GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that connects the dots, so you can see the bigger picture.

​Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• ✍️ Worst sentiment in months → record buys.

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Bulls vs Bears Battle Intensifies: Bitcoin’s Next Move Will Shock Everyone w/ Michael Nadeau.

• 🍪 The S&P 500 just hit a new all-time high.

Nexo is back in the U.S. - and new clients get 30 days of Wealth Club Premier perks! Higher yields, lower borrowing rates, and crypto cashback - start here.

Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Trade today with Milk Road Swap.

SAYLOR'S BITCOIN VACUUM DOESN'T HAVE AN OFF SWITCH 📈

Q: What do these 3 statements have in common…

• Water is wet.

• The sky is blue.

• Saylor will continue to buy BTC.

A: They’re all universal truths.

Which makes an article covering MSTR’s recent Bitcoin purchases feel like a waste of line space…

But it's not what they're doing, it's how they're doing it that’s catching our attention.

‘Cause even though we’re in a multi-month, market-wide downturn - Saylor is still buying at the same pace as he was during the bull run.

Lemme put some numbers on it to really drive home just how insane his current pace is...

During the last bear market's peak-to-trough (Nov 2021 to Nov 2022), MSTR accumulated about $450M worth of Bitcoin.

Decent chunk. Respectable.

From the most recent market peak on October 6, 2025, to where we are right now? 

This mf'er has scooped up roughly $11.67B worth of BTC!

That's a 26x increase in capital deployed compared to the 2021/2022 bear market.

Source: @strategy

So where's the money coming from?

Throughout the recent bull run, Saylor was funding his Bitcoin shopping spree by issuing and selling shares of MSTR (Strategy's common stock).

When Bitcoin was ripping and everyone wanted exposure, demand for MSTR was high, and it was easy to raise capital that way.

But when the market turned? That demand cooled - and Saylor needed a new engine.

So he built one…

SAYLOR'S BITCOIN VACUUM DOESN'T HAVE AN OFF SWITCH (P2) 📈

We've talked about STRC (aka "Stretch") before, but the full power of this thing is only really becoming clear now (while the market is down)…

STRC is Strategy's perpetual preferred stock (a special class of stock that pays dividends forever), which is designed to sit at an even $100 per share. 

You buy in at $100 per share → Strategy pays you 11.5% annualized in cash dividends (up from 9% at launch).

Every time the STRC stock price goes above $100, Strategy issues new shares (diluting the stock/lowering the price) and funnels the proceeds straight into Bitcoin purchases. 

If it dips below $100, they bump up yields to attract more buyers, and bring the price back up. 

(Shares sell, BTC gets bought. Rinse, repeat, forever.)

Source: Strategy

And investors are LOVING it.

Estimated STRC proceeds hit $1.8B as of yesterday - not even two full days into the week.

Source: @KyleReidhead

Saylor has essentially engineered a financial product that accelerates his buying the worse sentiment gets. 

(The more people want safe, boring yield → the more fuel STRC has to vacuum up BTC.)

So why should you care?

Because the more financial instruments like this that exist and get adopted, the more robust Bitcoin becomes as an asset - it's hard to keep prices subdued when there's an absolute maniac buying $1B worth of BTC every week. 

And the more success Saylor finds, the more others will want to copy it.

Hell, it’s already happening. BlackRock's BITA (a yield-focused Bitcoin ETF) could launch within weeks. 

Goldman Sachs filed for its own Bitcoin Premium Income ETF yesterday.

Both of these have slightly different mechanisms - but they both lead to a similar result:

More investor demand → more Bitcoin bought to fill the fund.

Hell yeah!

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

The entire industry is headed to Miami. Get 20% off Consensus Miami passes with code MILKROAD.*

Always watching Wazowski: The CFTC is now investigating oil trades worth nearly $950M that happened just hours before Trump announced a ceasefire deal with Iran.

Ok, now do crypto! The S&P 500 just hit a new all-time high, right in the midst of the U.S.-Iran war.

Wall Street didn’t see this coming: AI just became a systemic risk…

Higher earnings rates. Lower borrowing costs. Up to 0.5% cashback. New U.S. clients get these benefits on Nexo for 30 days.**

*this is sponsored content.
**this is partner content.

👉 Get started here

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @boldleonidas

Source: @ToolySOL

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that turns “should I care?” into “I’m glad I read that.”

​Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• ✍️ Chainlink’s $58B fix.

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Bitcoin to $150K by Year-End: Why All Roads Lead to More Liquidity w/ James Lavish.

• 🍪 Tax free stables.

Midnight is a fourth generation blockchain that just launched last week. Check out their launch announcement here.

Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Trade today with Milk Road Swap.

CHAINLINK’S SOLUTION TO WALL STREET'S $58B PAPER JAM 🪄

Somewhere, right now, inside a major bank, there’s an analyst reading a PDF about a stock split and copying and copy-pasting the details into a spreadsheet.

By hand… like it's a middle school homework assignment… in the year of our lord, 2026.

Source: Giphy

It’s insanely inefficient, but it’s how "corporate actions" get processed in traditional finance. 

Corporate actions are events like stock splits, mergers, or dividend payouts - basically any time a public company does something that affects its shareholders.

There are 3.7M of these events every year in the U.S. alone - and 46% of the data involved is still processed manually.

Each of these events touches 110,000+ interactions between firms - the total bill?

$58B per year in costs, errors, and delays.

For context - that’s more than 3.5x Goldman Sachs' annual profit!

Source: Claude

You'd think someone would've fixed this by now… and to be fair - it’s not for lack of trying. 

The industry has been pushing for decades to get every company to standardize how they send their data, so banks can read it cleanly on the other end.

But it never worked. 

Too many companies, too many formats, too many people who'd rather keep doing things their way.

So Chainlink tried a different approach…

CHAINLINK’S SOLUTION TO WALL STREET'S $58B PAPER JAM (P2) 🪄

Instead of changing how the data gets sent, Chainlink is changing how it gets received.

And they’ve partnered with 24 of the world's biggest financial institutions to test it out, including: 

• Swift (the global payments messaging network).

• Euroclear (a major securities settlement house).

• UBS (one of the largest banks on Earth).

Source: @chainlink

Here's how it works in three steps:

1. AI reads the mess. The jumbled PDFs, the inconsistent formats, the weird edge cases… AI models digest it all and pull out the key info.

2. Chainlink verifies it. Oracles (which are basically data middlemen that connect blockchains to the outside world) take the outputs from multiple AIs, cross-check them, and agree on one trusted answer.

3. That answer gets published onchain as a "Golden Record." One single source of truth, stored onchain, that can't be tampered with or lost in someone's inbox.

The results from the pilot? 

They hit 100% consensus across every corporate action they tested - all with zero hallucination problems from the AI layer.

The big-picture formula looks like this: traditional finance connects to onchain infrastructure → AI collects the data → oracles verify it → blockchains secure it.

The ‘tokenization of everything’ thesis doesn't just mean slapping a token on a stock and calling it a day. 

The plumbing underneath has to move onchain too.

That's what this is. The boring, unsexy, back-office plumbing that makes financial markets actually function - running onchain.

We love to see it. 🥲

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

The entire industry is headed to Miami. Get 20% off Consensus Miami passes with code MILKROAD.*

Tax free stables: Transfers of regulated stablecoins (like USDC and USDT) could soon be tax-free if they stay pegged between $0.99 and $1.01.

That’s progress! Oil just dropped to $93.61 after markets got optimistic about US-Iran tensions easing up.

The strait is closed, but markets don’t care (yet): Iran says they are open to giving up nuclear weapons following new U.S. blockade.

Everyone’s betting big on prediction markets. Birdeye just dropped a solid report on their growing institutional adoption. Read it here.**

*this is sponsored content.
**this is partner content.

Check out their launch announcement here.

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @naiivememe

Source: @ToolySOL

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that turns complexity into clarity - and clarity into confidence.

​Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• ✍️ What we’re watching this week.

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Bitcoin & Ethereum Whales Are Buying Like It’s a Bull Market… The Signal Is Clear.

• 🍪 Morgan Stanley says this correction is basically over.

Nexo is back in the U.S. - and new clients get 30 days of Wealth Club Premier perks! Higher yields, lower borrowing rates, and crypto cashback - start here.

Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Trade today with Milk Road Swap.

WHAT WE'RE WATCHING THIS WEEK 👀

ICYMI: Every Monday morning, the Milk Road crew hops on a call → argues about what matters → and relays it all to you here.

So what’re we seeing this week?

In short: it looks like everything wants to rip, but one thing is holding it all hostage.

(Surprise, surprise: it's Iran. Still.)

The nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran failed (again), and this time Trump responded by slapping a full blockade on the country.

As of 10am ET today, the U.S. is shutting down Iran's imports and exports. 

Source: @MilkRoad

Iran makes a nice chunk of change from shipping - tolls, trade, moving goods through its waterways. That's now being choked off. 

Any ship that pays a toll to Iran risks being detained by U.S. forces in the region.

Our macro guy John didn't mince words on the call: "This is horseshit. They [Iran] have nothing. They can't do anything."

