The two catalysts that matter for Bitcoin right now: John Gillen

Transcript

The first thing I'll say is that life is a contest to see who can accumulate the most Ethereum and I'm I intend to win. >> What's up everybody? It's LGD said here and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show that is desperate to convince one of our analysts to go into a war zone to report back. We just can't decide if it's going to be Jay or Kyle. Today is April 6th, 2026. I haven't said this in a while. Crypto looks good today. And like every other Monday in the last few months, we have reasons to be optimistic. Not because the chart is green, but also because we've been served all the tacos and nachos and hot sauce we can possibly stomach, and we just want some kind of clarity on what's going to happen. This is the only story in finance right now. I wish we had all

this crypto stuff to talk about. And we are going to relate it back to crypto, I promise you. But it's really hard to talk about this stuff without talking about the biggest situation in the world. And what John, our guest today, well, our guest, my co-host, who does these shows so graciously with me on Mondays, uh, to talk about his point, his viewpoints on macro and crypto and everything else, uh, as he puts it. Um, probably the biggest uh financial story of our of our lifetime in a way that a lot of people are not thinking about it. Today's episode is brought to you by Midnight. Bringing rational privacy to blockchain and some turn cryptot tax chaos into confidence. I put words in your mouth, John. That's not exactly what you said, but you said something like that earlier today.

>> Uh, yeah. I mean, I say a lot of things, so I won't hold it. >> How big is this? How big is this? Because I think you said earlier in our team huddle, which you know, a lot of the content on today's show is usually based on our on our creator huddle that we do Monday mornings. Um, you did say this is the biggest financial spend, military financial spend since World War II. And I think you had some other kind of um kind of grandiose ideas like that or grandiose u uh affirmations. I don't know what you call them. I don't know if they're facts, but whatever you call them. I think you had a few other good lines like that in terms of the the gravity of the situation. >> I'm going to put grandiose affirmations specialist on my LinkedIn bio for you.

Um, okay. So, you you brought up a couple things here. what I was referring to there, Trump's proposed uh military budget for the United States is uh around one $1.5 trillion, which is a 50% about a 50% year-over-year increase in military spending, which is the largest year-over-year increase in military spending in the United States's history since World War II. If it's approved, if it's approved, that would start in fiscal year 2027, which would be October of 2026. So, that is coming up quickly. It should get it could get through Congress. It's a it's a big ask, but that's a lot of money and that's a lot of money for the military, which would imply that he intends to continue using the military for what I can't imagine.

Um, but you know, you know, to go back to your first question though, but like how big is this? The problem is we don't know because the conflict is still going on and because the shortfall in oil, liquid natural gas, and many other uh petroleum based products coming out of the Middle East, it's not it's not over. We don't know how big the hole is. We don't know how big the impact is. So it's really difficult to make some sort of like accurate forecasting or or comparisons to how big this is. But uh you know the the easiest analog is that it's a little bit like the shutdown that we've seen uh that we saw during COVID except that there's no COVID, right? So that's a lot of people have been saying that like that's basically the shortfall in energy that the world is seeing. Um

except the whole planet is not on lockdown. It's just uh you know the one of the biggest global economic arteries in in the world is is closed and there's no clear sign yet that it's going to be reopened. Um at the time of recording it costs $70,000 United States dollars for one Bitcoin and in 30 minutes the president of the United States is going to go into the White House briefing room and talk about military updates with with press and and the the leaders of our military. So we're going to find out what's going on. I don't know. I'm seeing all kinds of stuff. There's like this report from Axios that oh, they're they're talking about a 45day ceasefire between Iran and the United States and then Iran comes out and rejects the terms. Basically, look, I think they're very close to a peace deal. It's just

that Iran is insisting on the destruction of the United States and the United States is insisting on taking Iran's oil and and not letting them have a nuclear weapon. So, uh everything is is is very up in the air and undetermined and we're still figuring out what this is going to look like or what the impact is going to be. Everything you're listening to today is also covered in our daily crypto newsletter and on Sundays we even recap the best parts of the entire week's worth podcast. So check it out at the link below. Is the market reacting to this? Right? Because last night uh I don't know at some point something flipped. I think there's another report of the 45day ceasefire which we see this has been you know I feel like it's been the story every Sunday night Monday morning we have this kind of case for

