Why Ethereum could reach new highs: institutions, treasuries and upgrades

Transcript

So, I'm gonna say in the first week of November, ETH is going to go to alltime high. >> GM jam. Good morning and welcome to the Milk Road Show. The show for people playing the long game but still checking prices every 5 minutes, which you definitely did all weekend. I'm your host LG Ducet. It is Monday, October 13th. Ethereum is at $4,125. Thank God. And today's episode is all about if and when it will reach all-time high. We're also going to break down, of course, the events of the last 72 hours, which have been some of the wildest in crypto. And today is a very special panel episode. I am joined by Martin, Kyle, and John from the macro side. And last time we were on with last time I was on with two of these guys, Martin and Kyle. We had a big debate about pump

about pump. FFund, and I'm very excited to be back on a show with them. I don't think we'll be at odds about this topic, though. Uh, as we discuss what's going to happen to ETH, can it hit all-time highs this year. I think today is a perfect time to discuss this because we have so much to say about the crash from the last from this past weekend, what's going to happen going forward and why we really believe I think as a collective that with the you know two and a half months left in the year, ETH is going to and today's episode is brought to you by Nexo, the platform that grows your crypto without locking it away and figure markets grow your cash like a bank. No lockups, just real returns.

That's enough out of me. Everybody wants to know what the hell happened with this crash. Gentlemen, welcome to the show. Uh, you know, let's get right into Dude, I want to go straight straight to the man himself. Straight to to the big boss, Kyle. Dude, what the heck happened on Friday? What was your initial reaction? Give me how you're feeling right now. >> So, what's funny is my initial reaction. I was on a plane flying back from Europe to to Canada. And I had Wi-Fi, so I was I was still checking prices every 5 minutes as I always do. But for whatever reason, I think I was watching a show or I was actually listening to podcasts, I think it was. So, I didn't look for about an hour, hour and a half. And that happened to be the hour, hour and a half that all this stuff happened. And so

when I finally looked, I was like, why are prices down so bad? But it wasn't so bad because it had already gone down. Everything went down like 30, 40, 50, some like 90%. And then kind of jumped back up within like 30 minutes. So I saw it after that and I was like, "Okay, prices are down bad. Like what's going on?" And I went on Twitter and I was like, "What are people talking about 90% down? Like what's happening?" And I started scrolling, actually looking at the chart, like zooming in. I was like, "Holy shit." like some of these things when like the chart of like Lido or Sky or Adam. It is insane what happened. It all I mean most people kind of know already I think but um there's there's some you know a battle going on with China as always. Trade war has kind of

escalated a little bit. So Trump put out an announcement that they're going to put 100% tariffs uh on on China um and he's not going to meet with them and all this and so markets puked. This was like Friday I guess afternoon or evening whatever it was that's since been basically walked back. So on Sunday, he kind of said that, you know, there's not going to be issues and everything's going to be fine. So, you know, prices jumped big time back on on um on Sunday and now, you know, things look fine. We're kind of back to where not where we were last week, but probably where we were maybe two weeks ago. But there was some very weird things that happened in crypto. It's interesting when he made the announcement, the rest of the the the market was closed. So only crypto was open. And so whenever that happens,

you know, and then we make these big announcements, everyone needs to go risk off. And so they can only do it in crypto. And so a lot of people went and sold. Um and then there was just some issues with exchanges because so much was sold at one time that these shorts just went and a bunch of people were shorting and so things went down like crazy. Some of these kind of more illquid assets went almost to zero. Uh and uh so it was a bit of a weird situation which I think maybe John can walk us through a little bit further if we want more details on what happened there. Uh he's the the wizard on that side. Um but uh otherwise I mean we're kind of back and things are fine. So I'm not necessarily scared. it. To me, the one thing I thought of was like, I can't

believe people still sell when Trump does this kind of stuff. Like, we just went through this in April and then multiple times over the last few months, like you got to fade this stuff, guys. Like, what are you doing? And I know like there's institutions and funds and stuff that like they they actually trade and so they try to make money on this. But I think there's no way that they made more money than someone who just bought the dip. Like, if you just buy the dip and keep holding this stuff, like you're definitely doing better in my opinion. But anyway, I don't know if we want to get more of the technicals of what happened, but John's got some good insights there. >> I want to hear from John. And also, I want to say that it's like if you if you took took the weekend off to touch

grass, you came back today, it's just you're probably thinking about it like here's a nice little dip for me to buy and you missed all the action and you didn't freak out. Uh but we did John, you and I did an emergency live session on Friday that went out uh live on all channels. You guys go check that out. But that might be a little dated now because that was before the actual presser when you announced the 100% tariffs. John, give us your take real quick. What happened there? Well, yeah, there's a number of things, but I will say that this morning uh the spot Bitcoin ETF um trading volume passed $1 billion in the first 10 minutes. So, I think that that's a sign of market strength. So, for people who are, you know, worried or whatever, there's still a lot of demand for these assets.