His frustration: the U.S. has offered deal after deal, but Iran keeps stalling. And the longer it drags on, the worse the damage gets.

Where it’s getting increasingly scary?

The oil production shortfall (meaning how much oil the world is missing because of this conflict) has hit 400M barrels. 

That's already double what it was at the end of March. 

Countries are hoarding resources, rationing energy, and sending tankers to the Gulf of America to buy whatever crude they can get. 👇

Source: @dangambardello

But the U.S. doesn't have enough excess supply to fill the gap. John's estimate? The world needs to cut oil usage by about 20% to make up for the loss. 

That's a massive number.

And if we don't get a firm resolution by the start of May (17 days from now) he thinks things get really ugly.

Here's the weird part though… 

WHAT WE'RE WATCHING THIS WEEK (P2) 👀

Amidst all of this - the markets are… fine? 

The Mag 7 (the seven biggest tech stocks) holding steady, while the S&P 500 has been green over the past 7 trading days.

Source: TradingView

John's read is that everything (gold, silver, the S&P, Bitcoin) is sitting at a decision point - like a coiled spring. 

Markets want to go higher. They're trying to price in a resolution, but it hasn't happened yet.

"The whole world and all markets are hyperfixated on this one thing," he said. "If it goes in a favorable direction, you'll see a lot of positive momentum. But if it doesn't, we could break down."

So yeah. Vibes are tense.

But while the world waits, big money isn't sitting still…

Tom Lee continues to scoop up ETH, Michael Saylor continues to buy BTC hand over fist… it’s basically a weekly ritual at this point.

Source: @Saylor

What's wild about Saylor is how he's doing it.

He's figured out how to raise bull-market-sized money during a bear market, and has barely missed a single week in the last few months.

As John put it: "He's like a clock who comes up with a billion dollars a week."

And it's not just the Saylor…

Charles Schwab recently opened a waitlist for clients to buy spot Bitcoin. Morgan Stanley launched their spot crypto ETF products, and now has 16,000 investment advisors going out and pitching them to clients.

Source: @BitcoinMagazine

Even Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan who famously called Bitcoin a "decentralized Ponzi scheme," has flipped - he went on TV and said blockchains are now a better infrastructure for the financial world.

The meta-story in crypto right now? An institutional bull run is building, while retail apathy only continues to grow.

Every day, investors are sitting on their hands - but behind the scenes, the biggest financial players on the planet are building on-ramps, launching products, and deploying capital at a pace we’ve never seen before.

(By the time retail wakes up, the pipes will already be laid.)

So that's what we're watching right now:

A world coiled tight, waiting on global conflicts to simmer down - all while a wall of institutional money builds up behind the scenes.

Long story longer…

Hold onto your butts!

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

The entire industry is headed to Miami. Get 20% off Consensus Miami passes with code MILKROAD.*

God I hope they’re right: Morgan Stanley says this correction is basically over.

The real AI winner: how Amazon owns the AI economy.

Pennies on the dollar: A hacker created $1.2B of counterfeit crypto, and only sold it for $237,000 - DL News.

Everyone’s betting big on prediction markets. Birdeye just dropped a solid report on their growing institutional adoption. Read it here.**

*this is sponsored content.
**this is partner content.

👉 Get started here

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @ToolySOL

Source: @GordonGekko

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that runs hotter than your confidence right before a liquidation.

Here’s a taste of this week’s menu:

• 🔥 Bitcoin's glory days are over.

• 🥵 There’s a bull market happening, just not in retail.

• 🌶️ The internet's business model just broke.

Midnight is a fourth generation blockchain that just launched last week. Check out their launch announcement here.

HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK 🔥

HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK (P2) 🔥

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

What if a bank app and crypto wallet had a baby? You’d get Brighty which is a money app that lets you use crypto and regular fiat money together without transferring funds.*

Yikes! One of Bittensor's biggest subnets just walked out the door - and they took ~25% of TAO's market cap with them.

Hell yeah - looks like Coinbase could be onboard with the current stablecoin yield language in the CLARITY Act.

Matt Hougan from Bitwise: "There is a runaway institutional bull market in crypto".

Higher earnings rates. Lower borrowing costs. Up to 0.5% cashback. New U.S. clients get these benefits on Nexo for 30 days.**

*this is sponsored content.
**this is partner content.

Check out their launch announcement here.

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @alancarroII

Source: @ToolySOL

GM. This is Milk Road, the daily newsletter where crypto confusion goes to die.

​Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• ✍️ Is ETH the operating system for AI?

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Tether Co-Founder Says The Next Bull Run Is Already Here… Just Not Where You Think.

• 🍪 BitTensor's TAO dropped more than 18%.

Nexo is back in the U.S. - and new clients get 30 days of Wealth Club Premier perks! Higher yields, lower borrowing rates, and crypto cashback - start here.

Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Trade today with Milk Road Swap.

FORGET CRYPTO PAYMENTS, AI AGENTS ARE GOING TO NEED DEFI 💪

We've been beating the drum on AI agents using crypto for payments for a while now. 

And sure, that thesis is playing out… 

E.g. Coinbase, Cloudflare, and Stripe built x402 for instant stablecoin micropayments between agents, processing over 140M agent-to-agent transactions with $43M in volume.

But we just read a piece from Etherealize that made us realize we’ve been thinking way too small (and delivered us an “Oh my God, I get it” moment)…

SourcE: @Etherealize_io

Here’s the rub…

Payments are a great use case - but they’re just one tool in the toolbox. 

And if you really believe AI agents are on a trajectory to become serious operators in business/finance, they're gonna need a lot more than the ability to send money.

Etherealize found the perfect example: 

An AI agent named Felix made $300K in five weeks. He hires other AI agents, sells products, and runs a whole marketplace.

Source: Shopclawmart

His monthly operating costs? About $1,500. Pretty impressive for a bot. 

But Felix has a problem: he can't open a bank account. He's not human. And the entire financial system assumes there's a flesh-and-blood person on the other end of every account.

Hand Felix a crypto wallet, though? He's off to the races.

And this is where it all clicked… 

Once Felix (or any agent like him) starts actually managing money, the needs go way beyond just sending payments. 

Think:

• Borrowing (working capital for compute costs, bridging cash flow gaps).

• Earning yield (Felix has $165K just sitting there doing nothing).

• Raising funding (good luck setting up a Carta cap table as a bot).

• Custodying assets (without some third party who can freeze everything).

Traditional finance requires credit applications, underwriters, and a legal identity for all of that. 

But with DeFi? An agent can deposit collateral and borrow stablecoins instantly. 

No paperwork, no human in the loop, no DMV visits (thank God).

And Etherealize argues that Ethereum is going to be the place where it all happens…

FORGET CRYPTO PAYMENTS, AI AGENTS ARE GOING TO NEED DEFI (P2) 💪

So why Ethereum specifically? 

Sure, other chains have DeFi. But building an ecosystem that agents can trust with serious money for extended periods?

That’s probably going to take some time-proven trust. 

And Ethereum has a head start with 10+ years of uptime, battle-tested protocols, big-name institutional adopters, and liquidity that dwarfs the competition.

Source: DeFiLlama

So, assuming that’s true and AI agents opt for Ethereum…

What does that mean for ETH as an asset?

In short: increased demand and restricted supply.

Every interaction with Ethereum's DeFi stack (regardless of the asset being exchanged) requires transaction fees to be paid in ETH, which will help to increase demand. 

And borrowing, swapping, deploying contracts, rebalancing portfolios - all of that burns ETH through EIP-1559 (a mechanism that permanently removes a portion of fees from circulation).

Plus, agents borrowing on Aave need to post collateral. 

And ETH is the deepest collateral asset on the network. More agents borrowing means more ETH locked up, which means less circulating supply. 

Buy n’ burn it on one end, lock it up on the other.

Could things go wrong with the trajectory being assumed here? Sure. 

Gas abstraction tech could shift demand away from ETH, a competing chain could catch up, TradFi could adapt…

But as Etherealize points out, even an adapted TradFi system would still be offering agents a product designed for humans, with human overhead baked into every cost. 

DeFi offers a software-native product - and software tends to prefer software.

Leading us to this moment…

Source: Giphy

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

What if a bank app and crypto wallet had a baby? You’d get Brighty which is a money app that lets you use crypto and regular fiat money together without transferring funds.*

New data: March CPI rises, but still comes in below expectations - headline: 3.3% YoY, expected: 3.4%.

Ouch! BitTensor's TAO dropped more than 18% after a public fallout between a leading subnet operator and the network's founder.

It’s gonna be bumpy: The Bitcoin rebound is still set to face the oil shock & inflation tests, despite the ceasefire.

Higher earnings rates. Lower borrowing costs. Up to 0.5% cashback. New U.S. clients get these benefits on Nexo for 30 days.**

*this is sponsored content.
**this is partner content.

👉 Get started here

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @ToolySOL

Source: @ToolySOL

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that makes staying informed feel unfairly easy.

​Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• ✍️ Our PRO analyst’s latest token picks.

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: This One Crypto Law Could Decide the Next 10 Years.

• 🍪 “Polymarket deserved a Pulitzer”.

