Lark Davis on the macro setup for Bitcoin and Ethereum

Transcript

But if you look at others versus the BTC chart on the monthly, it's very interesting. They are essentially right now at a mega bottom with a bullish MACD crossover happening. This has happened only two times previously in crypto every time. One was in 2017, one was when 2021. Both times that happened previously start off the mega biggest mega altcoin bull runs in history. GM, good morning. and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show where it's a bullish Monday simply because nobody rage posted from Mara Lago over the weekend. I'm your host Jay Hamilton.

It's Monday, October the 27th. We are up. Things are green. The market is looking good coming into this week for the first time in a few weeks. It's been a rough few weeks out there, but October could still end as a green month. We are looking green right now. Bitcoin is looking strong. We had some daily closes over the weekend that is showing we are headed in the right direction. We're going to jump into the Bitcoin chart today. We're going to look at the ETH chart and of course we're going to break down macro because it's a big macro week this week. Over the weekend, Treasury Secretary Basant said that the China deal is looking good coming into this week. Trump and Shei

are meeting on Thursday. So hopefully that deal gets done and then everything is set up for a great end of the year. Also, we've got the Fed meeting on Wednesday. Rate cuts likely coming. We had inflation last week. We're going to talk about that. In the studio today is the one and only Lark Davis. He's back on the show. It's been too long since we had Lark on the show. He's an OG crypto investor, a fellow content creator, and a multi multi multi-VC investor as well. Before we jump in here from Lark, if you guys are swapping, which I know you are constantly throughout living in crypto as an investor, you want to check out

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With that, let's hear from the one and only Lark Davis. >> Thanks for having me back on. Always a pleasure. >> Pleasure, man. It's been far too long. Uh I don't want to waste any time because we've got so much that we want to jam on today. So, let's jump right in to the charts. Oh, that's the wrong chart. Here we go. What's What are we seeing? Uh let's look at Bitcoin first. >> Let's look at Bitcoin first. Let's look at Bitcoin because this this price action just feels very very positive right now. As of this recording, >> Bitcoin sitting at 115 115. >> Mhm.

>> Woohoo. It's interesting, isn't it? We've recovered a lot of the damage that was done. Now, look, we're all one traumatic treat tweet away from life-changing events again. So, just keep that in mind. The market's very responsive to news. The good thing is that news has been good recently. What happened in crypto when we had the flash crash was very much a a technical glitch we could almost say within the cryptocurrency markets. There's no reason that altcoins went to zero except complete insanity. But we are slowly grinding back in the right direction. Okay. So we go back here to October 10th. The price at the time before the crash started was $121,000. We recovered a significant distance back towards regaining those previous prices before the big crash happened. On average it takes around 30

to 90 days. 90 days is actually about the average post massive crashes like this to get back to previous price highs. I think we run this one much quicker because of all the good macro stuff going on. But let's just just talk charts real quick because this is very very interesting what's happened. Now look altcoins it's a very different story. Some of those got absolutely devastated. The charts even after the weekend pump still doesn't look good. Some of these still reclaimed their 20-day EMAs, stuff like that. But the majors, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Salana, right? These have actually looked incredibly well. I think we get a very good picture of that by looking at just Bitcoin and Ethereum. So, Bitcoin through all that drama, through all that chaos, all we had was a 200 day EMA retest right here. That's the purple

line on the chart, which happens. That happens. Now, 200 day EMA is a little bit crazier than like a 50 or 20-day EMA retest, but they happen and they're pretty normal. And that's not the place to lose your mind and get bearish. Now, if you lose support, okay, sure, we can have a conversation, but a retest of support, no. So, what has happened over the weekend? We had this great news from Scott Ascent basically saying, "Hey, we're going to make a deal with China. It's going to be awesome." And so, we actually saw the RSI leading the price here by a few days. If you can have a look just here, what do we see back here on the sort of Wednesday, Thursday, RSI started breaking out. That's a shift momentum, right? So, we started breaking out here on the RSI. The MACD flipped

bullish um yesterday, but you can actually see the curving up of the histogram here that ever since October 18th, slowly but surely, momentum has been shifting back. Now, when it's still in the red, it's still in the red. That's still bearish momentum and until it confirms, you can't really say, okay, we're back, right? But now, we did have a confirmation here uh on Sunday of the bullish breakout with the crossover happening sort of between Saturday and Sunday. So that has seen sign price momentum pick up here. The 20-day EMA taken out for a daily close and the 50-day EMA at the same time. Now the 20-day EMA for me, I think that's the most important shortterm indicator in terms of what the health of the market is, right? So what we're seeing now is

the 20-day EMA is breaking out. That means the trend potentially is reversing here. So the regime now looking forward assuming that this does continuous momentum is this could be a reversal of trend and to look for 20-day EM retests for going long again on uh Bitcoin, Ethereum and other assets as they start breaking out of their 20-day EMAs and start having that momentum shift to the upside here. So a daily close here above the 20 and 50-day EMA, that's really good. That's definitely what you want to see from the market right now. That's showing the market that we are putting in a bit of strength, enough strength in one candle to take out two EMAs at the same time.