There's still a lot of strength in the market. Um yeah, so I think Kyle summarized it pretty well. I think that Trump and Xi are both posturing for a meeting that they're scheduled to have at the end of this month in Korea. So, both of them want to go into that in the strongest possible position. Um, so they're both getting a little bit tough. Uh, Xi was posturing about, you know, limiting exports on rare earth. Um, and Trump has has, you know, sort of countered saying like, "All right, well then on November 1st, we're going to slap 100% additional tariffs on everything from China." Um, but then like he said on Sunday, he tweeted out, uh, don't worry about China. Everything will be fine. So, we'll see how this all plays out. I I think until there's sort of some like grand deal between the two

countries, there'll probably still be some uncertainties on this. Um, as far as what happened in crypto, um, I don't want to get too deep in the weeds on that, but basically what happened was there was some some selling that led to, um, some cascading liquidations. And to to put it mildly, there was some cas cascading liquidations. When this happened, I was walking through um, traffic in Midtown Manhattan and constantly trying to check my phone and stay up to date with our our pro community and Discord to update them update them on what was happening. Um, but yeah, I think the the long and the short of it is that a lot of leverage got flushed out. Um, but the the the buying pressure to to push the market back up has been really strong. We're back almost we're not to $4 trillion market cap yet over, but we're getting

close. Um, and so I think that uh, you know, as I said on that live stream, LG, the kind of line in the sand that I was watching for Bitcoin, like the time we were talking, Bitcoin was trading at like $119,000. And I don't think either one of us expected it to drop as much as it did. But I said like the line in the sand for me was 100k and it didn't breach 100k. Um so from where I'm sitting market structure is held the the uptrend is still in place. Um and I think you know a few months from now we're just going to look back on this as like a weird hiccup where some sort of the plumbing of some centralized exchanges like backed up on them but overall the market's going to continue and um and get stronger from here.

>> Yeah. It was the largest day of liquidations in the history of crypto. I think it was 20 billion uh or close to 20 billion liquidations which is pretty wild. But if you look at a lot of the charts of good assets like Bitcoin, ETH, Soul uh and a few others, the charts actually still look intact and look all good. There are others kind of, you know, farther down the risk curve, maybe old zombie coins where it doesn't look so great. they didn't really bounce back and have that strength and um so obviously an issue if you were holding any of those but otherwise if you're holding the majors um or even like good DeFi assets they some of the DeFi assets so these smaller altcoins had just insane wicks to like prices that you're like they've never even gone that low before but they came all the way back

and it's it's some of these charts are just wild to look at but otherwise outside of that big wick everything actually just looks back in intact so nothing to be too concerned about >> an incredible opportunity for anybody who was at their computer and had the had the courage to to to dive in cuz some some of those DeFi charts got absolutely nuked. Kyle, you were saying earlier that Adam literally went to like almost like literally oh zero >> and someone had a bid at someone had a bid at 1 cent and got it and it went up 250,000% in like an hour. >> You have a bid down there.

>> I don't know. >> Why would you have a bid like I'll put a bid for Bitcoin at 10 bucks, you know? Like that generational bid. >> Yeah. Crazy. Um, I want to hear from Martin too from like a research standpoint. It's like how do you plan for something like this, right? Because you're looking you're looking at the stuff all the time. Is there is there anything in the stars that that suggests that something like that could happen? Is there a way to spot these types of things? Uh, before there's an announcement, we also saw actually sorry, I'll just add a bit of a context. We saw that there was uh a trader who shorted the market, a few traders who shorted the market in the hours leading up to the announcements uh with size as well on Hyperlid making a couple hundred mil. Martin, how is was that you? Is

there is how do you how do you do this kind of stuff? Who's who's predicting this? >> Yeah, I guess maybe some insiders, but I don't really know. Um, but from my perspective, these kind of black swans events, you can't predict them and if you are investor, it does like nothing has really changed fundamentally wise. So like we are all good that the business cycle is intact. So like I don't know like I think the best strategy for this weekend is just touch some grass go out go out and just be offline and like just ignore the prices movements and the volatility because that's the best thing you can do and if you are scared right now that means that you are not you do not understand the

bigger picture that we are playing here. Well, unless you're a trader, uh we are investors. So, like this short-term spike doesn't really mean anything to us. So, um I I I'm like I'm in the same position as the a week ago, >> right? I have a mantra that I've said every day basically at uh in our pro discord and I tweeted out a lot too and a lot of people were saying it over the weekend in our discord which was majors spot zoom out chill. If you want to be prepared for what just happened, which Martin said, no one knew this was going to happen, but that is it. You hold the majors, you hold them in spot, not in leverage, and then you just zoom out on the chart, and you just chill, and that's it. If you just did that, you