optimism and there's a briefing and then by Monday night Tuesday there's more bombs dropping. there's more issues um and and the market continues to react to that. Not just the S&P, crypto as well, though, you know, crypto hasn't been overly reactive, but still these it's it's moving in some direction at some point. Um are we just is this is this is this a misnomer? Like is this irrelevant what crypto is doing this morning kind of pumping back up to 70 from 66 last night or over the weekend? >> Yeah, to me it's like it's fine to see the strength from crypto. I'm not like upset about it in any way. It's it's nice to see Bitcoin at 70K again, but it's also really not a shine of strength. It's not a show of momentum and and the market still hasn't figured out which way this is going to go. And

so to me, it's it's relatively like shoulder shruggy right now. Um unless Bitcoin breaks below 60K or above 80K, it's just kind of in this middling range where the bulls and bears don't know what to do. Um yeah, we've seen this pattern a few times. Trump will tweet something super aggressive on Friday and say, "You've got 48 hours to make a deal." and then on Sunday night he claims that there's a deal coming and then they postpone it a week and then um you know he does the same thing again. So they haven't figured this out. They're continuing to hit targets. Iran is continuing to attack targets. Um there there's a complete there's there's a completely viable way this goes where it just results in further escalation from both sides. The United States has troops in position. They could deploy those. They could take over Car Island

or other targets. Um Iran was hoping to capture some downed pilots as negotiating leverage and they didn't get them. Uh and you know I'm happy they didn't. But yeah, it's just there's a lot of volatility in this. There's a lot of things that aren't certain and the markets are kind of reacting a little bit to that. So just like you said on Sunday night um or on on Sunday morning rather, Trump tweeted out that Tuesday is going to be bridge and power plant day and you know Ukra open the effing straight and praise Allah on Easter which was wild. Um but um yeah, so but then now it's like it seems like maybe that's not going to happen. And that's what that that talk of the ceasefire was on Sunday night. The markets got you know the futures market got really

optimistic about that when it opened. Um oil traded down, markets traded up, but this is it's still been chopping down in a a bearish pattern. Um I think the S&P 500 is down now somewhere around 9% or a little over 9% maybe since this conflict began. And I think it could it could continue lower from from here while this uncertainty exists, while this conflict keeps going. Um, so yeah, it's it's just like there's there's these little periods where we get some hope or maybe it's over. Maybe they're they're making a deal and then the market really wants to turn around and see this resolved and get bullish again, >> but it keeps getting rug pulled and we keep tumbling lower.

>> What? Let's talk about clarity for a second because that is coming up, right? I think the it's going to the floor like in a few weeks right at the end of April is supposed to be the date. Um and currently in poly market it's got a 60% chance of passing if like let's there's so many different scenarios to look at here and and you kind of told me before the show right that there's only there's two things that matter. We're in the same place we were last week and there's two things that matter the war and clarity. Let's say clarity goes through but the war is worse. Does it does the clarity effect on the market get totally neutralized or is it or is it irrelevant?

>> I think it totally gets neutralized. I think if the the war is is so dominating everything right now that you know if the Clarity Act passes, you'll probably see some kind of a pump from that. But, you know, it'll probably be a little bit like what happened with um when Black Rockck announced their their partnership with Uniswap and we saw the UNI token pump and then immediately sell off. Um I think you'd probably see something like that. Uh but that's just like because we are in such a a a firmly bearish market right now and in such a highly uncertain context. Uh markets hate uncertainty. So I think once we have some certainty again of like you know there's no war going on, the midterm elections are over and the Clarity Act is in place that's a different investing environment. But while midterms are getting closer and

the war is still going on, I think that the Clarity Act is going to be something a lot of people sort of shrug off. I think there was a time where it would have been a huge catalyst like if this had come uh Q3 Q4 last year could have been a a very big market catalyst. Uh but not not in this environment, not in this context. I feel like the the war is going to be dominating everything for the for the foreseeable future. >> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Uh I do want to talk I do want to continue talking crypto um while we can as well and uh talk about some of what our team's been asking and doing. Um but I I do want to spend a bit more um on our on our monitoring of the situation just before we get to that. Uh this morning in our