Showing a very positive momentum shift coming our way, especially lined up the RSI and the MACD there. Uh the picture on Ethereum looks relatively similar. We have this interesting big triangle here. By the way, the price target of that's around $5,000, just FYI. But this uh triangle, beautiful price action on this and obviously another 200 day EMA retest all the way back down to 3500 bucks during the crash on the 10th. bounced straight off the 200 day EMA. Bit stronger than Bitcoin in terms of its uh overall distance above the 200 day EMA during the consolidation period, but a classic consolidation period. You can just see here we came down for the initial bounce start. Price started just coiling like this, which is a very very classic move and now we're trying to break out to the upside here. Again, price started that's around $5,000 from

this particular triangle. Again, the RSI leading the way here, giving that little bit of an early indicator. Hey, momentum could be shifting here under the surface. time to start paying attention. That happened on Thursday. Well, the price of ETH was just around $3,800. MACD, of course, crossing over the weekend with Bitcoin price now closing the daily above the 20 and the 50-day EMAs. Now, moving forward, what do we need to see? Particularly the 20-day EMA starting to get defended. 50-day EMA to start curving up and for us to get a little bit of distance between us and the 200 day EMA. Okay, but that's what's happening currently in the charts. So, I think it's very constructive. Uh, it's obviously after all the craziness that's happened recently, great to see some

green candles in the charts here and some potential breakouts forming up and momentum shifts happening with the MACD's showing momentum is moving back in our favor. >> So, how you feeling about Q4? Obviously, October's just been a rough month. October what? Like, it's been tough out here, but Q4 most people still feeling pretty good. How are you feeling? I'm still feeling pretty good about Q4. I think the the thing is what has fundamentally changed. Here's here's some interesting perspective for you. This is the monthly chart for Bitcoin. You see, there's been a lot of noise on the timeline, but all we need to do all we need to do is finish above about $114,300 and the month actually finishes green.

That's a big It's a big Darth Maul lightsaber there. Don't get me wrong, but but here's the thing. The month can still finish green. We have four days to go, five days to go for the month to finish. Great. If we finish the month green, that's very constructive as well here. So, look, I'm still bullish for Q4, particularly because, and this is the reason I didn't get mega bearish on these big retests of support. We looked at the weekly charts and stuff and the daily charts in the channel saying, "Guys, we're retesting all these key areas of price support. You know, if we start putting a weekly candle close under the 50we EMA, okay, then let's talk." Until then, this is a retest of all these major lines. And I know there was a very big traumatic event with the big crash and stuff that happened.

That's a different story. But when you have these big retests across the majors, it's always scary on the retests because the retests mean, well, we're either going to bounce or we're going to go down, right? The reason I was in the bounce category is that all of the macro is lining up. It would be wild for all this macro to line up. stocks just keep ripping non-stop for years straight and Bitcoin just goes into a bare market because the four-year cycle theory which just doesn't hold enough water right now in my opinion.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I I completely I completely agree. Uh it feels feels a bit like taking crazy pills sometimes because it's been a slow long cycle >> and it hasn't exactly acted the way we wanted. But let's let's talk about macro because there is so much going on here. And first of all, let's touch on CPI came out Friday. Let's go in order. Let's start with last Friday and then we'll talk Fed meeting and then we'll talk tariffs and Trump sheet later this week. But CPI came out Friday. What were your thoughts on that? CPI came in really good. It's good that it came in below expectations. Now the silver lining of that statement is it's still

up. So last month was 2.9%. This month it's 3%. Okay, but that was below the 3.1% forecast. So, it means inflation is not rising as fast as analysts have predicted and it's still of course above the Fed's target of 2%. So, you have to keep that in mind, too. But it's good. The fact that it's moving slower, right, that's the key factor here is what's the momentum doing right now for the inflation. And if it's coming in cooler than expected, that puts a lot more uh potential for the Fed to say, "Hey, okay, look, inflation's not that big of a problem. It's coming in under expectation. It's a bit cooler than we we thought it was going to be. It's fine. Let's cut some more rates. Money's going to get cheaper. So, this is really good. This very positive, I think, for everything really. Obviously, want to

see inflation come back down, but we may just have to get used to being above this sort of 2% level for longer than people might think it will be. Okay, this 2% target is very arbitrary anyway from the Fed. And the thing is, you don't want it to spike to six or seven or 8% or something like that. Then you have real problems, okay? Okay, then we have massive monetary shift from the Fed and sure, but at these levels and with a coming in more than expectation, it's basically a green light to the market to just go and that's what it's doing. >> Okay, so inflation doesn't feel like a problem right now. That's certainly the the feeling and that's even the feeling that Powell's been putting out. Also, QT coming to an end,

Fed meeting this week. Give us the crystal ball that you see Jerome Powell walking us through. >> Well, I imagine Jerome Powell is going to highlight continued weakness in the labor markets. That's why they have to cut rates again. Now, again, another 25 basis point cut. These individual cuts of 25 basis points don't move the needle very much. I realistically rates need to come down 100, 150, 200 basis points. They're been too high for too long. But it means we're moving in the right direction. No, no, no. That's not going to happen in one meeting though, just to be clear.