were completely fine this week. If you were not holding majors, you probably got wrecked on Friday. If you were levered, not holding majors, you definitely got wrecked. Uh, and so I just will say it once again, majors, spot, zoom out, chill. That's all you have to do to succeed in crypto. >> Yes. Are you talking to me about the le part? Are you talking to the DJ people who got sucked into this per deck meta for the last two months and CZ is convincing us to farm his perp decks and then just comes along and nukes us all? Is that what are you talking about us? >> Yeah, exactly. >> But no, that's a great mantra, guys. And I think that that that holds true and especially especially in situations like this where it's like this is another tariff uh positioning thing. It's not it's a black swan. Yes, but it's not

even something like co whereas like co was like listen we might the world might be reshaped here. So, we didn't know what was going to happen after CO because it was such a new thing versus this. It's like this same old story all year. So, uh that's a really really great spot. I think it's a um this is probably a good segue because I think you know the whole we wanted to we scheduled this episode so we could talk about um ETH ETH going back to alltime high which would be what's the exact price? Just below 5K, right? I think it would be like $49.90 or something would be the all-time high if it if it came back to that or when it comes back to that which is not which would be what from here Kyle a >> 18% increase 19% increase >> 18 makes sense 18 or 19

>> that's right and on uh and before we transition into that I just want to point out in the DGEN world on poly market there is currently a 60% chance that ETH will go to 5k by the end of the year so that's something just to keep in mind especially zoom out and all this like you guys are saying that it's like people are and that and that specific market has over $5 million of volume. So, a lot of smarter a lot of really smart people including these guys really believe that ETH and of course the rest of the market will bounce back and that ETH has tons tons tons of upside. So, guys, so let's let's let's dive into this. Um, I want to kind of go around the table. I mean, Kyle, I want to start with you as as you know, probably the

biggest Ethereum bull that I know uh that you've been banging the drum on this since I've known you, especially my time at Milk Road. What what gives you so much conviction right now that ETH is going to get back to get back to uh previous prices and continue from there uh through the rest of the year? >> John is waiting for me to say something. >> The biggest is who is John. John's more than you. Okay. I'm not your secret. I don't know. I don't know what happened. >> I'm not Maxi. >> Anyway, that's what we call him every week. But uh no, I mean I yeah I think um since April uh since the the DAT meta came along and we had Joe Luben and then

Tom Lee to follow uh launch uh launch these DATs, I became super super super bullish on ETH. I was always bullish on Ethereum but became a little bit bearish on ETH the asset last year. Um and we actually sold a little bit in our pro you know the year previous. Um, and then once Joe Luben came out, I was like, finally, the demand for the asset is here because Ethereum has always done so well. And I think, you know, the technology and what they're what they're building there, it's widely accepted. They're, you know, they're innovating like crazy. There's so much happening over there. But there was just never a demand for the token itself. And I think we finally had that happen in I think it was May when uh when Joe Luben announced um ESP. So that was what really got me bullish this year. And that turned out

to be to be great. Um but I think when I look at you know what's going to happen here over the next let's call it six months uh to year um I I try to compare Ethereum to to other blockchains that are out there and when I think of how is ETH going to move to 5,000 up to 10,000 like wherever we think this thing's going to go it's a combination of things we've got ETFs which obviously have have done really well over the last few months but we're about to get staking. It could happen as early as this month. Maybe not now because of the the government shutdown but it's going to happen soon. Um, and so adding staking to the ETH ETFs, I think is going to be a huge catalyst. Now, we're going to get that for Salana as well. Probably just

those two will get it, but I think that's a big deal. So, I'm excited for that. The DATs, I think, are still just getting started. Um, and when we look at the dats, there's dats on, you know, for Ethereum, there's for Bitcoin, there's for Salana, and there's all the way down Hyperlid and I don't know, Athena, and there's everything now. But none of them have size like like the Ethereum ones have size. None of them have big names like Joe Luben and Joseph Shalom over on ESBED and Tom Lee, etc., etc. These guys are similar to Bitcoin. They're able to raise every single week or every single month and continuing to buy. Um, and so you haven't really been able to see that on any of the others. They're kind of like one big raise. You know, they buy some or they just take some like locked

