes, we do a rapid fire round where I just blast through a bunch of different stuff. And these are one-word answers, okay? And we're going to we're going to touch on a a few different things. Uh most of them, I think, are

pretty high interest to you. Okay? >> Are you ready? >> One word only. >> One word. Yeah. You can give a bit of color. Some people Some people can't help themselves to say more, but >> I'm I'm a context guy. I like to give context. You know that. We just talked. Well, a lot of it I think the context is the last like 35 minutes. Honestly, people I think people want context. This is kind of like summarizing a little bit. Okay, let's just get into it. Okay. Bitcoin high price and Bitcoin low price in 2026. >> Oh, you want a price prediction? >> It's the first two questions are price predictions, but the rest are other things.

>> 80,000 [snorts] >> in a low price. >> Uh well, I think what are we at right now? >> [laughter] >> It's not It's not 2026 yet. You can't you can't start uh down probably another 6% today. [laughter] >> I would say the low is somewhere in the 80s. >> Okay. Ethereum high and low in 2026. >> I thought you told me there's only one price predictions question. [laughter] >> There's two. There's two. There's two and then it's other things. I promise. Uh hi. Um new alltime highs. So 5,000 plus >> one token that everyone will wish they held by the end of 2026 >> has to be a token.

>> You can you can alter the answer. I mean that some stocks are tokenized now too. >> I'll give two. I'll give two. Sky I think is going to be huge. Um and because of what I talked about stable coins uh and Tesla because what I just talked about. >> Which sector has the potential to 10x next year? And it could be a specific sector of AI or wherever else. >> Um, not financial advice, okay? Whatever he says. >> Yeah, DeFi. But if I was to get even more specific, it's probably stable coins within DeFi. Um, so anything that that is around stable coins. The other one, cuz I want, you know, I'm anro AI guy, right? I'm the host over there. So the other one is Robotics.

>> Okay. Who wins 2026, Coinbase or Robin Hood? Good question. [gasps] Who wins? Is this in by price? Like who outperforms? >> However you define winning, >> I got to say Coinbase. >> Which AI app will grow the most in 2026? >> Tesla's robo taxi app. >> Okay. And last one, this is >> probably not. I don't. So that's going to be one of them. But like the problem is is that's only going to work in certain parts of the world, certain cities. So there's definitely going to be an AI app that is global that goes crazy. Um

>> but what does that doesn't exist yet or hasn't 800 million users, you know? Yeah, that's it. It's it's it could still be a chat even if they added 400 million. >> Google Gemini or Grock could be it. >> I think OpenAI is about to get wrecked. >> Wow. Okay. Okay. Okay. And the last one is an open open card, but it has to be something insane. A wild card prediction. Something that is like if this happened, everybody would think that you you can see the future because of how specific and insane it is. And you can take a second and think about it cuz I didn't tell you we're going to do this [laughter] >> but like totally out there and it could be like a crazy wish, you know, anything you want.

>> I think we're going to have a 10 trillion dollar public company in 2026. Is that big enough? >> Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, I think that's that's I think that works. Yeah, absolutely. That's that's pretty crazy. I think >> Who's it gonna be? Who's it gonna be? >> Uh don't know. Probably like a Google or an Nvidia. Probably one of those. >> Perfect. Right on. Anything to leave us with? That's it for the predictions, Kyle. Anything you want uh the Milk Road audience to know before we wrap out the year? >> Yeah, I do actually. I think I know that 2025 has been a tough year for many. And the thing I would say is that most people decide to just like walk away or stop investing or or just kind of give up. Um, and you see it on the timeline.

And all I want to say is like those are the times that you got to go through those tough times to learn and you become a way better investor and you really figure things out, right? That's what this whole journey of investing is is like everyone thinks that they're going to come in the first year and they're just going to nail it. And it's like name anything in life that that's ever happened. It's never happened, right? Like imagine you started playing basketball today for the first time. Do you think you could go and beat the professionals? Of course not, right? It would take you 10, 15, 20 years if you could ever do it. But for some reason, retail people come in and they go, I'm going to start investing and I'm going to get 100% every year. It's like the professionals don't even do that. Why do

you think you can do that? And so I just think I know this was a tough year for many and so many people have complained and been so negative and it's like these are the years you have to go through to become a good investor if you stick with it. And so that's why I don't think you should leave crypto, but I think you should just continue to learn what did you get wrong? What did you miss? Right? Like these questions you're asking. They're so helpful and it makes me and forces me to reflect. Everyone listening sees the same thing. Take the next two weeks during the holidays. Reflect on what you got right, what you got wrong. Journal that and come back 2026 stronger and figure out a way to do better because that's the only way you're going to succeed in investing. If

you don't do that, you're just going to do the same thing every year. You're gonna get excited because Trump does this or some new thing does this and you're going to chase the the trend and you're going to be too late and you're gonna give up and then you're gonna come back next year and do the same thing when the next hot thing comes. That's how retail typically works. And the whole point of Milk Road is to help people not do that. It's to think longer term. It's to figure out the fundamentals. It's to understand what it means to be an investor to figure out the psychology of investing. And that takes years. But I think most people want to do this in weeks and it's just not possible. So, that's the one thing I really hope people can take away from this year.

>> I love it. Absolutely. I agree with you and and I'm looking forward to continuing to work with you, man, in 2026. Really bullish on the team and everything we're doing. And um well, I'm sure we'll be back together for another pod pretty soon. >> Let's do it. Happy New Year everybody. Happy holidays. >> Want insights on what's moving crypto markets and how [music] we're trading each event? Subscribe to our channel and join the Milkro Daily and Pro Newsletters and start investing like the top [music] 1%. This show is for educational purposes only. Nothing we say is financial advice. Investing is risky.