>> No, no, no, no. That's going No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But I'm just saying that um the 25 basis points, that's what we need in the long run, right? But that is the individual cuts of 25 basis points don't in of themselves make a huge difference to everything going on the market. Like if you're looking to buy a home, 25 basis points doesn't make much difference if you're going to go in for a mortgage, but a whole but a whole 100 basis points does, right? And the same if you're a business. If you're looking to borrow money to build a new warehouse or something like that, 25 basis points, it helps, but it doesn't move the needle very much. But when you combine them all together, we're moving in the right direction. We had a cut last month, we

have a cut this month, and the mark prediction marks are saying we're going to have a cut at the next meeting, which I think is in December. So everything moves in the right direction and the momentum again is shifting at the at the biggest levels of the monetary pyramid here. And that's what's important is that we have the momentum moving in our direction of rate cuts and the money keeps getting cheaper. See, three rate cuts over four months, that's 75 basis points. That does move the needle. Okay? And that's the important thing. And look, Jerome Pal's got until May. He gets replaced in May. So between now and then, maybe he gives us a couple more rate cuts. And that might be in total 125 basis points, maybe 150 basis points in total cuts from Jerome before he

goes. That's probably all reasonable. Then Trump is going to put in a puppet. Someone's going to do whatever Trump says >> and they are going to cut rates to just gargantuan lows and that's going to create the next problem the market to be honest. But it's not an immediate problem and markets will pump in the short term and then we have to deal with the reckoning and the horrible crash afterwards caused by 0% rinse again or whatever he's going to put it down to. That's a later us problem. Before then we got to sell. Okay. >> And we'll get you back on Mark uh to talk about the problem. But we but that's that's hey that's down the road man. Unless >> that's later.

>> We can we can keep pushing that one down the road too possibly depending upon the timing of that, you know, that could be pushed for a while. Okay. Uh anything else on uh on Fed to touch on before we go to uh tariffs and uh trade war ending please? >> I think just a quick mention on QT here um would be >> Yeah, of course >> that Q Jerome Pal has come out and said he's going to end uh QT. JP Morgan came out last week and said Jerome Pal is going to completely end QT at this Fed meeting. Now, we did have an 80% reduction in QT six months ago or something like that. And that was basically when they said, "Hey, we're going to reduce by 80% the amount of treasuries that we're, you know, letting out into the market, right?

But they're going to totally cut that. So, there's going to be no more Treasury easing." And nobody's really said much about mortgage backed securities, whether they're going to completely end the QT on that as well, because that's a pretty big part of the picture. It's 25 billion a month or something like that. It's substantial. I don't know if they can end QT on mortgage back securities right now with how weak the housing market is. But maybe they do. And if they do, if JP Morgan's right and they're just going to end all QT, fantastic. That takes a huge amount of pressure off of the financial markets overall because that pressure from the Fed has been very palpable for a very long time and it's been very influential in the way markets have moved and we pumped this much despite massive QT QT from the Fed. But to be clear, the

ending of QT does not mean the start of QE. Yes, there will be technical adjustments and yes, they'll find ways to creatively refill the Treasury General account and bail the banks out and all that kind of BS, right? But it doesn't mean an official return to QE policies, okay? Where the Fed starts buying back tens of billions a month of treasuries from the market, okay? That does not mean that's what's going to happen. A lot of people conflate the two, that the end of QT has to mean the start of QE. That's not the case. There'll always be tweaking and pulling of levers in the background. That's how the Fed operates. But in terms of a major monetary shift like that, that's something we probably don't see straight away unless something breaks in the financial system like the regional banks all start collapsing or something. Then

we might talk about QE. But that means we have to go through a crisis in order for that to happen and markets don't like crisises. So be careful what you wish for, guys. >> No thanks. No thanks. >> Did you know you can earn Bitcoin without ever buying it? That's where the Gemini credit card comes in. Here's how it works. Earn up to 4% back in Bitcoin on gas, transit, and ride share. 3% on dining, 2% on groceries, and 1% on everything else. Use it just like any other credit card, and you're building a crypto portfolio at the same time. The best part, the Gemini credit card has no annual fee and works anywhere Mastercard is accepted. When you're approved and spend 3,000 in the first 90 days, you'll get a $200 Bitcoin bonus. Spend as usual, earn Bitcoin instead at

milkroad.com/gemini. 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. Okay. So, uh, so let's just to be clear though with what's the what's the magnitude quickly of these technical adjustments that happen because if QT does end and it hasn't it this is not official yet we are still waiting for

them to tell us like just to be clear right said he's likely to end QT and JP Morgan thinks >> but he didn't say when though he didn't say when he didn't say when right so we're all just speculating likely it happens this week though no one wouldn't surprise anyone that happens. Technical adjustments start. That does bring some liquidity into the system, right? Like not it's not nothing. >> QE could start in 2026. >> Trump could >> you wouldn't be shocked, right? >> I would be shocked if the guy does >> Q.