up soul or locked up hype or whatever and they put it into a DAT and they kind of make it look like, you know, they bought a billion worth of it, which they haven't. whereas ETH has all been actual um spot buying pressure and I think we're only going to continue to get more of that as um as prices start to move. Obviously, we've been in a sort of downtrend for the last like month or two and so that's slowed down. There hasn't been as much buying. Um but that always happens. Uh same with happens in the Bitcoin world too. And so I think soon as price starts to go back up, you know, they'll get their premiums and they'll be able to start buying a bunch again. And then the the last thing that I think really excites me, well actually there's two things. one is you have the stamp of

approval uh from things like you know Black Rockck and from Robin Hood you know who's building chains and building funds and and launching things on Ethereum. There's no other chain that has that today. Um so you just don't have that like stamp of approval from like institutions whereas Ethereum has that. And so I think as institutions continue to allocate into crypto which they're going to do more and more here um I think Ethereum is going to be their big choice. And then the last thing I will say is you have the stablecoin bill that came out uh or um was approved earlier this year and then you have the market structure bill that's coming maybe by the end of this year hopefully.

These are massive massive catalysts for Ethereum specifically of course for the whole crypto space but the stable coin bill has really allowed you know anyone to start using stable coins and launching stable coins and integrating stable coins. Most of that happens on Ethereum. Um, and so I think that's a huge catalyst. And then when the market structure bill comes in, it means that a lot of these companies can start to allocate more. They can start to, you know, use DeFi. They can start to do so much more in the space that otherwise they couldn't do. And again, most of them are going to be on Ethereum. So I just think there's a lot of adoption to come in Ethereum and then a lot of demand on the asset because of the staking ETFs and because of the the DAT.

So there's just so much to play for for Ethereum. Um, and so that that's all the things that excite me right now. If long meetings and judgmental bankers are your thing, Nexo is probably not. Nexo is a premier wealth platform built for people who value their time and money. It's built for people who have idle cash lying around and want it to grow fast. Whether it's Bitcoin, Ethereum, or even forex pegged assets like USDT or USDC, Nexo offers up to 14% annual interest and access to cryptoback credit in under 24 hours. Your assets need a platform built for growth. Join Nexo. Why do people invest in real estate? Because it spits off cash flow. But I'm not here to

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>> Oh, sorry. Yeah, sorry. The debts. Yeah, sorry. >> The DATs. Yeah. So, um a lot of them have exhausted and they're not in premium anymore. So, they haven't been able to raise. I think only Bitmine is still in a premium. So, they've still been raising and buying. Um, I think Sharp Link and some of the others have been less so, uh, cuz they've actually been on a negative premium or a negative NAV. So, um, or a discount to nav, sorry. So, but that that'll turn, I think, as as prices turn, so it's not really a concern. >> John unmuted. So, I want to hear from John. I feel like he's coming into the ring here. >> Uh, I mean, I would like to hear from Martin on this, but yeah. So, I'll say a couple things. I I think Ethereum is is well positioned going into Q4. I think

that um Matt Hogan from Bitwise has been particularly bullish on Salana um but also talking about Ethereum as well. I'll just echo a lot of what Kyle said but not repeat all of it. Um something I will say though that he hasn't mentioned is that um there's the Fusaka hard fork that's coming up and the Pectra upgrade. These are both technical improvements to Ethereum which are going to make L2s um a little bit more uh let's say able better to function uh and and better supported by the network and it should increase adoption and activity. Um and I think that uh once the Clarity Act gets through Congress, which hopefully it it will um if if you know Congress decides to not shut down and actually pursue legislation again, um the Clarity Act is one of the top items on the agenda, that should be very bullish for Ethereum. Um

and the SEC is working around clarity for tokenization um which a lot of people think Ethereum is going to benefit from a lot because it'll bring a lot more economic activity into that blockchain ecosystem. Um and then just the the larger macro backdrop I think is still um generally supportive for risk assets, for Bitcoin, for Ethereum. Um and so I think that's going to continue. I will say about these ETFs though, like the the staking element being added is I think going to be a big um a big and appealing thing to investors. Uh in Q3 of 2025, there were some periods where the demand for ETH ETPs actually was greater than that of Bitcoin. So I think that the narrative in the market is starting to shift and I think that'll continue as as we get deeper into Q4.

So, I'm very bullish on Ethereum here. You know, I'm still bullish on Bitcoin, obviously, but I just think that like the the current regulatory and macro setup of of the the market right now is is going to be very supportive of of Ethereum. Um, and I think that these like technical upgrades to the network are going to help as well. So, there's a lot of reasons to be bullish on ETH right now. >> Martin, do technical upgrades matter? I remember three years ago when the bear started, everybody was so stoked about uh what was what did we get? What was the what the merge? Yeah, the merge. Everybody was like merge, merge. And then it's like the merge happened and the price trickled down. Is this how much these upgrades matter in your experience?