chat um Chevy who writes our our our crypto X and our newsletter as well. Um he asked you he asked you a question I thought that was really great that was basically like what is the downside risk for the US here? And again, not to make this all geopolitical, but I thought that that was a really interesting question because we have all these scenarios about like trying to end things, trying to blah blah blah, but I feel like you had a really great answer there in terms of what that actually looks like because I think that's what people are wondering. That's like continuing to escalate the war. Obviously, there's there's there's an upside in terms of control, but there's a downside. So, I want to kind of hear from you what your take is. Uh I think that the downside so the upside is you know if they create

instability in the Middle East. The one of the largest um reserves of oil in the world is in Venezuela and in North America and Canada. And so it kind of forces the rest of the world to get a little bit more dependent on the United States for those resources. And you know whatever you think of that that's one way to look at the situation. But the the consequence of this is that you know something that Thomas our our pro report research writer for macro has been focusing on is the price of Brent crude oil and where that gets into situations that kind of can tank the whole global economy uh is what we're all kind of watching to see right now because if it gets up towards $150 you know the United States is like kind of running through scenarios of what happens if oil gets to

$200 a barrel um because these are like kind of like collapse kind of scenarios. So that's really the the risk is that if the the deprivation the global deprivation of resources of these petroleum based products gets so severe, many of our trading partners and the US economy would not be insulated from that and there'd be a significant pullback and a significant risk from that. Um I don't recall the specific question he asked me in the meeting. So if I said something intelligent you want me to repeat here, you have to jog my memory a little bit. But that's a little bit where we are, right? Like Europe is telling people to stay home if they can. Egypt is rationing power. or South Korea's president is already coming out and saying like, "Hey, we need to be very careful here and conserve resources." So, it's it's a a global

problem. It's a global shortage. It's not something that can just be fixed. There's been a lot of temporary measures to sort of ameliate and cushion the impact for the short term, but that is temporary and and like if this like if this continues into May, we're going to have a very serious and long-lasting global problem from this. >> Yeah. Okay. That's a good take. There was also uh circulated in our in our Milk Road Pro Discord this weekend and you kind of you you spent your Saturday night giving a lot of great takes similar to this and a lot of sobering thoughts. um was one of the articles uh from Andreas at Realvision uh saying that the most contrarian take on oil you will read this year was the name of the thing that and basically this article I think told us that the he was trying to

argue that um it's largely overblown and that there's not that much production and flow needed to kind of restore the balance. Um and I think a lot of people kind of took this obviously as some form of as well thinking that it's like okay maybe this is true. We've all become geopolitical experts in the last month. So it's like I think people are kind of learning about this in real time as they're talking about it, John. Um but naturally you you are not so optimistic. >> Yeah, I think that he is uh being quite generous with how how much these temporary measures have been able to cushion the blow and how big the shortfall is. And he said it's like it's only like you know 6 million barrels of a day that we need to pick up. And I'm like bro only 6 million barrels a day.

It's like that that's still like one of the hugest like shortages on record in history. Um and the other thing too is that not everybody agrees with that. Like I I interviewed a guy on the macro channel, Rory Johnson, who says it's higher than that. Um and then you know Goldman Sachs published their analysis of this. They think it's closer to 11. I think 11.4 was what their calculus was. Uh million barrels a day of shortfall. And then you know there's obviously been a lot of production that's been shut in. Shut in means like they shut the oil in. And so they stop bringing the oil out of the ground because in the Gulf countries there's no way to get it out. So there's nowhere for it to go and they've kind of like maxed out their capacity to store stuff before shipping it. So they

they've stopped production. So I think that the you know the French government put out a report that says that they think that 30 to 40% of the Gulf region's oil production um has been reduced or stopped and it'll take probably 3 years from now if then no more damage is done to bring that up to normal production. uh and and to repair the damage that's been done through the conflict and the combat that's happened. So, >> I think that just saying it's only six million barrels a day is like it's I just I don't even know where to start with that. But the other thing too is he has this forecast for like Iran using the straight as a toll booth and charging people to go through it and having that scale up uh over time as more people start paying the tolls. Um and like I just I don't think that's