Yeah. Like >> Yeah. >> So, okay. So, the the long term there looking very very very positive. the the macro side is just it's it continues to I mean gold >> okay we we'll talk about that in a second actually I want to talk about Bitcoin bull but before we get there >> I just want to make one one one statement we're in the Goldilock zone economically everything you'd ever want for a a riskon market is here crypto's been a bit slower to respond in the previous months but we are essentially entering into a goldilock zone how long that zone lasts for is anybody's guess but it's loose loose and it's getting looser.

Let's put it that way. >> How how long could it last for? >> Well, it's interesting because essentially if you look at the business cycle and really we use like the ISM PMI to gauge this which is still under 50. I don't think we've got the most recent numbers in for October because government's closed down but the ISM PMI is under 50, right? So generally you don't really start the major expansion phase of the business cycle until that's back over 50 consistently and it usually tops out somewhere between 60 and 65. So that usually takes about 12 months and risk assets tend not to have major tops outside of the business cycle having a

major top. That's not here yet. It's actually quite far away from happening still. If we got a cross over the ISM PMI50 for this month, then let's say that's it. Okay, the breakout's here. It happens. We keep moving in that direction late next year potentially. You know, if historical precedence rhymes, which obviously past performance does not equate future performance, but we do have a lot of rhyming in these sectors. So, could be a year or more between now and when that happens and when we get an eventual top, which is crazy. But the flip side is is four-year cycle theorists aside, what Bitcoin's more largely followed in the past has been credit cycles and business cycles which have kind of lined up with that

more four-year window. >> But this for what are wide variety of reasons that has not happened this time. >> So it means the cycle is going to be extended if we as we always have before follow all these major economic factors. >> So there you go. >> Yep. Yeah. Which I think we will. Okay. trade war. Does it end this week? Do we get a deal? >> I hope so. Holy cow. The amount of brinksmanship between she and Trump.

>> Sorry, what was that word that you just used? >> Brinksmanship. >> Can you define that word for me? Yeah, just really just these guys are taking everything and and taking it right to the edge of sanity to the last minute, the 11th hour, and it's all just this blustering and posturing and running things right down to the last minute here. And and that's, you know, the the classic uh case of uh political brinksmanship was the Cuban missile crisis between JFK and Cruchev, right? That was brinksmanship between the USA and stuff, right? Pursuing dangerous policy, the limits of uh safety before stopping. There you go. That's what's going on between she and Trump right now. And if you know how Trump operates, it's all well within the norms of reason. The freaking art of the deal

basically says cause mass chaos before you make a deal. Keep the opponent continually guessing. All that sort of stuff is exactly what he's doing, right? So it's all we're going to do 100% tears. I don't know. Tomorrow, yes. Few hours later, no. Obviously not. Tomorrow, yes, of course we are. You're crazy. And back and forth and causes continual confusion. I I almost think you got Xi Jinping sitting there in Beijing. He wakes up in the morning, goes to X and like looks at what Donald Trump's tweeting. He's like, "Ah, Donald, you did it again. What are we going to do today? What's my move?" It's like playing, you know, political chess here. Um, but look, jokes aside, the fact of the matter is everybody benefits from a deal >> and that's the thing. But the deal has

to work in such a way where both Trump and Xi Jinping can go back home to their base and said, "We got everything we wanted. We took the other guys to the cleaners. We got a great deal and we're going to all have massive benefits and it's going to be the golden era, right? >> Yeah. They both have to be able to say I won. They both say that. >> Exactly. Exactly. And so that's looking like what we've got coming here is that everyone's going to win and that benefits everybody because nobody neither America nor China or anybody else in the world because everywhere else will be the collateral damage wins from a China US trade war deepening.

They don't. But everybody wins from China and USA making a deal and working closer together, which is it looks like what's happening now. Can some crazy still happen between now and then? I don't know. Scott Bent's going to get into a get into a fist fight with the Chinese dude. Apparently, he's a brawler, man. I have you heard these stories that Scott, the Treasury Secretary, man. He's he's a loose cannon, man. He's a brawler. Apparently, he's the one who gave uh Elon Musk that black eye. >> Did you hear about this? >> No. Really? Yeah, that's the rumor. I mean, that's the rumor, man. Apparently, Scott's just a a crazy loose can of brawler, man. But anyway, so hopefully he doesn't get into a fist fight with the Chinese his Chinese counterpart. I don't know how much truth there is in this, but I think it's hilarious if it's

true. You see Scott, you're like that guy? I guess >> that guy. Why not >> that guy looks like a nice old man? >> Takes the glasses off, man. He's a baller, man. I'm telling you. Anyway, that aside, I think the deal gets made aside from some big stuff happening. Scott Pensp has come out and said we f we made all the deals. We made all the terms and probably they signed the deal on uh Thursday and the Chinese even said like we're not even pointing to this meeting if we're not going to sign a deal on Thursday. And so, looks like they've made all the everything done.

So h >> how do you think this week goes? Like what are the probabilities here? Like does uh does the news get leaked beforehand? Uh, do we do we pop off this news because we're unsure up until the moment? Like >> I think we're we're we're popping off the news right now. That's what the market's currently showing. >> Exactly. Yeah. Is it going to sell or is it sell the news by the end of the week? >> Probably to some extent. You know how the it usually works. You get a big run up into it and then it's not to say the sell the news is going to be go to goblin town, but you know markets pull back probably slightly after the deal gets done, which is fine. That's normal.