>> Well, I think they matter a lot. We just don't index the the importance of them uh much. I think once we see the price going up, then some narratives will catch up. But I think for people who are really building on on top of Ethereum, they need to look ahead. Okay? Because there are upgrades now there will be two upgrades per year. And if you are building on top of something and there are new upgrades and you you really need to know like what's the road map where where this stuff is heading like are you going to be still you know composable and like is your solution still going to be able to work with this new upgrades those kind of stuff it's super important and I think that the recent pivot made

by Ethereum Foundation was critical because until that point um Ethereum community and like pretty much everyone else building on top of Ethereum was sort of um lighting the the better communication and like focused uh goals for Ethereum and like even from technical perspective um having a blockchain in 2025 with 12 seconds uh block times and like throughput of I don't know 18 transactions per second it's just uh no way right so you really need to double down and improve those technical stuff as well. And like I think if we do not improve Ethereum at

all, we just stop here and do nothing. Yes, I think there will there might still be some you know these digital asset treasuries and ETF. might still be some inflows but in the on the longer time horizon we would struggle to attract like more serious and sophisticated players because if this technology is not evolving and it's not reacting what's happening in the market and now we have ZK we need to you know change the solidity to something else which is more optimized for for zero knowledge proofs which is amazing technology so like I think like you need all these pieces together, right? So now we have Wall Street bringing all the uh

public inflows into these assets. We have these the same guys doing all the education on Wall Street pretty much everywhere. Many financial advisors are now allowed to sell crypto and like Bitcoin ETFs, Ethereum ETFs. So that the these all things like matter a lot. And then you have like Revolute, Robin Hood, Coinbase, Revolute not yet, but they're going to soon. uh blockchain road map pretty soon. I guess it's going to be uh on Ethereum as well. But the point is we are just bringing like everyone uh to build on top of Ethereum.

So it's not just that it sort of validates what Ethereum is doing, but it also brings more liquidity and improves the network effects of Ethereum itself. And like once that's happening, it's also bringing more activity on Ethereum. So there's going to be much more fees, a lot of burn and people love deflationary assets. So like I think it's all just like putting together and uh it's really hard to be bearish on Ethereum this point. The the other thing I would add is um this and I was talking about this this morning with you guys which is when moments like what happened on Friday happen. You know there's a lot of people as Martin said there's a lot of you know

financial adviserss and other people in the institutional world that are starting to sell crypto and people are coming into crypto obviously more and more but we're seeing this sort of like K-shaped let's call it like performance in crypto assets. You think about like the K-shaped economy where you have like rich people keep getting richer because they hold on to assets. Whereas poor people or people without money, they keep getting more poor because they don't hold on to assets that that appreciate. And one of the things we're seeing in crypto is the good assets continue to go up. You know, Bitcoin, ETH, Soul, Hype, uh you know, whatever else. Like these things continue to go up over the years. And then there's a lot that just have stayed the same and now are actually just kind of getting lower and lower and lower. These are this kind of like older, let's call it

like ghost tokens or ghost chains. Um, and I think what we just saw here on Friday was those kind of shittier old chains that have like large market caps but no volumes, they got absolutely wiped out. Like they went down like 80 90% and didn't make it back a lot. I think that a lot of people are going to start to understand I got to stop holding these things or these are not even worth our attention anymore. And so what are the good ones? And there's only a few. And so we're that's kind of like more and more happening. I think each time we have one of these kind of like black swan events, hopefully the market gets a little bit smarter and I think more of that capital gets allocated to to these better assets. So, I think we're going to continue to see that play

out more, which bodess well for for Ethereum, obviously. And then the last thing I would say is the one thing that crypto doesn't really have that would allow crypto to grow is there's a lot of institutions that want to or are looking to allocate to crypto, but most institutions don't want to just buy one single asset. They like to buy an index. This is why ETFs are such a big deal, right? Um, they want to buy an index of assets like the S&P 500 uh or or the NASDAQ, etc. And we don't really have that uh in crypto today, at least not in a big way. There's like the coin 50 and there's like, you know, a few of these other different uh indices, but none of them are like available on like big public platforms. And you have the S&P 500, which announced last week that

they're launching the is it the 50 I think uh crypto for 50 tokens or 15 whatever it is. um which is a combination of digital assets and and crypto equities but these kind of things are going to come more and more especially as the the regulation improves and that's when these institutions can start to allocate more and more in size and a lot of those are going to be market cap based so of course Ethereum is going to get the biggest bid out of all that uh and so I just think that's when we start to get real true allocation to crypto is when these indices start to become a bigger thing and I think that's to play for here in the next maybe six months or so um so that's going to bring a lot of capital in the space as well >> so you guys think that all these factors

can bring. Were they were all these factors contributors to ETH getting almost to 5K in the last couple months? Like is that what is was it like the DATs buying them up and everything else you mentioned? Like is that what caused it to get there so far? >> I mean I I think the DATs were the big reason why it went up to 5K over the last few months. Like it's very obvious in the charts. You know, this thing has was just basically dying until uh end of April and then all of a sudden Joe Luben's like, "Hey, I'm here to save your bags. I'm going to buy a bunch." and Tom Lee said the same. And now they're running around on, you know, every news channel and every podcast screaming that Ethereum is the greatest thing and they're going to keep buying it. And, you know, the price went from,