going to happen either. the United States is not just going to sit there and watch Iran get filthy rich off of extorting people that go through the straight. Like I just I don't understand how that plays out exactly. So I think that we're still in the situation of needing an actual lasting peaceful resolution to this or at least a like extended ceasefire so that economic operations can resume in the region. Um but I don't know. I thought look I Andreas is a friend of the channel. I've had him on the show before. I want to have him back. He's a great guy, great analyst, and he does a lot of great work in there and thinking through these things. Um, but I just think it's just too optimistic right now from from the context that we're in.

>> Is why would he write something like that? >> Well, you know, being contrarian is a good way to get attention and get some ideas going. And um I do think he believes it though. And you know, he's got a different perspective. He's got a European perspective. And so what he's seeing is like there are countries drawing up these like bilateral trade agreements and like Oman and Iran have come up with a a a deal that I think the estimates are it'll put 3 million barrels a day back into the market which would help and like he's saying oh it's not that bad if they're adding that in and yeah but like who knows how stable that is. Who know who knows how long that lasts. And uh the other thing too is it's now we do still already have the shortfall that's already been um created

from this month over a month of of the straight being shut which is over 200 million barrels that's not going to get produced this year. Um that's not something you can shrug off. So uh yeah I don't know it's just there's different ways of looking at it and everybody's trying to get their arms around it and like you said we're all becoming uh expert barrel counters and experts on the current thing like every every hour things change. We're all trying to learn stuff, but you know, I don't know. It's just a different perspective. >> I wish I didn't have to be an expert. I don't want to know anything about this stuff, honestly. Like, it's not it's not cuz it's not interesting. I just do I wish I wish there wasn't this big reason for me to have to learn all this stuff.

>> I think that's been I think that's been the kind of the story as a crypto person the last couple years. You're like, "Yeah, the macro stuff is good, but like I don't really I don't know if I got into crypto to learn about liquidity and the Fed and all that kind of stuff." You know, it's not really why I'm here. Um, but >> we're believers, John, and and we're that's that's what we got to do and and I'm grateful for you because you do know a lot about this stuff. Um, you know, this is your background. So, so we're happy to have you. Um, let's let's jump over to crypto. Obviously, how do you frame or contextualize >> that's how I do it. I do it very carefully. this long period of chop, you know, because I don't even know if this is I don't even know if this is how we

had a similar kind of like just in the same channel for so long in the last bare market. I feel like we had more reactive kind of news moves over the time or at least macro macro moves based on something, but this it feels like we're just in purgatory at this point. >> I think it may feel that way. I don't think this is radically different from how a lot of bare markets feel. I think that the range that you're chopping in sometimes changes, but it's pretty common to have bare flags or bull flags that just chop like this on the way up or the way down. I think that Bitcoin did this a lot on the way up in in 2023, 2024 of like it would break out, it would chop a lot, and it would break out, and it would chop a lot. Um, so

yeah, I don't know. This isn't too radically different from the market behavior we've seen. Um, it's just uh the emotional experience of it is probably a little bit more stressful and just yeah, just not fun in general. What's your uh I mean I feel like you give you I'm asking you the same question every week, but what um what is your take on on what the road looks like from here? I asked you about clarity, but is this something where are you still in the kind of like let's actually let me give you a scenario. If the war ended, what would change? >> Well, we'd be able to get some oil out of the straight of Hormuz that would be one >> crypto wise, John, would anything change? Like let's say let's say at the end of the month there's a ceasefire.