Bullwaxs are healthy and fine. A good bull market is two steps forward, one step back. >> People always freak out about the one step back. Come on. I know. I know. I know. I know. People only want up only. That's not how it works. And the great advantage of that is that you have continual opportunities to buy into the assets that you like because every so often they go on sale. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and and nobody expected this sale. That's for sure. Right. Nobody expected this one. Um Okay. Let's talk uh let's talk gold BTC.

>> Gold BTC has been a very interesting one because um what we've seen often historically and I I don't think I have a good chart to show it off the top of my head, but what we've seen is that throughout Bitcoin's life cycle, you tend to have gold making these big moves first. and gold. Look, I'm not saying gold can't push higher for a big fat, you know, bearish RSI divergence on on the weekly or something and gets up to 4,500 bucks or something. That can happen, sure. But more likely than not, gold is at or very near its top for a while. And if that's the case, what tends to happen is that within around 90 days on average, Bitcoin will make a major move, a major breakout to the

upside. Now, with all the sort of Goldilocks economic conditions, maybe that happens sooner. It's like we were talking about earlier, tend to have around 90 days after these mega leverage crashes as well. Maybe because of the economic conditions right now that is speedrun and we do it much quicker than we would have previously, but the rotation is on right now. And never has there been a clearer sign of mania than people literally standing in cues for hours outside of bullion exchanges to buy the intergalactic effing top of gold. And people people come and tell me say, "Lark, no one's ever going to buy Bitcoin at $250,000."

Of course they are. Obviously, that's going to be exactly the same psychology. >> My my my neighbor is telling me about how we can go and get gold from this old mountain pass close to my house right now. Like that the gold bull is is on fully. I'm getting t I'm talking to neighbors about going out and digging for gold, you know, and and it's like and you think that Bitcoin won't won't reach that level someday, you know what I mean? Like these guys have no idea what Bitcoin is, right? They're trades people, right? You know, so it's just it's so what do you think? Do you think do you think we have a big catch-up then the

next >> Yeah, I I think to end this year we have a big catchup. I think that can that plays out. >> It seems relatively likely again assuming that general economic conditions stay as they have been and we don't get some sort of big um you know surprise. Aside from that though, then yes, Bitcoin looks absolutely primed. The next major target for us is around $150 to $160,000. That's the 2.68 Fibonacci line. So, we came up to the first major target, which is around $110,000. We got a little bit over it. Obviously, been kind of around that range for quite a while now, actually, which is very interesting. The next big targets 150 to 160. So, that's the next big area to watch for. It's it's a nice move. It's about a 40% move or so for Bitcoin from

the current prices. If you guys have been around Bitcoin for a while, you know how this goes. That can happen in a matter of like a week or two. >> Something happens, mania starts, ETF flows start pumping in like crazy. People start rotating from gold. What's funny is you're definitely going to have people who literally bought gold at like the intergalactic top are going to come back, sell their gold to buy Bitcoin at the at the intergalactic top. >> One dude's going to do it. at least one dude, man. You know, there's that one guy out there who's going to do it. Uh yeah, but it generally what what it's showing us is that there's likely to be a strong rotation from gold into riskier assets as people realize the world's not

ending. And look, there's a certain amount of central bank buying, the debasement trade and all that kind of stuff going on. Sure, that's not going to go away. But often after gold makes these kind of measurements, by the way, gold almost perfectly hit its 3.618 Fibonacci target. >> No way. went over just by a little bit. But if there ever there was a place for the price action to cool off, man, it's right there. >> It's right there. That's for damn sure. So, let's see how that plays out. Obviously, anything can happen. Things can get crazier than we think they will, but if there's ever a good spot for it to have a major chill time, it's right there. So, Bitcoin, we've only got up to the 1.618 so far in the Fibonacci charts. Still the 2.618 and the 3.618 to go. The 3.618 is around $250,000.

So patience guys, patience. >> What about ETH? >> ETH. Thank god Tom Lee started buying. I have been a massive pessimist on ETH for uh most of the year. And I actually um briefly sold my ETH and got back into it when I saw the the show through ETH. >> Oh yeah. I was I was absolutely frustrated beyond belief with just the lack of caring from the Ethereum Foundation of Vitalic coming out and saying like, you know, don't expect us to go all bronze age and do things and but then tides started shifting a little bit. We got some upgrades. We had um Vitalic coming out and saying, hey, look, we're scale the chain 10x onchain and stuff like that. But ETH's still broken in its current form. And even 10x

scaling isn't going to massively fix ETH in its current form. Now fees have been low and scaling's been better and stuff progress has been made, don't get me wrong. And I've got an ETH bag right now, but the ETH bag is basically an ETH BTC ratio trade. So when it uh we get to 0.05 ETH BTC, I'm out again. And there's a underlying things that have not been structurally fixed with ETH. And Kevin Olirri did a a video on this got a lot of uh press, but I was saying the same thing on stream Kevin Liry. But when when the crash happened, what happened? ETH fees spiked to like $1,000 again.