Aligned is a full-stack infrastructure suite that lets businesses launch, operate, and scale on Ethereum. Join the whitelist on their campaign page.

Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Trade today with Milk Road Swap.

OUR PRO ANALYST’S LATEST TOKEN PICKS 🥇

Our lead PRO analyst, Martin, is pounding the table on perp DEXs right now.

ICYMI: Perpetual DEXs are platforms where you can trade perpetual futures (contracts that let you bet on the price of an asset going up or down, with no expiry date) entirely onchain.

And Martin’s fired up about them for two big reasons: 

1. The economics are absolutely stupid.

2. And the growth story has barely even begun…

Source: Claude

To give you an idea of just how ‘stupid’ the economics are - look no further than Hyperliquid…

They’re doing $1B in annualized revenue with 99% net margins and just 12 employees!

That's $83M in revenue per employee.

Goldman Sachs? Roughly $1M per employee (83x less efficient).

CME Group (the biggest centralized derivatives exchange on the planet)? They run at about 50% margins.

All with thousands of employees, compliance departments, and clearing infrastructure that require hundreds of millions a year just to keep the lights on…

The efficiency of perp DEXs put them (perp DEXs) in a completely different category of business. 👇

Source: Claude

Ok, but… how?

Because smart contracts do the work that entire departments would normally do at traditional firms. Margin calculations, liquidations, trade settlement - it all runs automatically.

So when trading volume doubles, headcount doesn't - nothing changes on the cost side. 

Every new dollar of revenue flows almost entirely to the bottom line.

Which naturally raises the question: why don't the big guys just… copy it?

It’s really quite simple: they can’t. 👇

OUR PRO ANALYST’S LATEST TOKEN PICKS (P2) 🥇

In the U.S., the Commodities Exchange Act requires that execution, clearing, and settlement happen across separate legal entities. 

A single platform can't legally do all three.

Perp DEXs do all three inside a single smart contract, automatically & instantly.

The very thing that makes them so efficient is exactly what U.S. law says traditional exchanges aren't allowed to do.

So to compete, an incumbent like CME would need to lobby for a complete rewrite of the legal framework governing an entire asset class. 

We're talking a multi-year regulatory fight with no guaranteed outcome - where the centralized exchanges come bearing a knife, and regulators come packing a revolver.

Source: Imgflip

Then layer in the distribution angle, and things get reeeal interesting…

Traditional exchanges control who builds on their infrastructure. Perp DEXs don't.

Hyperliquid uses something called "builder codes"... 

Which essentially allows any developer anywhere in the world to build a front-end, an integration, or a whole new app on top of the protocol and earn a cut of trading fees for doing it.

Think of it like a permissionless affiliate program for trading infrastructure. Every new builder extends the protocol's reach without requiring a single thing from the core team.

And the flywheel is working. 

Builder codes already account for about 10% of Hyperliquid's volume:

Source: @RyanWatkins_

On top of that, Hyperliquid rolled out something called HIP-3, which lets anyone create a perpetual futures market for any asset. Equities, commodities, interest rates, you name it.

So… 

• The distribution scales itself. 

• The product catalog scales itself. 

• And the cost structure barely moves.

All while the incumbents are handcuffed by regulation, and the onchain growth engine is open to anyone with a keyboard.

(As we said at the top: the economics are absolutely stupid and the growth story has barely even begun.)

… so what are Martin’s picks of ‘the Perp DEX litter’?

Right now, it’s Hyperliquid (HYPE) and Lighter (LIT).

And if you want to know exactly why he’s bullish on them, what weights he’s putting behind each allocation and get a deeper understanding of the opportunities in the perp DEX space: 

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

What if a bank app and crypto wallet had a baby? You’d get Brighty which is a money app that lets you use crypto and regular fiat money together without transferring funds.*

Bitwise's Matt Hougan: “Polymarket deserved a Pulitzer.”

Moooar stables! UBS and 5 other Swiss banks just joined forces to test a Swiss franc stablecoin.

Higher! Why AI agents will need Ethereum for low-risk DeFi.

Higher earnings rates. Lower borrowing costs. Up to 0.5% cashback. New U.S. clients get these benefits on Nexo for 30 days.**

*this is sponsored content.
**this is partner content.

Join the whitelist on their campaign page.

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @boldleonidas

Source: @ToolySOL

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that keeps you informed without stealing your whole afternoon.

​Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• ✍️ 3 big pieces of news you just missed.

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Retail Is Quitting Crypto at the Worst Possible Time w/ Guy Wuollet.

• 🍪 Three Polymarket accounts made $600K+ on U.S./Iran ceasefire bets.

Nexo is back in the U.S. - and new clients get 30 days of Wealth Club Premier perks! Higher yields, lower borrowing rates, and crypto cashback - start here.

Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Trade today with Milk Road Swap.

3 BIG PIECES OF NEWS YOU MISSED TODAY 🗞️

Yesterday, Trump told the world an entire civilization was about to die.

It didn't come to pass. Thank god. They reached a ceasefire deal. 

But while the diplomats were shaking hands, somebody apparently didn't get the memo.

A drone struck one of Saudi Arabia's most critical oil pipelines just hours after the U.S. and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire. 

Source: @WatcherGuru

And this hit packs an extra punch right now - because while the Strait of Hormuz has been shut down, the pipeline has basically been Saudi Arabia's only functioning export route.

Now part of it might be out of commission too.

The timing is… let's call it suspicious. 

Before the ceasefire was signed, Iran explicitly threatened to hit this exact pipeline if the U.S. went after Iranian power plants. Then the ceasefire happens. And the pipeline gets hit anyway.

Who did it? Nobody knows yet. 

But if it turns out to be Iran, that two-week ceasefire could become a two-day ceasefire real fast.

And speaking of Iran and creative infrastructure moves…

The Financial Times is also reporting that Iran wants to charge a $1-per-barrel toll on any oil tanker passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

But they don't want dollars. They want Bitcoin.

Source: @WatcherGuru

The logic being: digital payments can't be traced or frozen the way traditional bank transfers can, which matters a lot when you're a country buried in sanctions.

We didn't have "Iran sets up a BTC toll booth in the middle of the ocean" on our BTC adoption bingo card…

But that's kind of the theme of the day: crypto keeps showing up in rooms it wasn't invited to.

Including, apparently, the White House…

3 BIG PIECES OF NEWS YOU MISSED TODAY (P2) 🗞️

The Council of Economic Advisers (basically the President's in-house economics team) published a weighty report today…

Source: White House

And it takes a sledgehammer to the banking industry's main argument against stablecoin yield.

ICYMI: banks have been lobbying hard to ban crypto companies from passing stablecoin yield on to their users.

Bank of America's big scary number? If stablecoins start paying yield, $6.6T in deposits could flee the banking system. 

That stat has been everywhere, and it's the backbone of the case to ban yield in the CLARITY Act.

So the White House ran the actual model and found:

• Banning yield increases bank lending by just $2.1B (that's 0.02% of total U.S. bank loans, aka: a rounding error).

• Large banks capture 76% of that tiny gain, community banks get the scraps.

• The ban costs consumers $800M in lost benefits.

• For every $1 of lending gained, $6.60 in consumer benefit gets sacrificed.

Even under the most extreme stress-test assumptions, the model only produces $531B in additional lending. 

Still nowhere near Bank of America's $6.6T doomsday number. 

The report's own summary line was essentially: banning yield does almost nothing to protect bank lending, while torching the consumer benefits of competitive returns.

I.e. this…

Source: Giphy

Quite a day. 

Iran wants Bitcoin tolls, Saudi pipelines are getting droned hours after a ceasefire, and the White House is quietly siding with stablecoin holders over banks.

Crypto's having a weird week.

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

What if a bank app and crypto wallet had a baby? You’d get Brighty which is a money app that lets you use crypto and regular fiat money together without transferring funds.*

Water is wet, insiders will bet: A trio of accounts on Polymarket made more than $600,000 on U.S./Iran ceasefire markets.

Chainalysis: Stablecoin volumes could hit $1.5 quadrillion by 2035.

The AI advantage you can’t copy: And ol' Zuck already has it...

The moment is here. Midnight, the fourth generation blockchain designed for real world adoption, is officially live.*

*this is sponsored content.

👉 Get started here

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @alifarhat79

Source: @naiivememe

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that helps you stay rational when the headlines… aren’t.

​Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• ✍️ “A whole civilization will die tonight.”

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Bitcoin to $95K? 3 Signals Pointing to a Major Move w/ Matt Hougan & Ryan Rasmussen.

• 🍪 Stablecoins are at ~$300B today.

Aligned is a full-stack infrastructure suite that lets businesses launch, operate, and scale on Ethereum. Join the whitelist on their campaign page.

Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Trade today with Milk Road Swap.

“A WHOLE CIVILIZATION WILL DIE TONIGHT”

Look, we've been writing about the Iran situation a lot lately. 

And honestly? We'd love to talk about literally anything else.

But we can't. Because… 

Source: Giphy

The President of the United States posted this on Truth Social:

"A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will."

So yeah. We're writing about Iran again.