There's no more bombs. uh chips are flowing through as they as they can and as they they have been. Uh clarity passes. Is there if those two happens, is this a guaranteed we're back to 100k or is there still a high possibility we're just hanging around where we are? >> I think that the markets would react very strongly to a major change like that like a a a clear end to hostilities and conflict in the region would probably result in a pretty strong um bounce in the markets in a lot of ways, right? because like that means like okay now we know what what the earnings outlook is going to look like what the expected shortfall is how much that's going to impact the economy it would have some stagflationary headwinds um but it wouldn't throw us into a stagflationary like recessionary crisis

um so yeah I think that the markets would respond positive to that overall I mean I I can't tell you the exact wiggles on the chart minute to minute but overall it would be positive and I think that would release some pent-up demand because right now a lot of people have derisked on equities on other risk assets. And so, you know, people have been talking about this deleveraging. It's not that the deleveraging is over necessarily, but a lot of people have already deleveraged. Um, and so I think that there's not, you know, there's not really much more to go in that direction. And so, the the result is I would say that if we got clarity on uh the war being over and like like making the market feel secure in that, I think you would feel feel some strong sentiment change in a positive direction

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Mhm. Would you I feel like we see you know what's funny? One of the things I see all the time still, John, is despite all these things um that the these types of catalysts need to happen and even this kind of like a very apparent bare market at this point, I still see posts people saying alltime high this year. How is that even possible? Like how is ETH going to two 2.5x its its market cap within nine calendar less than nine calendar months even on good news? because that's the trajectory that we were on. Arguably you there's an argument you could make that we were on that trajectory before this conflict broke out because we were seeing an acceleration in productivity, an

acceleration in GDP and uh inflation was stable and like relatively under control. The labor market h hasn't been great but the economy was accelerating was heating up. We've had three now consecutive ISM prints above 50 on the ISM manufacturing survey which generally indicates economic acceleration. Um I had on an expert on the trucking industry who was just showing how the data that he's seeing in the trucking industry is showing a resurgence in economic activity um and and accelerating in that area in the United States as well. And so uh you know there was reason to believe that we'd kind of hit this sort of goldilocks thing. Plus, you know, it's the tax season in the United States. A lot of people are getting larger tax refunds than they

ever have before. That's going to be extra money in people's pockets to do spending. You've held this capex, which is just like untaxed expenditure, direct injection of capital into the the economy. So, there was economic acceleration that was happening and there was a possibility that that would result in risk assets and Bitcoin and other digital assets moving to new highs in 2026. if this conflict resolves and this severe you know shock doesn't turn into a a recessionary crisis um then you know maybe that's still on the table in some form or some people are still hoping that it is um but you know I I think that that's that's a big pivot that we had to make at Milk Road as well right like and this was covered in our recent pro report this long like 70 page thing that up until this point we had

been you know kind of observing this reaceleration and kind of taking a more risk-on stance as a result of Now with all of this changes that all the changes that this war and this um economic crisis or shutdown, whatever you want to call it, um has has caused now we're more in a riskoff posture. Not me personally, but like that's kind of the outlook, right? Um and so yeah, if if this ends and we pivot back to that, then maybe those things are still on the table. And there is a lot of people there are a lot of people in the market who are still holding to that kind of more optimistic um outlook, right? and hoping that we do get a resolution that leads to positive uh turnaround for the markets. Um, and that could come. It's just not certain when or or what that

looks like when it does. >> What do you mean people are getting really nice tax refunds this year? >> Uh, because of the big beautiful bill, people on average, like not everybody obviously, but on average, Americans are getting larger tax refunds uh this year than they have in prior years. >> What What specifically in there gives them a big bigger tax refund? like it's specifically like just lower tax. >> Yeah. For for certain individuals, certain households. Yes. Yes. That's what what it was. Um and that was that's part of the strategy, right? Is like trying to pivot from uh government large public sector economic growth towards private sector economic growth. So letting people keep more of their money, incentivizing them to to invest it in in

uh economic growth by not taxing capex for 2026. Um, so that's that's part of the strategy of of that and it's also some things he ran on like, you know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, things like this. He's trying to like deliver on those promises. That was all in the big beautiful bill. And the result of that is, you know, people getting better better better numbers back from the government on their tax refunds. >> Is that going to make a difference with gases at $7 in some places? >> You know, it's a great question. Um, I think that that has happened. This has been one of the largest like percentage increases and most rapid percentage increases in gas prices in the United States in a long time. Um I don't know how long they stay there but yeah obviously that's going to hurt a lot of

people for for a while and it's going to revise down earnings forecasts for companies too because they were creating these earnings forecastes assuming oil at you know let's say $65 a barrel or wherever it was and now maybe oil's 90 to 100 maybe it's higher. Uh, so yeah, we'll see how all that changes. >> You said earlier today when we were talking about crypto, um, I asked you like kind of what the state of things was and you said there's no one left to sell. It's just me and the cockroaches. Which, no offense anybody here. We're all holders long term, okay? Uh, we're all I guess I guess we're all the cockroaches along down there with you.