I don't know, we were down at like 1,400 or something all the way up to 5,000 in a few months. So, um, I think, yeah, absolutely. That was DATs. Um, and the thing is, it doesn't mean that DATs need to be the only thing to buy moving forward. But the fact that, you know, Ethereum just moved from 1,400 up to 5,000 in a few months, and now everyone's hearing about it everywhere. Now all of a sudden, people are looking at it going, "Holy this thing just moved a lot." And it's a half a billion dollar or half a trillion dollar asset. This is insane. What is this thing? And now when they look at it, they go, "Oh, Robin Hood's building on it and Black Rockck has a fund on it." And like they start to understand a little bit more.

And so, um, I think this is when you start to see those kind of network effects play out here and more and more people start to buy it. So, is that something where you expect retail as well, Kyle? Or at least retail that isn't in yet. Is that is that a factor here? Because people always talk about retail. Retail's not here yet for this cycle. They're going to come, but Thanksgiving, they're all going to talk about ETH and Bitcoin and they're going to buy it. Is that is that something you guys expect to be a factor at all? Or is that even is that even relevant these days? >> Um, let me just answer something. I'll throw it over to you, John, because I know you wanted to say something there. But, uh, for for ETH, I don't really care about retail at all. It's a $500

billion asset. Retail is not going to move that thing that much anymore. uh we need big flows, we need institutions and that's where either the dots come in who are raising you know billions every week um or just you know bigger institutional players that are allocating that's what really matters yes retail can move markets obviously it's a very important part of the market and it's becoming more and more important as we go because there's more and more retail people that are are speculating on assets but um I don't think retail is here to an extent but they're not here like 2021 here and that's because they just don't have a lot of extra capital right now they don't a lot of extra money if we get these like tariff sty checks that Trump has been talking about. I think a lot of them are going to come in and probably

punt Bitcoin and ETH and and who knows what else something in the DJ world that you handle LG uh but I don't know but uh so at some point that'll come but we need a we need the business cycle to pick up. We need liquidity pick up and so I think that's still to come at some point. I just don't know exactly when but I don't think we necessarily need that for ETH to continue to do well. Um, I think we just need more institutional adoption, which I think is coming for all the reasons that we've talked about here in this episode so far. >> John. >> Yeah. Uh, sure. Yeah. So, something I'll add to that. Um, I I've been really kind of like hurt, frustrated, disappointed a little bit about the the retail adoption that we've seen in the space. Uh, number one, I think a lot of like really

devoted retail investors in digital assets just got wrecked pretty badly um on this this market downturn. So, I feel pretty like, you know, I feel a lot of empathy and pain for them. Um, so everyone, please practice good risk management, like like Kyle was saying before, like don't use leverage. It's not worth it. Um, and uh, yeah, but there are a lot of the the term now that we're using for multicycle survivors who just won't drop off are the cockroaches who are unkillable investors who are very devoted to to digital assets. So, those people I'm rooting for. I'm one of them. Uh, I look, I I worked at Blackpart for a while. I left because I wanted to participate more in the retail side of things to try to evangelize a little bit to be honest about the the values and power of digital assets of

decentralized finance of why these things matter so much. But the reality is what we're actually seeing is institutions are adopting this technology. They're coming to this technology and to this asset class as an investment um much more uh in mass and much stronger. Um, we saw JP Morgan say that there's a debasement trade that favors gold and Bitcoin in the same sentence, not just gold. And then there's some fringe people who think Bitcoin is good, too. They said gold and Bitcoin. Uh, Morgan Stanley updated their uh, global investment advisor committee recommendations um, to say that they recommend a 2 to 4% allocation to crypto and digital assets. They're far from the last asset manager to make that recommendation. Um, or far from the first and they won't be the last, I