Quick context for anyone who missed it: 

We put out a full Macro PRO report on the current Iran trajectory this past Sunday (click here to read it) - but here's a speed-run version of what you need to know right now:

The Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed. Pre-war, 20M barrels per day flowed through it. Now, virtually nothing.

Brent crude oil (the global benchmark for oil prices) has been zig-zagging between the "headwind zone" ($90-100) and the "stagflation zone" ($100-120).

Meaning: high enough to cause real economic pain, but not yet at the $120+ levels where serious recession fears kick in.

Source: TradingView

One of the (many) issues here is that it's not like there's a warehouse full of barrels waiting to ship the moment things reopen. 

That oil was never pumped. It just… doesn't exist.

The core concern being: 

The longer this drags on → the longer the recovery → the more overall pain.

Which brings us back to that post…

“A WHOLE CIVILIZATION WILL DIE TONIGHT” (P2) 🤦‍♂️

Here's the full Truth Social post from Trump:

Source: @FoxNews

That is un-hinged. Even by Trump’s standards.

And pushes (fly kicks?) us further toward ‘dragging on longer’ territory when it comes to the Iranian conflict.

Thankfully, ‘saying’ and ‘doing’ are two very different things when it comes to Trump.

The general consensus right now is that this is yet another case of TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out). 👇

Source: @ces921

And while we tend to agree - here's the god’s honest truth: 

At the end of the day, we have no idea which way this will go.

Nobody does.

And anyone who says they do with any sort of certainty is either wrong, delusional, or Donald Trump himself.

… ok, so if the takeaway is ‘who the hell knows’ - why are we even talking about this?

Because whether Trump acts or TACOs - this situation has a deadline measured in hours, not weeks. 

And the implications for risk assets (crypto very much included) have the potential to be significant.

If he acts, expect pain across the board - oil spikes, equities dump, and crypto gets caught in the risk-off wave.

If he backs down, a short relief rally is on the cards - but likely not one that will have much effect beyond the next couple of days, as the TACO trade is likely already priced in. 

(We’d need REAL de-escalation to genuinely see any lasting effects beyond this week.)

Either way, you should be watching tonight.

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

The moment is here. Midnight, the fourth generation blockchain designed for real world adoption, is officially live.*

Stablecoins are at ~$300B today. They could easily hit $1-2T "if not more" according to the Solana Foundation.

Human shield: Iranian civilians are creating human chains around bridges and energy infrastructure.

“Wartime” economic data is trickling in: What does the war mean for the U.S. economy?

What if a bank app and crypto wallet had a baby? You’d get Brighty which is a money app that lets you use crypto and regular fiat money together without transferring funds.*

*this is sponsored content.

Join the whitelist on their campaign page.

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @boldleonidas

Source: @ToolySOL

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that keeps you informed without stealing your whole afternoon.

​Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• ✍️ What we’re watching this week.

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: The ONLY 2 Catalysts That Matter for Bitcoin Right Now w/ John Gillen.

• 🍪 Clarity Act failure risks U.S. crypto lead.

Nexo is back in the U.S. - and new clients get 30 days of Wealth Club Premier perks! Higher yields, lower borrowing rates, and crypto cashback - start here.

Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Trade today with Milk Road Swap.

WHAT WE’RE WATCHING THIS WEEK 👀

Every Monday morning, the Milk Road team jumps on a call to figure out what the hell is happening in the world and what it means for your money.

And as always, we're letting you eavesdrop. 

Here's what we're seeing right now…

The overarching theme: we’re stuck in a loop.

Source: Giphy

If you've been paying attention to the Iran situation, Mondays have developed a pattern. A very predictable, very annoying pattern.

It goes like this: 

• Ceasefire talks happen. 

• Oil dips. 

• Futures go green. 

• Everyone gets hopeful. 

• Then, a few hours later, Iran rejects the terms. 

• Markets reverse. 

• Rinse. Repeat.

Our macro social manager, Archie, laid it out: 

"Just a typical Monday. What happened for the last 31 days is happening today."

The market buys into the hope. And every week, the hope gets pulled out from under it like a tablecloth at a magic show. 

… except the dishes don't stay on the table.

It was at this point in the conversation that John, our in-house macro analyst, decided to scare the sh*t out of us, in true John fashion:

One week of disruption? Not a big deal. Two weeks? Manageable. One month? That's a problem. And we're past one month.

We're now moving from what was roughly a 500M barrel oil shortage toward a billion barrel shortfall. That's a billion barrels of oil that simply won't get pumped, won't get shipped, and will vanish from the global economy.

Gas is back at $7 in California. There's power rationing in parts of the world. And John's take is that the U.S. is only just now about to feel the first real impacts.

Some analysts - like Andreas from Real Vision - are floating the idea that Iran will just run the Strait of Hormuz like a toll road, gradually letting more ships through until things normalize. 

Source: @AndreasSteno

But John's not buying it:

“I like and respect him (Andreas). He's a great analyst. I think he's underestimating this.”

"We killed their leadership again this weekend. They attacked desalination plants in Kuwait with drones. That feels more like escalation than de-escalation to me."

The honest answer from the team? Nobody knows what happens next. 

It’s another case of needing to "hurry up and wait."

Which brings us to crypto…

WHAT WE’RE WATCHING THIS WEEK (P2) 👀

Bitcoin's been flat for two months. 

And weirdly… that might be a good thing?

John's read: "It got so oversold there's nowhere else to go but bounce. It's just me and the cockroaches and I don't even know where the sell button is."

The one thing the team all agrees actually matters? The CLARITY Act. 

If that gets through, it could flip the mood (and the market).

Meanwhile, the risks aren't just macro.

Drift (a decentralized trading protocol on Solana) got hit with a $270M exploit last week:

Source: @DriftProtocol

And this wasn't some anonymous code hack - it was a six-month social engineering operation. 

A group apparently posed as a legitimate quant trading team, built a real relationship with the Drift team, pitched themselves as wanting to build on the protocol, shared progress through Telegram… 

And somewhere in there, they slipped a malicious app to the team through Apple's TestFlight (a tool developers use to share pre-release versions of apps).

If you downloaded it and had sensitive info on your machine? They had access.

The scariest part? Everything these attackers did - building relationships, sharing early builds through Telegram, etc.? It’s not an uncommon practice in crypto. 

Other teams could be compromised the same way and not even know it yet.

Source: @laurashin

So where does all of this leave us?

Geopolitics? Uncertain. Oil? Scary. Crypto? Flat. Security? Under threat.

Not exactly a feel-good Monday. But John closed the call on an uplifting note.

How? By getting biblical on us. Literally. 

John quoted six words from the Book of Proverbs: "Buy the truth, and sell it not."

70% of his portfolio is in Bitcoin and Ethereum. The rest is cash and a few concentrated bets. No overtrading. No chasing. Just conviction.

"The more trades I make," he said, "the more likely I am to have human error screw it up."

In a week where everything feels uncertain, there's something grounding about that. 

Know what you own. Know why you own it. And don't let the noise shake you out.

And on that note… we'll see you tomorrow.

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

What if a bank app and crypto wallet had a baby? You’d get Brighty which is a money app that lets you use crypto and regular fiat money together without transferring funds.*

Eeeep! Japan's 10-year bond yield just hit 2.425% - the highest it's been since 1997.

The AI Bubble just got real - and the market isn’t ready.

Let’s get ‘er done: CLARITY Act failure could see U.S. lose global crypto leadership, experts warn - DL News.

Higher earnings rates. Lower borrowing costs. Up to 0.5% cashback. New U.S. clients get these benefits on Nexo for 30 days.**

*this is sponsored content.
**this is partner content.

👉 Get started here

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @boldleonidas

Source: @naiivememe

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter hotter than your DMs after publicly calling the bottom.

Here’s a taste of this week’s menu:

• 🔥 Solana is quietly eating NASDAQ's lunch.

• 🥵 Satoshi's coins are a ticking time bomb.

• 🌶️ We’re witnessing the biggest oil shock in human history.

Outskill is hosting a hands-on bootcamp designed to make you an AI-expert in just 16 hours. Reserve your free spot now.

HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK 🔥

HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK (P2) 🔥

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

What if a bank app and crypto wallet had a baby? You’d get Brighty which is a money app that lets you use crypto and regular fiat money together without transferring funds.*

The growth behind Sky’s sUSDS is insane: $6.9B in supply right now - nearly 2x its closest competitor in the yield-generating stablecoin category!

Noice! The U.S. jobs market just had its strongest month since March 2025. 178,000 jobs added in March. The forecast was 65,000.

Where did everyone go? Crypto developer count just hit lows not seen since 2017.

Mind blown, brain leaking. On the Virtuals protocol, there are already 18,000+ AI agents deployed with 3,000 of them actively earning revenue.*

*this is sponsored content.

Reserve your free spot now.

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @boldleonidas

Source: @ToolySOL

GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter helping to make you the smartest person in your group chat.

​Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• ✍️ Are the best AI plays actually in crypto?

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: The "NASDAQ of the Future": How Solana is Winning the Institutional Crypto Race w/ Catherine Gu.

• 🍪 Most people holding stablecoins are leaving money on the table.

Midnight is a fourth generation blockchain that just launched last week. Check out their launch announcement here.

Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Trade today with Milk Road Swap.

THE BEST AI INVESTMENT MIGHT BE HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT 🤫

AI is the hottest trade on the planet right now. 

Valuations are stretched, everyone and their grandma owns Nvidia, and most of the obvious plays are priced to perfection - or well past it.

So you're essentially stuck paying premium prices and hoping there's still room to run.

Which got us thinking... what if the smartest AI bet isn't an AI stock at all?

Here's the angle - and you already know this part, so we'll keep it brief: 

AI agents need fast settlement times, low fees, programmable money, and 24/7 uptime to operate at peak velocity/efficiency. 

Traditional financial rails can't give them that (we're talking days to settle, hundreds of dollars in fees, closed on weekends). Blockchains can.

And if you believe AI agents are going to be the next big cohort of internet users, then DeFi and crypto could be key to expressing that thesis - at a discount.

Because right now, the market is pricing these two sides of the same coin very differently.

AI stocks are trading at premium multiples. Investors have already priced in massive adoption, revenue growth, the whole enchilada… 

Meanwhile, crypto just got crushed. 👇

Source: TradingView

So here's what the market might be missing: 

Both sides are connected by the same catalyst. 

The explosion of AI agents doesn't just benefit AI companies. It benefits the infrastructure that those agents will actually use to move money, execute trades, and settle transactions.

One side of that trade is beloved and expensive. The other is hated and cheap. 

(Classic mispricing?)

Now picture what this actually looks like in practice…

THE BEST AI INVESTMENT MIGHT BE HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT (P2) 🤫

Imagine millions of AI agents operating autonomously onchain: 

Swapping tokens. Lending capital. Settling payments with each other. 

Not on some distant timeline - this is the direction things are already heading.

What happens to protocol revenue when a tidal wave of new, non-human users starts generating transaction volume 24/7/365? 

What happens to TVL (aka the amount of capital sitting inside DeFi protocols) when AI agents start parking and deploying capital at machine speed?

It's a usage explosion. 👇

Source: PrecedenceResearch

And the downstream effects on the tokens and protocols that facilitate all that activity could be enormous.

Of course, this isn't a slam dunk. 

We'd be doing you dirty if we didn't flag the risks:

• Regulatory uncertainty is still a wild card. 

• AI agent adoption timelines could be slower than anyone expects. 

• And crypto volatility is its own beast, regardless of how good the thesis is. 

Good narratives don't always translate to good short-term price action.

(So eyes wide open on this one.)

Source: Drafthouse

But the core idea is pretty simple: 

Instead of buying more of what everyone already owns at crazy valuations, you could get ahead of a user base that nobody's really modeling yet.

AI agents that need to compete at the highest levels of operating efficiency and velocity will go wherever the rails are fastest and cheapest. 

And those rails are onchain.

Top DeFi protocols and AI-focused blockchain ecosystems might just be the discount aisle for a high-conviction AI thesis right now. 

(Sometimes the best hiding spots are the obvious ones.)

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

Mind blown, brain leaking. On the Virtuals protocol, there are already 18,000+ AI agents deployed with 3,000 of them actively earning revenue.*

Damn dawg! Most people holding stablecoins are leaving money on the table. Like, a lot of money. $11B a year, to be specific.

Woah! The biggest construction race in American history just got a reality check and the gap between promise and progress is staggering.

Hyper-Bitcoinization: what does it actually look like?

Higher earnings rates. Lower borrowing costs. Up to 0.5% cashback. New U.S. clients get these benefits on Nexo for 30 days.**

*this is sponsored content.
**this is partner content.

Check out their launch announcement here.

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @boldleonidas

Source: @ToolySOL

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that turns “WTF is happening?” into “Ahh, got it”.

It’s Thursday - which means Tomas is walking us through everything we need to know about macro right now!

​Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• ✍️ The energy supply squeeze continues.

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: The ETF Multiplier Effect: Why Bitcoin Could Still 10-20x From Here w/ Cory Klippsten.

• 🍪 Coinbase just launched the x402 Foundation.

Midnight is a fourth generation blockchain that just launched last week. Check out their launch announcement here.

Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Trade today with Milk Road Swap.

THE BIGGEST ENERGY SUPPLY SQUEEZE IN HISTORY CONTINUES 🛢️

The Iran war rages on, and the vital Strait of Hormuz waterway remains closed.

This is a very bad environment for the global economy.

If this situation doesn’t change, we’ll likely see meaningfully higher energy prices, widespread physical energy shortages, and intensifying economic damage.

Over time, negative economic effects will likely ripple across the world, starting in the most heavily affected areas (Asia, Africa, some parts of Europe) and spreading further.

So what’s going on, what does it mean, and when will it end?

Let’s take a look…

So, what’s the latest with the war?

Here’s a rapid-fire round-up of all the important noises that have been made this week, on both sides of the conflict.

If you can make any sense of all this - let me know…

• The Islamic Republic has “the necessary will to end this war,” but only with “guarantees”, according to Iranian officials.

• Those “guarantees” may include assurances to prevent further fighting, war reparations, and sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.

• President Trump said the U.S. is “not going to be there too much longer,” adding that the Strait would open “automatically”.

• Later, he said he would leave it to other nations to resolve issues with the Strait of Hormuz.

• Then, Trump claimed Iran wanted a ceasefire, but in the same post, he said he would “blast Iran into oblivion” until the Strait is reopened.

• Iran said Trump’s comments about a ceasefire were “false” and “baseless”.

• New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence has determined that Iran is not willing to engage in negotiations.

• Meanwhile, reports suggest that more than 50,000 American troops are now deployed in the Middle East, potentially foreshadowing a ground invasion.

• And Iranian officials say they have 1,000,000 troops ready to deploy in the event of a ground invasion.

Confused? Yeah - so am I.

What are the odds?

So what in the world is going on? Let’s take a whirlwind tour of Polymarket to get a sense of what the consensus view is currently.

According to speculators on Polymarket, there is a 24% chance of a ceasefire by the end of April, rising to 45% by the end of May.

Source: Polymarket

There’s a 13% chance that Strait of Hormuz traffic returns to normal by the end of April.

Source: Polymarket

There’s a 63% chance that U.S. forces will enter Iran by the end of April.

Source: Polymarket

Plus, an 89% chance that the Iranian regime survives U.S. military strikes.

Source: Polymarket

So, what is Polymarket currently saying?

Essentially:

• America likely initiates a ground invasion of Iran in April.

• The Strait of Hormuz likely doesn’t return to normal for another month at the very least.

• A ceasefire is some way off, potentially not happening until the summer.

• The Iranian regime is likely to survive the war - however long it lasts.

So what does it all mean for markets?

THE BIGGEST ENERGY SUPPLY SQUEEZE IN HISTORY CONTINUES (P2) 🛢️

Investors have been getting used to TACO headlines since Trump took office last year.

(TACO = Trump Always Chickens Out.)

This refers to several occasions in the past year when Trump has initiated a move or a policy, usually tariff-related, and then quickly walked back on that move after a negative market reaction.

But we’re no longer in TACO headline world anymore.

We’re in a new world. The world of the NACHO headline.

Not Actually Changing Hormuz Opening.

The Strait of Hormuz is the most important thing for markets. As long as it’s closed, at least 10% of the world’s oil supply is killed off with every passing day.

Every day, the total energy shortfall stacks up higher and higher.

And it really doesn’t matter what Trump says, if the Strait is still closed, risk asset markets probably won’t be happy.

This is the one thing.

And Trump doesn’t appear to be able to provide a fix for the Strait issue, at least not yet. We’ve seen this dynamic play out three times in the past week.

A potential TACO headline emerges, raising hopes of de-escalation and prompting a positive market reaction.

Until investors realise that it’s actually just a NACHO headline, there’s no imminent re-opening of the Strait, and the market fades away again.

On Tuesday, we did see an impressive rally across risk assets.

In particular, the S&P 500 shot up 2.8% in a single day, its best daily rally since May 2025.

Source: TradingView

But this particular surge was largely “mechanical” in nature.

It was fueled by positioning dynamics and month-end/quarter-end rotation, including a massive pension fund rebalancing involving $34 billion in equity purchases, the eighth largest in history.

Source: Goldman Sachs

So it’s tough to draw too many conclusions from the price action we saw on Tuesday.

Brent crude oil continues to settle above $100 - the “stagflation zone”.

Source: TradingView

And risk assets, like equities and Bitcoin, just continue to move in the opposite direction to oil.

Source: TradingView

Oil will likely continue to move higher over time as long as the Strait remains closed.

So, we’re back to the same issue - just reopen the damn Strait.

This energy supply shock has put us on the path towards a serious global growth slowdown/recession.

This path could change course, but probably only if/when the Strait of Hormuz reopens.

And the longer it stays closed, the more damaging the economic consequences will be.

Crude oil settling where it is now (around $100) is already quite a bad environment - but moving higher and remaining above $120 would be a lot worse.

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

$213M was just drained from a DEX on Solana. If you're building in DeFi, you can avoid these types of exploits with Chaos Labs.**

Bye bye scammers: X is about to auto-lock your account the moment you post about crypto for the first time.