But it you did have some kind of positive. You still had a positive spin. Talk about Michael Sailor and you know you're going to hold with Tom Lee. John, we always need some hopeium from you, man. In terms of like the actual good things that are going on, there's a lot there's there's other negative things that have been happening. There was the drift hack hack last week um on Salana, which was this incredibly like social engineered thing. If you haven't read about it, basically um they they were infiltrated through a series of like uh IRL meetups where people approached them at a conference. They wanted to build on drift. They created a telegram group uh at a test flight app where they were demoing this app that they were building and all of that as a scop to get basically to to to be able to access

somebody's computer on the drift drift side and at one point last week extract over $200 million from the protocol. Um people pointing to North Korean hackers potentially whatever. This kind of stuff I feel like happens or or doesn't happen. It happens all the time in crypto, but it feels particularly bad in a bare market when there's just so little news and um whether it's it's scams like last time like FTX or just hacks, they feel terrible. John, um obviously you're still you're still looking at the light at the end of the tunnel, but I always want to hear like what other good things you feel are happening or at least just like the reminder that things are good in this industry.

>> Michael Sailor is buying five times the amount of Bitcoin that is mined every day. Tom Lee has not stopped buying uh he thinks he bought another 70,000 ETH. Yeah, it is true. Um and he there are there's like you know I say this every week but the institutional adoption and investment in crypto and digital assets has never been stronger. Last week Franklin Templeton which I think has like $1.7 trillion dollars of assets under management bought out I think it was um I can't remember I don't want to quoted >> coin fun. >> Yeah. We had Chris Perkins their president on the show a couple weeks ago. Yep.

>> Yeah. Yeah. And so they launched their own uh platform called Franklin Crypto. Um there's just a lot of capital moving into the space, talent, energy, resources, new products, new features. On the crypto native side, there's been a lot of developments that are happening there like chain link and swift have gotten to new levels of uh operational um like practice with their the the partnerships and the projects they've been working on. the midnight side chain which is a huge project out of the Cardano ecosystem has gone live and is seeing a lot of adoption and momentum there and partnerships with major banks in Europe and many other things that are exciting that's happened there. So I think that the fundamentals are getting stronger. The building is not slowing down. Um and then you know look a big conversation right now is around Qday and what does quantum computing mean for

Bitcoin and crypto >> because like elliptic curve encryption is effectively now obsolete or should be considered obsolete. So there's a need to upgrade there but the community is responding to that. they're having robust dialogue leaders from, you know, like Brian Armstrong to Sailor, like everybody's getting involved in like ideulating on what that looks like and trying to move that that forward. So that that'll happen. Um, and you know, so I think that's what I would say is that like the the sentiment, the the uncertainty, all this volatility is something that people who understand the value of the digital asset ecosystem and of digital assets are looking through and they're seeing the opportunity here and they're seeing it for what it is, which is an opportunity where the market is fearful. Um but the the value the fundamentals have never been stronger.

So the the thesis on Bitcoin the thesis on Ethereum particularly like Ethereum has um a dedicated effort to make Ethereum quantum resistant by 2029. They have plans in place. They have a team assembled that are working on this um and they've been transparent about doing that. So I think that the the thesis on crypto digital assets has never been stronger. And so I'm not really worried about this from that perspective, right? Like obviously I don't want there to be widespread energy shortages or power outages or starvation. I don't want there to be global economic unrest and uncertainty. However, um when those conflicts when all this conflict passes, when all this uncertainty passes on the other side of that, there's still going to be an enormous amount of value in Bitcoin in Ethereum in digital assets overall and the market will come to