It's unusable when something happens. And that's the time when you need it the most. That's a problem. That's a real problem that hasn't gone away for ETH. So layer twos great, big fan of base and all that stuff. ETH main chain continues to struggle and we have a lot of work still to be done. The big thing that's really changed for ETH is that the buyers who are coming in Tom Lee and Wall Street ETFs and stuff like that which had a major turnaround. And again, you know, sometimes you have to ask yourself the question, do you want to write it? Do you want to be right or do you want to make money? I still think there's a lot of problems with the ETH um foundation and all that stuff. In fact, we had that viral thread go recently uh from an ETH dev who had

worked there for six years. He's getting paid $100,000 a year to work at the Ethereum Foundation for to be a dev on the second most important cryptocurrency, a blockchain worth $400 billion. They cannot keep talent at $100,000 a year. You literally have Meta out here giving a hund00 million dollars for devs to come over from AI companies, which I know it's a very specific situation, but like come on, Ethereum Foundation, throw the dude a bone here, man. Give him two or three $400,000 a year. It's not going to make that much of a difference to the Ethereum Foundation. But the fact that they're unwilling to invest in talent like that again makes me pessimistic um at least in the short term about the fundamentals of Ethereum. Tom Lee started buying, ETFs started buying, that changed the wave. I got back in

around the same price that I sold at. It's fine. Doesn't really matter. It's all good. Ride the wave and now we're up massively in profits again. So, yay for that. But I'll sell ETH when the time comes. And I think they've got a lot of soularching to do to get back to the um back to the technological edge of innovation, right? Things are moving too slow. Um whereas you see like Salana, you know, Anatolian crew, those guys are absolutely focused, man. They're they're out there promoting their ecosystem all the time. They're out there pushing the edge of technology. They're working super hard to get the vision of Salana out there. And Vitalik's just not that same kind of leader, right? And you know, no shade on Vitalic. He's fine. He

can be the nerdy dev leader. But in the world's most competitive industry, you can see why the guys at Salana are getting more and more devs to come over. Um, we shed had a recent dev report and while the entire Ethereum ecosystem when you account for all the layer 2s and stuff like that still has the lead on Salana in total numbers of devs, >> Salana as just one blockchain is very close behind only about um 20 25% behind in devs. And if you were to just look at Ethereum versus main chain versus Salana, Salana be winning. It's only when you count all the layer twos together >> the ETH ecosystem wins. So the trend has been definitely in one direction uh for Salana which we've talked about we talked about this last year too interestingly sort of the Salana versus ETH trade and I still think Salana is

massively undervalued compared to Ethereum based on current metrics and market cap and all that stuff. Why do people invest in real estate? Because it spits off cash flow. But I'm not here to manage rental properties. That's why I'm looking at figure markets. Their new democratized prime product backs your money with real cash flowing assets and returns up to 9% APY. It's the first real world asset borrow lend pool built for everyone, not just institutions. Ready to lend like a bank and get more than the 5% A is offering you. Download the Figure Markets app today and get 9% on your idol funds. Go to milkroad.comfiguremarkets.

Interesting. So you think Salana wins the the if if we all had a crystal ball and we knew who was going to win tokenization if we knew right if you knew where would stocks be tokenized private credit you name the the asset that you're we're going to tokenize if you knew it >> be the best best trade you one of the best trades you can make in crypto in the next few decades. You think Salana You think Salana wins over Ethereum? >> Feels like it's it's going to be one of the two, but it's still too early. Like it could be someone else. Let's I will say that, but right now it feels more likely. So Salana, ETH or someone else, which >> Yeah. Well, it could always be somebody else. You could always have somebody

else come up and um you know, take their place at the at the throne as well. Gun to my head is somebody said, "Hey, you can only invest in one of these two. I'd invest in Salana today." That being said, it's not a zero- sum game actually. And we all like to put things out as zero sum games, but it's got to be one definitive take all winner, but it just doesn't work like that. My general feeling has been that you're going to have about four to five blockchains which capture 90% of the users, 90% of volume transactions, DeFi, devs, all that kind of stuff. That's essentially Ethereum base Salana, uh, you know, maybe BSC or something like that. It's But okay, there you go. the the next 10%

captures the next 90% of users, but that's only again four or five blockchains. So this is like avalanche and sooie and stuff like that and one of those could break out and and displace you know BSC or base or something like that and or just you know take a bigger market share of that total 90%. >> So essentially what we're saying is that 8 to 10 blockchains are going to capture 99% of users values transaction all kind of stuff and there's hundreds of blockchains. So the 1% are going to be scrambling for a very very tiny piece of the pie and to some extent the market has already chosen who the winners are likely to be. Can things change in the next 5 10 years? Of course they can. But it's hard to get momentum shifted back

when things start moving in the right direction, right? Is it um well there's a law for it. Basically the more users you have, the more value you have, the more likely you're going to continue to succeed. And that's basically what's happening right now for the Ethereum ecosystem in Salonus. Even though I might be pessimistic on what's happening on the Ethereum main chain, I still think Ethereum's got an incredible place in the entire ecosystem. The layer 2, Base, all that stuff's fantastic. So, ETH main chain doesn't need to have massive success in order for Bass to have massive success and win. The only thing is they better hope that Bass never jumps ship and just makes their own chain. Mhm.