Dream team: Coinbase just launched the x402 Foundation - and there are some BIG names involved!

The Strait is closed… unless you have a couple million stablecoins to spare.

Mind blown, brain leaking. On the Virtuals protocol, there are already 18,000+ AI agents deployed with 3,000 of them actively earning revenue.*

*this is sponsored content.
**this is partner content.

Check out their launch announcement here.

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @ToolySOL

Source: @ToolySOL

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter delivering two pieces of news to you today. One real. One as fake as a Discord “support agent”.

​Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• ✍️ 2 big pieces of news. 1 real. 1 fake.

• 🍪 Here's how the U.S. can reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Okara’s AI CMO runs 7 specialised AI agents in parallel across multiple growth channels. Get your AI CMO now.

Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Trade today with Milk Road Swap.

2 PIECES OF BASE NEWS DROPPED. ONE REAL. ONE FAKE. 🤨

Base just published its 2026 game plan for the world to see.

And while everyone was digesting that…

A leaked codebase had crypto Twitter convinced that one of the biggest AI companies in the world was quietly building crypto payments into its product.

Turns out… not so much. 

But shoot, I'm getting ahead of myself - first, the official stuff.

Base dropped a full 2026 Mission, Vision, and Strategy doc, and if it ended at the 2025 recap alone, that would be impressive enough:

• $17T in stablecoin volume, across 26 currencies, and 17 countries.

• They became the #1 onchain venue for Bitcoin spot trading.

• The Base App went live in 140+ countries.

• And they funded over 50 teams through their builder program (called Base Batches).

Source: @base

The 2026 plan? It boils down to three big bets:

1. Bring every major asset class onchain

Stocks, commodities, prediction markets, perpetuals (which are basically futures contracts with no expiry date). All of it is tradable 24/7 with sub-second settlement and near-zero fees.

2. Scale payments and stablecoins

Think: privacy features, smarter wallet infrastructure, and turning the Base App into the easiest way to spend, borrow against, and earn yield on your USDC.

3. They want to be the home base (pun intended) for builders

This means rolling out tools like AI-native smart accounts, open-source developer access, and x402 payment standards.

Now, x402 is worth knowing about because it's at the center of yesterday's other big story…

2 PIECES OF BASE NEWS DROPPED. ONE REAL. ONE FAKE. (P2) 🤨

In case you're new to the agentic payment rails game: 

x402 is an open payment protocol (developed by Coinbase) that lets AI agents make payments using stablecoins. 

It showed up in Base’s strategy doc - and then (seemingly) in another BIG document drop…

Over 500,000 lines of Claude's source code (Anthropic's AI assistant) leaked online yesterday, and people combing through it found multiple references to x402 scattered across it. 

Crypto Twitter went nuts. The implication being that Anthropic was already wiring up its AI to use Coinbase's crypto payment protocol.

Source: Giphy

The post with the most popular mirror of the code got 315,000 views. The repo got 8,100 forks…

One problem: it was planted.

A forensic analysis comparing multiple mirrors of the leaked code found that the two clean extractions (pulled straight from the original source map) had zero x402 references. 

None. 

The only mirror that contained x402 was the most popular one - uploaded by the same person who also snuck in their own separate tool.

Source: Github

“It's real code. It's just not Anthropic's.”

And by the time anyone noticed? 

Anthropic's DMCA takedown had already nuked the repo and all 8,100 forks, which made cross-referencing basically impossible.

The takeaway from both stories combined:

• The Base 2026 strategy is real, and it's ambitious. x402 as a protocol is real too - it's just not secretly baked into Claude.

• AI agents using crypto payment rails is still very much the direction things are heading. Base is building for that future explicitly.

• When source code leaks and everyone's racing to post the hottest take first, it pays to check which mirror you're actually reading (easier said than done though - we fell for it too).

Long story longer: the real stuff is exciting enough on its own. 

We don't need the fan fiction to be true.

… though, cards on the table: we definitely want it to come true.

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

Mind blown, brain leaking. On the Virtuals protocol, there are already 18,000+ AI agents deployed with 3,000 of them actively earning revenue.*

Kharg Island: Here's how the U.S. can reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

War? What war?! U.S. manufacturing just posted its strongest reading in 3 years.

The hidden robotaxi winner - Hint: it’s not Tesla or Waymo...

The moment is here. Midnight, the fourth generation blockchain designed for real world adoption, is officially live.*

*this is sponsored content.

Get your AI CMO now.

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @boldleonidas

Source: @ToolySOL

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

GM. This is Milk Road, the newsletter that upgrades your crypto IQ in 5-minute daily increments.

​Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• ✍️ Google says BTC is hackable by 2029.

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Crypto’s Next Bull Run Will Be Built on THIS (Clarity Act Explained) w/ Jake Chervinsky.

• 🍪 Corporate treasurers are about to go fully onchain.

Incogni helps to remove people's private information online. Sign up with code MILKROAD for 58% off.

Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Trade today with Milk Road Swap.

GOOGLE JUST MOVED THE CRYPTO QUANTUM THREAT FROM "SOMEDAY" TO "2029" 📆

Google dropped a whitepaper yesterday that has the entire crypto world talking/panicking.

It was co-authored with the Ethereum Foundation - and the core message is simple: 

The quantum computer needed to crack the encryption protecting almost every crypto wallet just got way smaller and way cheaper than anyone previously assumed.

Source: @projecteleven

Let's break it down - starting with how crypto security works right now… 

You've got a private key (the key to your front door) and a public key (your home address, which anyone can see). 

The math connecting them is so insanely hard that no normal computer could ever reverse-engineer your private key from your public key.

That's the whole promise.

But a quantum computer can run something called Shor's algorithm (a shortcut that exploits quantum physics) to do exactly that - turning your public key into your private key, and allowing hackers with sufficient quantum compute power to walk right in and take your coins.

Now, the big question has always been: 

How powerful does that quantum computer need to be?

Until this week, the best estimates said you'd need around 10M physical qubits (qubits are the basic processing units of a quantum computer, kind of like transistors in a regular chip). 

Ten million felt safely far away (like, decades-out - Google's own Willow chip only runs 105 qubits)...

But Google just slashed that number to fewer than 500,000 qubits (a 20x reduction) - while other research is even more aggressive with its estimates:

Source: @projecteleven

We just went from "the finish line is on another planet" to "you can squint and see it from here."

So what's actually at risk?

GOOGLE JUST MOVED THE CRYPTO QUANTUM THREAT FROM "SOMEDAY" TO "2029" (P2) 📆

About 6.9M BTC have their public keys already visible on the blockchain right now. 

Old wallets. Reused addresses. Coins from the early days.

The biggest name on that list? 

Satoshi Nakamoto.

Source: Arkm

Satoshi's Bitcoin sits in an old wallet format called P2PK (Pay-to-Public-Key). That format puts the full public key right on the blockchain the moment coins are received. 

In plain English: modern wallets hide the key behind a second layer of math. Satoshi's don't.

And here's the kicker… 

No software upgrade can fix that retroactively. 

Satoshi himself would need to log in and move those coins to a new quantum-safe wallet. If he's gone (which most people believe), those coins are permanently exposed. 

(A $70B+ honeypot, sitting onchain, waiting.)

There's already a draft proposal from Bitcoin security researcher Jameson Lopp to freeze coins in vulnerable wallet types after a grace period. 

Essentially:

Source: Yarn

… that would include Satoshi's stash and challenge Bitcoin's core principle that private keys = ownership. 

(As you can imagine, that debate is... heated.)

The broader point we’re trying to drive home with all of this is:

Before this paper, the quantum threat felt like something for the next generation to worry about. The kind of thing you wave off at dinner parties.

But now, Google's own internal roadmap targets useful quantum systems by 2029. 

… ok, so how worried should we be?

While this is a real risk, it’s not an imminent one. No quantum computer exists today that can do this. We likely still have years. 

And fixes do exist:

• Post-quantum cryptography (new math that even quantum computers can't crack) is already being tested by Ethereum, Algorand, Solana, and others. 

• Bitcoin has successfully upgraded before (SegWit, Taproot), and can again.

• The Ethereum Foundation co-authored this paper, which tells you they're taking it seriously.

Our guess at how it all shakes out? 

This forces the industry to upgrade its armor now - while there's still time.

As a result, crypto gets stronger.

THIS WEEK ON MILK ROAD 🥛 

📆 April 1 at 10:00 a.m. ET.

We go live tomorrow with John, Melvin and Martin 🫡 Come ask them anything and get their take on what's next. Submit your questions using this form.

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

The moment is here. Midnight, the fourth generation blockchain designed for real world adoption, is officially live.*

Standard Chartered: Corporate treasurers are about to go fully onchain.

Jerome Powell: "Federal Government debt is growing substantially faster than our GDP. It will not end well if we don't do something fairly soon.”

Bye TACO, hello NACHO: Is Trump losing his grip on markets?

Mind blown, brain leaking. On the Virtuals protocol, there are already 18,000+ AI agents deployed with 3,000 of them actively earning revenue.*

*this is sponsored content.

Remove yourself from the web (with 58% off).

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @boldleonidas

Source: @ToolySOL

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that delivers “aha” moments every damn day.

​Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• ✍️ What we’re watching this week.

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Why This “Boring” Crypto Market Is a Generational Trap w/ John Gillen.

• 🍪 Two-thirds of crypto investors unaware of new IRS tax rules.

Okara’s AI CMO runs 7 specialised AI agents in parallel across multiple growth channels. Get your AI CMO now.

Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Trade today with Milk Road Swap.

WHAT WE'RE WATCHING THIS WEEK 👀

Every Monday morning, the Milk Road team hops on a call.

No scripts. No teleprompters. Just a bunch of people who stare at charts and headlines for a living, arguing about what matters this week.

Here's what came up this morning - the stuff we're excited about, the stuff we're nervous about, and the stuff keeping us up at night…

Crypto is stuck in a holding pattern:

BTC has been ranging - bouncing between the same levels like a pinball that's lost its momentum. March gave us a light bullish bounce, but nothing convincing. 

No breakout. No breakdown. Just… grinding sideways.

The team's base case? April weakness is probably coming.

But there's one thing that could change the whole picture: The CLARITY Act.

(Aka: the comprehensive rulebook for crypto in the U.S., that will give institutions and companies the green light to invest/build in crypto.)

If it passes out of the Senate committee, John thinks it could "break the market higher" by lifting the massive cloud of regulatory uncertainty hanging over the space.

The problem? The market still has the odds of it passing into law this year at roughly 50/50. Literally a coin flip.

Source: Kalshi

So for now, we wait. Everyone's watching for the flip - that one catalyst that confirms whether we move higher or roll over.

But crypto wasn't the topic that dominated our call this morning.

The Strait of Hormuz was…

WHAT WE'RE WATCHING THIS WEEK (P2) 👀

Quick geography lesson: 

The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway between Iran and Oman, where a huge chunk of the world's energy, chemicals, and raw materials flow every single day.

And right now, it's effectively closed.

The ongoing Iran conflict has choked shipping through the strait, and oil prices keep climbing. 

For a while, traders were banking on what they call the "TACO" trade - Trump Always Chickens Out. The idea being that Trump would eventually de-escalate once markets sold off hard enough.

That happened - Markets sold off and Trump chickened out. But it didn’t work.

So now there's a new acronym floating around: "NACHO":

Source: @agnostoxxx

And this goes beyond just oil:

‘Cause sure, roughly 21% of the world's petroleum and 21% of global liquefied natural gas (LNG) flows through the strait… 

But it also carries nearly half of the world's urea exports - a nitrogen-based fertilizer and one of the most important inputs in global food production. 

About 30-35% of all traded nitrogen fertilizers move through this chokepoint!

• If that supply stays cut off, fertilizer prices spike. 

• When fertilizer prices spike, crop prices spike. 

• When crop prices spike, import-dependent countries start hoarding. 

And when hoarding starts… John put it bluntly: 

There's a "non-zero chance of a lot of people dying". Cascading food shortages in vulnerable regions. Real human cost.

On top of that, Tomas flagged something almost nobody is talking about - helium. Qatar produces roughly 30-33% of the world's helium supply.

Helium is a critical input for semiconductor manufacturing (used in cooling systems and chip etching). With Qatar's exports curtailed, the AI and chip boom just picked up another risk factor.

Food, energy, and chips. All under pressure. All at the same time.

And the scary part? Even if the strait reopens tomorrow, you can't just flip a switch.

Restarting production and loading tankers takes weeks to months. Damaged terminals, pipelines, and processing plants could take years to fully repair. 

Skilled workers leave. Maintenance gets deferred. Secondary supply chains break down in ways that compound on each other.

John closed the conversation paraphrasing something that Rory Johnston (Twitter’s favorite oil quant and a guest on tomorrow’s Milk Road Macro show) has been repeating:

"No one is grasping just how bad this is." 👇

Source: @Rory_Johnston

Long story longer: this touches everything.

Stay sharp out there. We'll see you tomorrow.

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

Mind blown, brain leaking. On the Virtuals protocol, there are already 18,000+ AI agents deployed with 3,000 of them actively earning revenue.*

Higher for longer: Powell just told Harvard students that tariffs could add 0.5%-1% to inflation, and that he's still laser-focused on getting to 2%.

This AI selloff makes no sense: Here's what the market is missing…

Eeeep! Two-thirds of crypto investors unaware of new IRS tax rules that could cost them thousands of dollars, Coinbase and CoinTracker warn - DL News.

Higher earnings rates. Lower borrowing costs. Up to 0.5% cashback. New U.S. clients get these benefits on Nexo for 30 days.**

*this is sponsored content.
**this is partner content.

Get your AI CMO now.

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @naiivememe

Source: @ToolySOL

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter hotter than a Dubai sidewalk in the middle of summer.

Here’s a taste of this week’s menu:

• 🔥 Software is a dead asset.

• 🥵 The sneaky catalyst nobody's talking about.

• 🌶️ Tesla's building its own chip empire (and it's not even close to priced in).

Kalshi is one of the largest prediction markets that allows users to trade on the outcome of real world events. Sign up here for a free $10 and start trading.

HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK 🔥

HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK (P2) 🔥

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

Whether it’s crypto, sports or even politics, there’s a market for almost everything on Kalshi. Sign up here for a free $10 and start trading.*

John Gillen: Why do rising bond yields terrify governments? It's markets voting with real money.

Nice! You can now earn yield backed by GPUs sitting in data centers.

Crypto backed mortgages anyone? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac just got told to count crypto as a mortgage asset!

The Milk Man is hitting the road. Catch us at EthCC from March 30 - April 2 and come grab a beer. Join the telegram group here.

*this is sponsored content.

Sign up here for a free $10 and start trading.

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @boldleonidas

Source: @ToolySOL

GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that turns overwhelm into understanding.

​Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• ✍️ 3 pieces of positive news.

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Why Ethereum Might Be the Most Mispriced Asset in Crypto Right Now w/ David Duong.

• 🍪 Coinbase’s AI agent protocol has already done 100M transactions.

Kalshi is one of the largest prediction markets that allows users to trade on the outcome of real world events. Sign up here for a free $10 and start trading.

Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Trade today with Milk Road Swap.

3 REASONS TO CLOSE YOUR LAPTOP WITH A SMILE THIS WEEKEND 😊

It's Friday.

And depending on what news feeds you've been plugged into - this week may have felt like a drag. 

Iranian-U.S. tensions are yet to ease, the Strait of Hormuz is still closed, and BTC is back in the $65k range…

Source: TradingView

But while we’ve all been buried in geopolitics, three things happened in the crypto world that flew under the radar. 

Consider this your palate cleanser before the weekend:

1. Your Bitcoin can finally help you buy a house

The FHFA (the regulator that oversees $12T in U.S. housing finance) just told Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the two government-backed giants that process the majority of American home loans) to start counting crypto as a qualifying asset for mortgages.

Before this, you could have been sitting on $500k in Bitcoin and it wouldn't move the needle on your mortgage application. As far as lenders were concerned, it didn't exist.

That changes now. 

Borrowers with significant crypto holdings can use them toward qualifying for a home loan, without having to sell a single token.

H.U.G.E.

Source: @MorePerfectUS

And it didn't take long for someone to build on that…

3 REASONS TO CLOSE YOUR LAPTOP WITH A SMILE THIS WEEKEND (P2) 😊

Love crypto and real estate but don’t want to sacrifice one for the other?

Say no more…

2. Coinbase just launched crypto-backed mortgages through Better Mortgage

You put up crypto (like BTC or USDC) as collateral for your down payment → your portfolio stays intact → you get a house.

This means that long-term holders who have been sitting on big gains, but couldn't touch them without triggering a massive tax bill, now have a path to homeownership through Coinbase.

… and all the legacy banks that spent the last five years telling customers their crypto "doesn't count" as real wealth now have some explaining to do.

Source: @coinbase

Ok, so crypto is earning its stripes in the housing system…

But what about the market itself?

3. The bottom might be in for crypto according to Goldman Sachs

Goldman is a $3T institution, and one of the most cautious, compliance-heavy banks on the planet.

So when they say "prices may have bottomed" publicly, it’s not some random hopium-fueled guess - these mf’ers have quant desks, client flows, and macro overlays backing their view.

Source: @BitcoinMagazine

Their analysts flagged that certain crypto stocks now have "attractive setups" - which is Wall Street-speak for "we think this is cheap".

That said…

They're not calling a guaranteed floor - the word "may" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting in that sentence.

But coming from Goldman, "may have bottomed" is essentially a green light for their institutional clients (hedge funds, pension funds, family offices) to start looking again - all while the retail crowd is still scared.

And that gap between what retail feels and what institutions are actually doing? 

That's usually where the trade lives.

So there you have it. Three signals, all pointing in the same direction:

• Crypto is earning its stripes in the housing system. 

• Real products are being built on top of that recognition. 

• And the biggest bank on Wall Street is quietly telling its clients the worst might be over.

Not a bad way to head into the weekend.

NEXT WEEK ON MILK ROAD 🥛 

📆 April 1 at 10:00 a.m. ET.