mean. Um, and then, uh, I think it was yesterday or Monday, sometime in the last couple of days. Um, Larry Frink was just on, uh, 60 Minutes, um, talking about how he was wrong on Bitcoin and how he believes in it as an investment. Um, and then these digital asset treasury companies have not been shaken out either just during this recent downturn. Um, Tom Lee's Bitine bought $800 million of Ethereum. So, like the institutions are here. They're coming in stronger. They're coming in with more size, more capital. They're all front running this tokenization narrative which is a real transfer of economic value onto rails into digital assets. So my my frustration a little bit has been that this is a huge opportunity for retail to get comfy in spot, not take obscene risks and just frontr run the

largest transfer of of capital and um the a transformation of the way the human species allocates value and value networks. Uh and a lot of people are missing the opportunity. they're they're chasing things that that are um you know maybe uh you know they're they're going on as doing a 101x instead of getting a hold of some of these great assets and putting them to work in DeFi which is what a lot of these digital asset treasury companies are doing. So that's something that uh you know I've been a little bit disappointed with and frustrated by. But you know I do think that at some point uh the the market conditions will change. There will be a flow of of liquidity again that will come into retails pockets at some level as well. Whether it's through a refund check from tariffs or through some other

means or mechanism. Um but then I I hope that people take that capital and instead of treating it like a lottery ticket or a poker chip, they treat it like capital that they're investing. Um and they they find a way to do that in digital assets that makes sense for them. But uh yeah, I don't know. I've been I've been hurting a lot for retail uh throughout this bull run so far because I feel like they're getting the short end of the stick and they're they're missing out on great opportunities. >> I was going to say another thing I think that is a big thing for Ethereum which is to come. I talked about kind of the market structure bill and you know um Martin and I have talked a ton about DeFi and how we're super bullish on DeFi. And one of the things that like a

blockchain needs to do well is apps on it to be doing well. And right now, Ethereum DeFi is is doing great. And it proved that it's it works really well on Friday with all those liquidations, but a lot of companies can't necessarily allocate to these assets yet, even though they're producing a ton of um uh of revenue and and a ton of profit. But it's because they don't have proper reporting. uh they don't have proper like uh you know um I don't know what you necessarily call it but like they don't have good reporting on um what they're what they're doing with their tokconomics what they're doing with the assets that the treasuries hold when the owners are selling etc whereas the the trady world has that and so the trady world is very efficient and very good in

terms of their reporting and the crypto world sucks and we need the market structure bill to fix that and I don't think institutions are really going to allocate to these like smaller DeFi assets um or any kind of altcoin asset until we have that stuff. And so that'll come with the market structure bill. And when that comes, I think DeFi is going to get repriced. A Sky a bunch of these ones that are like legit businesses. They're going to go from two, three, four billion dollar assets to 10 plus billion dollar assets. Kind of like right now, if you look in the stock market, they're like lower-end smaller riskier stuff. It's all around like 10 billion, not two billion. But all the like good assets in crypto, but that aren't fully like big yet, they're like two billion. Those need to be repriced.

So when that comes, I think that's going to be a really big catalyst for Ethereum as well because everyone's going to notice, oh my god, there's Sky which has 20 I don't know 80 billion or sorry million dollars in revenue on an annualized basis. Like that's huge. So I think that's to come soon. Um and then the last thing I would say is as rates come down the the yield that you can get on dollars in the TRDFI world is going to get worse and worse and worse. And yet in DeFi it's going to go up and up and up. And so I think in 2026 the big trade is going to be capital coming into crypto to get yield and that might just be stable coins getting dollars. It might be using DeFi, but either way that's going to be a massive catalyst for Ethereum, mainly Ethereum DeFi

because it's the only one that's big enough and robust enough for institutions to do this. Uh but that's going to be a huge catalyst for Ethereum as well. >> I like I like that last point. I like that a lot. Uh speaking of different companies and portfolio, I just want to give everybody a quick peak behind the curtain. when you're a pro member. Uh these guys run a fantastic portfolio that they update uh pretty often in terms of like what they're holding, buying, selling. Uh and that's something that you get you get you get notifications for if you're in the Discord if you are a pro member. Martin, is there with all this talk right now with the current dip and even just going into you know hopeful what should be an incredibly bullish Q4 any major changes uh to the portfolio? Don't give us the

whole update because we got to keep keep some, you know, just for pro members, but was is this a time to add more ETH even to the portfolio or anything else any of the other DATs? >> Well, whatever. It was a lot of assets uh trading at discount. So, if you if you bought some majors or some good DeFi tokens like it was a good good trade and but like for us and for our portfolio, we didn't do like any big moves or anything. We are not traders. So if there is short-term volatility, we don't do anything and we did didn't have uh any stable coins. So uh we were just watching and you know we are ready for Q4 and we still think that we are going to hit like all-time highs pretty much