Yep. Yeah, that would I mean there there's a very very big risk risk there. Although at the same time, the bigger it gets, the harder that gets to jump ship. >> True. >> Very true. >> You know, you kind of you got to make the decision sooner rather than later. >> Let's let's zoom out for a sec. You and I were chatting about this before we recorded. It just feels like where are all the investors in crypto this year in a way like you know and you kind of feel like you're looking over the fence at AI and you're like but then also at the same time it's not not like everyone in AI is winning and then you look at the S&P and you're like okay like it just

what's what's your sense of of the the whole market and all asset classes and sort of the mix right now and and how you think that might where you think we go from here for the rest of the year and into 2026. >> Yeah, the market's definitely told us to be much more selective with uh betting on any altcoins. It's interesting if you look from the time that Trump tweeted buy to now, you would have made more money buying Bitcoin than you would have buying the NASDAQ or the S&P 500, which is interesting. Had you bought individual stocks, you bought Irene Energy for example, why didn't we all just full poured into Irene Energy, it would have been up 10x.

But then some altcoins have done that as well. You should have full poured into Hyperlid and you would have got similar returns. So it's not to say the returns aren't in crypto right now. But I can definitely understand some of the pessimism from the retail crowd in crypto because so much of what has been built in crypto is just a lot of A lot of vaporware scams from VCs and stuff like that and people got tired of playing that game. It's not to say the stock market's all squeaky clean. Certainly is not. >> But you can understand why people maybe become more pessimistic on some of the crypto stuff. Um, and when you have big leverage flashes like you had the other day where some altcoins literally went to zero in a matter of three minutes, that is scarring for people. Anybody who got hit by that or even retail looking

out going, I was going to get back into crypto, but holy cow, >> you know, the this is a problem. So there's been a bit of pessimism in that regard and altcoins have underperformed basically the entire cycle except for very small areas of outperformance. You've had you know AI agents pop off or XRP go 7x in a month but those have been much fewer and far between stories. The asset class as a whole if you look at the others chart which is the top 10 coins excluded. So all the altcoins after the top 10 it's been a much rougher time for them. They've essentially been in a bare market since 2024 and have really struggled I think overall this cycle. But if you look at others versus the BTC chart on the monthly, it's very interesting. They are

essentially right now at a mega bottom with a bullish MACD crossover happening. This has happened only two times previously in crypto. Every time one was in 2017, one was in 2021. both times that happened previously start off the megas biggest mega altcoin bull runs in history. So one thing that I think is working in the favor right now of risk assets particularly altcoins is that the Russell 2000's breaking out. So that's 2,000 lower cap stocks in the US stock market that's breaking out to new all-time highs that just started happening the other day. If you look at the correlation between the Russell and the others very strong correlation that's essentially the market saying we're taking more risk in the low cap stocks. We're also going to start taking

more risk in the low cap altcoins. But I think the stock markets has a lot more interesting stuff to offer too and with lower risk and also big upside potential. Again, data centers, AI, robotics, biotech, space. Man, these are really cool things. These are really cool things. And I've got a big stock portfolio and I have had been building it for years across all kinds of cool stuff. I love it. It's neat. I want to invest in rockets. I want to invest in robots. That's cool stuff and it's really exciting. People are getting much more excited about that stuff right now.

Whereas with crypto, we've kind of found out we've got we do a few things really really well. Really well. And you know, this is the financial layer of the internet, which is fantastic. But there's a lot of things that we keep trying to plug into crypto that just don't really get people very excited. Social, infoi, gaming, and 50 other use cases that just have not really done well. But we found a few things we do do really well. and value settlement. Whether you're talking about using Bitcoin to store value and setting value that way or using Salana or Ethereum as your rails to settle value and stable coins and stuff like that. Great. Very clear. If you've ever sent an international bank transfer, you know how great it is to send stable

coins across Salana. It's it's incomparable incomparable experience. So, that's great. We've done we've done uh value settlement really well. We're bringing real world assets on chain. But what's bringing real world assets on chain? Yeah, okay. We can access more investors and stuff like that. But really, it's going to be people taking loans in DeFi and gambling on dog coins and stuff like that, which is fine, which the primary use case of a lot of the stuff happening in crypto. What's all the most popular stuff right now? It's all speculation. Aside from stable coins, which are gamechanging technology, perexes, perpetual swap uh exchanges for longing and shorting with futures. Okay, Perex is wildly popular.

prediction markets. We're not going to call it gambling. It's prediction markets. I'm predicting the future for financial gain. Okay. DeFi. DeFi is maybe a little bit different compared to those two because you can, you know, borrow against existing assets and stuff like that. But in practice, what's that become? You loop things. You loop it 10 times, man. And it becomes another form of financial speculation, too, which is fantastic. We love financial speculation. That's what the world thrives on. So, crypto's got a few very powerful compelling use cases with some coins that have compelling uh compelling powerful narratives for their tokens like Hyperlquid for example or Pump Fund.