understand that and will allocate and and um you know support that in a repricing um accordingly. So all of that taken into account to me this is an opportunity to just watch, learn, pay attention, not panic, right? like Bitcoin's not breaking down. It's not breaking out and I'm not doing anything like radical either. I'm like watching and thinking about where I want to accumulate and what I want to accumulate. But yeah, I mean that's just the way I look at this, right? Like if you're Sailor says that volatility is a gift to the faithful and it's an opportunity for you to allocate to positions you want to hold for the long term if you have capital that is patient enough to take that longer term view.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I like that. You're always the you're always the uh the steady one I feel like on the team. Um, and we've had we've had a lot of action in the last couple weeks on the the analyst side, John. Uh, that I think is worth coming commenting on as John climbs up the rankings of the Milk Road Pro uh analyst, I guess, race. I don't think it was ever a competition, but I think that that's definitely how our team has started to treat it, especially Monday mornings as the market kind of makes its move. Um, but for people that don't know, Milk Road Pro, we we kind of upgraded it massively last month. It's now basically uh a series of portfolios that you can check out from from every analyst and John has one. John John probably has the most minimalist one but

also one of the strongest ones in there uh in terms of being quite steady the last couple weeks. Uh John has not made many moves let's say the last couple weeks but Melvin and Martin have been incredibly active uh both taking kind of different uh different positioning in their portfolio let's say in the last couple weeks based on the on on the bigger situation here. John I did have this question for you earlier and I kind of want to repeat I want you to repeat your answer a little bit for everybody listening here. what what does what does cause you to make a move because like I said you're very you're you're you're the steady one. Um but obviously like everybody you do eventually need to either buy or sell more stuff. And I know you'll tell me you're accumulating, but I think we're wondering two

questions like what makes you interested in a new asset that's not currently in your portfolio. What makes you actually look at that and and consider it? And also um what makes you sell? >> All right. I this this is like six questions in one. I'm not really sure. >> Here we go. That's that's my style. Yeah, it's a mouthful of questions all at once. >> No, that's I do that, too. All right. So here the first thing I'll say is that life is a contest to see who can accumulate the most Ethereum and I'm I intend to win, right? Like uh Tom Lee is trying to get to 5% of the Ethereum supply. I am as well. I think he's got a head start on me, but I'm going to try to catch him. Um so yeah, look, you know, of all the analysts in the Milk

Fro team, I have the largest positions. The two number one and number two largest positions. The number one largest position is my position in Ethereum. The number two largest position is my position in Bitcoin. because of that because I have like something like 70% of my portfolio in those two assets. >> Oh, he's re you're revealing it. Oh, no one's going to pay now. You tell everybody what's going on. I'm just kidding. >> Well, no, I can I can I can take some smaller parts of my capital and and you know, explore other positions, take views on things and it's not going to radically impact the performance of my portfolio because the bulk of my portfolio is allocated to what I consider to be Apex assets, right? which have the best riskreward performance profile o over the next decade. Right?

So that that's that's kind of the the way I keep myself safe. The point of this is to not have to make a lot of moves. The advantage here is that I'm protecting myself from human error, from guessing wrong, from making the wrong trade, from you know overdiversifying into 17 different things and you know having them not perform well and and and blow up my portfolio. So I think you you want to put I like the drunken Miller approach. Put your eggs in one basket. Watch the basket carefully. understand your thesis and be patient while it plays out. Um, so I'm I'm trying to take that approach. I, you know, there's a a passage in Proverbs that I I I quote, I have a fund outside of Milk Road called True Capital, and when I write my newsletters to our our limited partners in the fund, I always end it with this

quote, which is um, Proverbs 23:23. Buy buy the truth and sell it not. That is investment advice from Solomon, the world's richest man ever. Um, and I think it really makes a lot of sense. At this time, I am buying assets. you know, there are cryptographic truth. Um, and I don't have to sell them because there's uncertainty in the price of the dollar or the yen or or other things. So, I I don't know that that's kind of one of the things I like about digital assets is that it protects your capital from uh volatility and uh let's say uh dishonesty in other assets in other markets and in the fiat world overall.