on all our our tokens and stocks that we hold. So still Q Q4 remains super bullish uh despite the the flash crash we saw last Friday. >> Excellent. All right, guys. I want to do I want to wrap out by doing actual price predictions of what day ETH will hit. We always do predictions. This is the This is the DJ in me. We have to do this. Do you guys have anything else to add before we get to that? >> No, let's do it. >> Okay. Okay. >> What day hits all time highs? That's what you want. >> What day it hits alltime high between now and December 31st? And John had to hop off. So, we'll have to we'll have to make one up for John. We'll have to we'll do one on his behalf. Um, so I've got the chart here and I've got our

names. So, I'd love to know, Kyle, let's start with you. If you had to pick one day, throw a dart at the wall. What is the day that ETH gets there? >> I am going to say that at the end of this month, the there's going to be a resolution of the whole China US thing. Uh because I know Trump and G are meeting at some point. I think it's on the 31st. So, I'm going to say in the first week of November, ETH is going to go to alltime high. >> Okay, first week. If you want an actual day, let me pull up my counter and see what exists. Let's go with what's a good one here.

>> Let's go November 6th. >> Thursday, November 6th. That is Kyle's horse. We'll put it around the 5K mark, wherever it is around here. Okay, Martin, what is your >> Oh, man. >> pick. >> I don't have a crystal ball. Um I have >> Well, you know, >> no one's going to see you don't get it right, Martin. It's all right. It's okay. it can happen like in one week and also like in in two months. Um >> yeah, I also feel like uh we might go sideways or you know slightly up in the next one or two weeks and then I really think that the market resetted and we we are ready for alltime highs. So Kyle's like pretty good guess. I I don't want to be the same. So uh I'll

be more bearish. Um, so let's say November 20th of November. >> Thanksgiving. >> Bear. >> Is that No, that's not Thanksgiving. That's not the American Thanksgiving. That's a week before, I think. >> Or is it? >> See, wait. My main thinking was we need to have alltime highs before Thanksgiving. >> Yeah, totally. Okay. What do you think? What do you think John would say? What do if we have to encapsulate John? What would we got to summon him? What would he say? Is he more bullish or more bearish than us right now? I think he's might would say December.

>> Okay. December, let's pick a day. >> December 8th cuz it's my birthday. >> That's your birthday? Oh, that's great. We're we're we're Sagittarius bros. Uh, okay. And then I'm going to go, you know what? Let's go let's go proper den for this one. I'm saying like very soon. I think it's just I think we're just we're just going to go buck wild like uh by in a in a week tomorrow. And guys, and for people listening, this is for fun. Okay, the the rest of the episode, this is that is the deeper insight. This part is like we're doing this part just for fun. Do not take this as financial advice, these predictions.

But we do have a nice spread here from uh October 21st to December 8th is the general team predictions of of when ETH will get there. >> What's the poly market for alltime high? You said, "Can I make more money on that if I buy that?" >> It's at 60% to hit 5K by uh December 31st. >> Uh so how does that work? If I throw a buck, how much do I make? >> So you would make 40 cents on your dollar uh when it resolved. >> So 40%. >> Oh, no, no, no, no, sorry. It would be uh you would make like 66%. Sorry. Because you'd be buying a share at 60 and then you'd be making the additional 40 cents on top of that.

>> Huh. So you would make 66% back on your investment. >> So if ETH goes alltime highs, you make three times uh what you would make if you just held ETH if you were to use Poly Market. >> That's it. So Kyle just said sell all your ETH and buy the Poly Market bet. >> Yeah, don't do that, guys. >> Don't do that part. Don't do that part. >> Oh boy. All right, gentlemen. Uh this has been fantastic. And like I mentioned, uh, pro members, they get access to all these types of moves, all this type of insight in real time.

There's tons of chats in there that were going off this weekend where you can chat with these guys in person, get their signals, get access to all the great data that Martin writes up and newsletters and the pro reports um, as well as the proas that come down uh, I think every month, every couple weeks as well. And you get to chat with me, the DGEN AMAs. Uh, gentlemen, this has been fantastic. A great day to do it. I think this line, this podcast actually lined up perfectly. I think we had a great fun uh, crazy market event to kind of set up a really bullish Q4. So, uh, it's been great to chat with you. I learn I honestly learn so much every time every every time I get to talk to you guys. So, uh, I appreciate it and, uh, let's hope for a very bullish Q4, very, very

quick turnaround from Mr. Trump and and and all his trade partners to, uh, to get things back on track. Uh, any any last words, gentlemen, before we wrap up? Stay bullish. Thanks, everyone. >> We're sending Kyle Reedhead, our head of research, to the UK's largest web 3 summit. I'm talking about Zebu Live happening October 21st and 22nd in London. Want to join? Use our code milk to get 20% off your tickets. Hit the link in the show notes and say hi to Kyle for us. 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.