>> But a lot of tokens are completely valueless. There's no buybacks. There's no revenue share. Where'd you go look at stocks? Okay, what's the stock doing? Oh, they're buying back their shares all the time. So, the price is going to go up. Great. Or they're going to give me a dividend. There's a reason to hold it. Great. Look at Unis swap. Great example of a completely useless governance token. you buy unis swap token >> they got to turn the they got to turn it on at some point at some point at some point the regulation is here I think they're just waiting for market structure is my take market structure >> they might they must at some point they will at some point they I think they will >> let me ask you this because because it sounds like I'm getting the vibe that you're feeling stocks more than crypto

more than tokens right now which is this I I I want to give you a hug are you Hey Lark. >> I love stocks. They're great. Again, lots of really interesting things, but I'm still very much balls deep in crypto right now. Don't >> believe the exponential opportunity crypto. And I know it's too, but it's, you know, that's harder to invest in and there's no opportunity there. You got to go private, right? >> Yeah, that's right. So, like right now, for example, I'm trying to get into um some pre-market stuff for like Apptronic and Figure AI, but like the the price tags are super big and it's very opaque markets and there's almost no liquidity and so it's really difficult to get sort of exposure to this kind of stuff. So, I

I I don't want to come off as being pessimistic on crypto. I think the market's been very pessimistic on crypto for a very clear amount of reasons. And I'm, >> let's say, pessimistic on most coins in the market, but I kind of always have been. Most of it is Most of it's always been >> And that's just everybody knows that. You've been in crypto for a while. It's just the simple facts. >> Yeah. >> There's probably a hundred or so, let's say, highly investable assets in the entirety of the cryptocurrency market and maybe even hundreds being generous. But those hundred are really good. >> Be generous.

>> No, I think you're Yeah. >> Yeah. >> But those hundred are really good and really investable. And this is the thing is we come to the cryptocurrency market. I'm always saying this. is we come to the cryptocurrency market for volatility. You come here because you want to outperform the S&P 500, the NASDAQ. You come here because you want to outperform individual stocks. And there's been some incredible moves in individual stocks. Again, stuff like Irene Energy or even some of the stocks that US government's buying now. Like there's been some huge moves. Okay. But but what have we seen over the last two three years? Okay. Since the bottom of the bare market, we've had insane things happen. Pepe go from $300,000 to billions, right? We've had AI agents go from zero to billions. we've had. So, the amount of opportunity in crypto that's available to anyone anywhere

is intense and the volatility is a double-edged sword because the volatility burns a lot of people and and puts a lot of people off in crypto. But if you are comfortable with the volatility and I feel like after I've been in crypto since uh 2017 and after all that time, nothing really bothers me anymore. I it just I I wake up and I see like I don't know a monumental flash. >> What you tell your wife and your kids? You're like >> you you you pooped on the floor. Nothing bothers me. I'm I'm in crypto. >> Did Did you see the leverage crash last week and this is nothing?

>> But it's true though. The longer you're in this market, the more comfortable you become with the volatility, the more anticipatory you become of the fact that there are regular disgusting crashes. And >> this is the thing. The volatility is the price that you pay for performance. Okay? And yes, there are long periods of time when absolutely nothing happens in crypto. And then there are short periods of time when everything happens in crypto. And if you zone out and you walk away and you just buy a bunch of index funds, you're not going to get the upside performance. Okay? But it shakes a lot of people out. Most people are not ready for this kind of stuff. If you come from buying gold, bonds, and stocks into crypto, it's like you've walked from like, I don't know, some kind of like normal place to like some back

alley crack zone where like everything's on fire. You're like, what's going on back here? We're making money, man. That's what we're doing. >> But then somebody rolls through in a Ferrari and you're like, how did how did that happen? >> Yeah, we're getting we're going 100x long, man. Let's go. Oh, Lark, man. Great to get you back on the show, my man. It's been it's been too long. I might have to stay up late once a week just to get you back more often. Let us know in the show notes, guys, if you want to see more, Lark. Appreciate your time today, Larks. Thanks for joining us.

>> Thank you for having me. >> Thanks for tuning in, y'all. Have a wicked awesome day. We'll see you back again tomorrow. If y'all are making swaps or trades right now, highly recommend you check out Milkroad Swap. This is a DEX that we built in partnership with Cow Protocol. Why did we build it? Not to make money, just honestly so we could have a place to do our swaps for the lowest fees that we could find. This is the fees on Ethereum, Arbitum, and Bass are only.15% fees. Uh this is a huge difference from uh other centralized exchanges that charge half a percent or even up to 1.2% fees on their swaps. Also, you can swap on Salana all at swap.milgro.com.

Check it out today. You won't be upset and you can join me in my favorite place to make swaps and launch chain. Want insights on what's moving crypto markets and how we're trading each event? Subscribe to our channel and join the Milkro Daily and Pro Newsletters and start investing like the top 1%. This show is for educational purposes only. Nothing we say is financial advice. Investing is risky. Never invest more than you can afford to lose.