But it also means that you don't have to go do tons of trades to try to chase alpha and performance. You can rest your capital in a place where it's safe and let the market come to you, which is a much better way to to think about this, I think, overall. Um, so yeah, man, I don't know what would make me make a move. The other thing, too, I'll say there's tons of other assets in the digital asset ecosystem beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum that I believe in that I have a a strong thesis on, but you also have to recognize that at certain times in the market that that's not going to matter, right? Like the fundamentals are going to continue to be mispriced, but that doesn't mean you should allocate necessarily. you have to kind of wait until you you feel like it's the right

time to get in because being early is the same thing as being wrong in investing. So, um that's something I'll say there. But, uh yeah, if the market shifts, if Bitcoin breaks out, if we're going towards new all-time highs, I'll start looking at other things that I think are going to follow it higher and maybe outperform. Um and if things break down even further, I'll start looking at allocating there because I have a cash position and I'm going to I think probably continue to just hold and build that cash position until I feel like I've gotten some strong clarity from Bitcoin whether or not it's going to go lower or if it's going to break out. And because there's not certainty right now, it's a great opportunity for me to just not, you know, touch my huddle position and build cash and dry powder and wait

for the the starting gun. So, uh, there's a few things on that, but yeah, like the list of things that I am bullish on in crypto is is much longer than your arm. Like I I could talk all day about why I'm bullish on a lot of different things. Um, but doesn't mean I'm allocating capital to that yet. And then >> what would make me change position or sell? There could be a lot of things that would drive that. Um, but for right now, I don't see any reason to do that because there's nothing like, you know, look, if I'm like up 15,000% on my Bitcoin position, I'll take some profits or something maybe. But for the most part, the point of it is to let fiat go to oblivion while my capital is protected. And so that's, you know, just you do you sit on your hands and let

that happen. >> That's it. We had to end the show with some with the with the the ethesis, man, with the with the we needed it from John. Uh, and if you do guys, if you guys do want to check out what John has in his portfolio, it's all in Milk Road Pro. So, make sure you go check that out. John, you know, oh, oh, he's not done. >> One more thing. One more thing. I one other thing that would make me change position if somebody else, another analyst at Milk Road did end up with more Ethereum than me. I would change my position to get more Ethereum than them. I will not be the number two ETH bag holder on the team. So, that was >> I haven't they I've I've still I've never been unleashed in the portfolio side. So, who knows? Who knows? If that

ever happens, then maybe that's what it's going to be, man. Um, it's going to be between that and and ASDAC. So, I don't know. Those it'll be a 50/50 holding for me. Uh, anyways, call back to the Milro DGEN days. We need we need we need some fun meme coins again. I feel like that's the only thing. That's the only thing that could save the the the sentiment right now is just another fun little memecoin season. Maybe not even on Salana. Anywhere else would be fun. Um, John, another great episode. Thank you, man, for sharing your thoughts and as usual, keeping us uh very hopeful and optimistic about the future of our industry, the one that we report on every day. Um, and hope you guys got that as well from the show.

Hopefully, we have something different to talk about soon. Man, like I said, I don't want this to be keeping the main story, but unfortunately, that's just kind of how it goes right now. And there are better days ahead. Clearly, that's the end of the show. That's what I I I never say goodbye. Now, I just say I just end the thing and then I expect the guest to just to also say thanks for having me. Oh thanks. >> We're losing it, man. We're losing. Thanks for having me, LG. I'm glad. >> Go check out Milro Macro. Listen to John. Ask people smart questions. Smart people smart.

>> Wait a minute. Are we still recording now? Oh my god. >> Oh, we're still on. Yeah, this is still This is They get the behind the scenes. This is what's going to have to happen. We'll give people behind the scenes access where they can just sit in the audience. Uh, >> great. You just stopped talking and I just like looked at you. >> I just looked. >> We're still going. They're going to keep this. This is still all going to be in the show. extra bonus feature the last five minutes. All right, goodbye, John. Have yourself a great week, man. >> Thanks, LJ. You, too. Want insights on what's moving crypto markets and how we're trading each event? Subscribe to our channel and join the Milk Growth 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.