We go live this Wednesday with John and Martin 🫡 Come ask them anything and get their take on what's next. Submit your questions using this form.

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

Whether it’s crypto, sports or even politics, there’s a market for almost everything on Kalshi. Sign up here for a free $10 and start trading.*

Woah, ok! Coinbase’s AI agent protocol has already done 100M transactions.

"Yeah, but": the two words killing institutional allocation, according to Bitwise.

Raoul Pal: The biggest disconnect in the world right now is centered on AI.

The Milk Man is hitting the road. Catch us at EthCC from March 30 - April 2 and come grab a beer. Join the Telegram group here.

*this is sponsored content.

Sign up here for a free $10 and start trading.

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @alifarhat79

Source: @ToolySOL

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

GM. This is Milk Road, ​​the crypto newsletter that gives you signal in a sea of noise.

It’s Thursday. You know what that means: 

Tomas is giving us a breakdown on everything we need to know about the current macro environment!

​Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• ✍️ What’s the latest with the Iran war?

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: The Shift From Crypto Cycles to Structural Growth.

• 🍪 How AI will change crypto.

Nexo is back in the U.S. - and new clients get 30 days of Wealth Club Premier perks! Higher yields, lower borrowing rates, and crypto cashback - start here.

Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Trade today with Milk Road Swap.

WHAT’S THE LATEST WITH THE IRAN WAR? 🤛

I covered the latest on the war in detail in today’s macro newsletter - but here’s the short story…

Beneath a mountain of headlines, there now appears to be “negotiations of a sort” happening between the two sides of the conflict, via third-party mediators.

America proposed a “15-point plan” for a ceasefire. Iranian officials then appeared to publicly reject that plan and proposed a “5-point plan” of their own.

Neither side appears to be close to agreeing to a deal at this point in time.

Meanwhile, thousands of elite U.S. troops are en route to the Middle East.

It looks likely that the U.S. might have to initiate a ground invasion of the strategically important Kharg Island if it wants to attempt to reopen the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping route by force.

Source: Bloomberg

Iranian officials are not very happy with this and have vowed significant escalations if the U.S. attempts a ground invasion.

Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, with hundreds of tankers clogged up and a huge chunk of the world’s energy supply still frozen.

And this is the most important thing for markets.

What does it all mean for asset markets?

Crude oil - the most important market in the world right now - continues to edge slowly upwards. Brent crude oil dipped lower earlier this week as hopes of a de-escalation were raised.

But it’s now pushing higher again, back into the “stagflation zone”.

Source: TradingView

We haven’t yet hit the “danger zone” at any point ($120+) - which is where commentary would likely shift from “serious macro drag” to “heightened global recession fears”.

Unfortunately, as long as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, it’s likely that crude oil and other energy prices will continue to creep up over time. With a massive gap in the global oil supply, growing larger with every day that passes, there’s simply not enough oil for everyone.

Trump administration officials are actively examining what a potential spike in oil prices as high as $200 a barrel would mean for the economy, according to Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 continues to trade in almost perfect inverse lockstep with oil:

• Oil up = stocks down.

• Oil down = stocks up.

Source: TradingView

Since the conflict began, risk asset markets have settled into a bit of a rhythm.

A “stair-step down” week-by-week.

For equities, more clearly, but also Bitcoin and crypto too, that rhythm has generally been:

• A gap lower to start the week. 

• “Dip buyers” emerge, often resulting in notable gains on Monday/Tuesday.

• Pessimism creeps back in as the week progresses, before a broad-based de-risking into the weekend.

Source: TradingView

This week, though, seems like it might be a little different….

WHAT’S THE LATEST WITH THE IRAN WAR? (P2) 🤛

The market hasn’t faded as much as in previous weeks, and equities have largely treaded water (so far at least - at the time of writing) after the Monday pop.

This change in dynamic might suggest that, despite all the noise, investors are focusing on the key signal that this week’s developments have sent. 

At face value, the Trump team seems more open to finding an “off-ramp” and is attempting to find a way of de-escalating the conflict.

That said, we still appear to be some way off a ceasefire, and kinetic action is continuing in the Middle East.

All the while, the Strait of Hormuz is still essentially impassable, and the impact of the energy price shock continues to mount.

In a note, JP Morgan’s market intel desk wrote:

“The thinking this week is that escalation is what will drive markets lower from here:

1. Attacks on energy infrastructure, especially Saudi oil production and refining.

2. U.S. boots on the ground or an attempt to use military force to reopen the Strait.

3. U.S./Israel targeting civilian infrastructure in Iran.

4. Any attacks on water supply in the region.

“Barring escalation, we expect markets to chop sideways, but it does seem more likely that we will get a decisive move shortly, either steps toward a ceasefire or another wave of escalation.”

Some people have been comparing the current risk-off environment to the “tariff tantrum” correction in April 2025.

But this current environment appears to be different from April 2025, from a retail investor perspective (non-professional investors).

Back then, retail traders jumped into the market and “bought the dip” amid the tariff chaos, correctly anticipating the Trump tariff U-turn and helping to form the rapid “V-bottom” in risk assets in early April.

However, this time, retail investor flows are waning, according to JP Morgan.

Retail dollars invested shrank 15% week-over-week - and have dropped 43% since the start of the conflict.

Source: JP Morgan

So, what happens next?

On the geopolitical front, nobody knows. I’m certainly not going to pretend that I do.

I think there’s still a lot of hope priced into both energy markets and risk asset markets.

That might be correctly placed hope - but it’s still hope nonetheless.

If the Strait of Hormuz remains closed for a prolonged period, we’re heading for a serious global growth slowdown/recession.

This is clear.

That is the path we are currently on.

Right now, markets are pricing in a high probability that this path changes, and soon.

This may be true - I don’t know - I have as much insight as anybody else on what will happen next with the war.

There are big incentives on both sides to wrap this war up quickly.

But the growing risk here is a looming “tipping point” when the market starts to lose hope of an imminent resolution.

There’s only so much “verbal jawboning” that can be done by U.S. officials before the market realizes this mess might not be ending soon.

And the longer the Strait remains closed, the more widespread and lasting the global economic damage will become.

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

Whether it’s crypto, sports or even politics, there’s a market for almost everything on Kalshi. Sign up here for a free $10 and start trading.*

How AI will change crypto: Raoul Pal realized he's been wildly wrong on crypto's TAM.

Huge! A $1B deployment just kicked off inside one of DeFi's biggest stablecoin ecosystems.

Brian Armstrong told his engineers: Try AI tools by end of week or explain yourself to him.

The Milk Man is hitting the road. Catch us at EthCC from March 30 - April 2 and come grab a beer. Join the telegram group here.

*this is sponsored content.

👉 Get started here

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @ToolySOL

Source: @ToolySOL

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

GM. This is Milk Road, your unfair advantage in a world of confusing headlines.

​Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• ✍️ Robots are shopping with crypto.

• 🍪 Hyperliquid now does more futures volume for TradFi than crypto.

Kalshi is one of the largest prediction markets that allows users to trade on the outcome of real world events. Sign up here for a free $10 and start trading.

Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Trade today with Milk Road Swap.

SO… IT HAPPENED. ROBOTS ARE SHOPPING AND PAYING WITH CRYPTO. 🛒

Last week, a new marketplace opened its doors, with over 60 services going up for sale.

But here's the thing… 

There's no glossy website to browse, no "add to cart" button, and no checkout page.

Because the customers aren't humans. They're AI agents. 

How’re they paying? Cards, stablecoins, and BTC via the Lightning Network (a faster, cheaper way to send BTC). All in a single step.

• Is the page ugly as sin? Yes. 

• Would I ever shop there? No.

• Does it matter? Not in the slightest.

Source: MPP

The craziest part is: this butt-ugly website may just be one of the clearest pictures I've seen yet of where crypto fits into the future of online shopping.

Noah Levine from a16z Crypto just laid out the whole thing in a piece titled "The Era of the Headless Merchant". 

And the numbers from week one alone are wild.

913 AI agents racked up over 34,000 transactions. 

Prices ranged from $0.003 (yes, three-tenths of a cent) all the way up to $35 per request. 

The agents were buying stuff like full-text searches across every SEC filing ever made, AI image generation across 600+ models, CAPTCHA solving (ironic, I know), and even getting physical letters printed and mailed from just a document and an address.

Source: MPP

So what exactly is a "headless merchant"?

Think of it like this…

• Old school commerce = a physical store with a cash register. 

• E-commerce = a website with a checkout page. 

• A headless merchant = no storefront at all. 

(Just a server sitting there with a menu of services and a price tag. And the only ones reading that menu are AI bots.)

The merchant doesn't need a logo, a conversion rate-optimized landing page, or a sales team. 

It just needs to work, be reliable, and have clear pricing that an agent can understand in milliseconds.

And this new format could well flip existing business models on their head…

SO… IT HAPPENED. ROBOTS ARE SHOPPING AND PAYING WITH CRYPTO. (P2) 🛒

Right now, most software companies charge you a monthly subscription. 

That model exists because it would be ridiculous to charge a human being three-tenths of a cent every time they use a feature. 

The overhead of billing, sign-ups, account management... it only makes sense if you bundle it all into a recurring fee.

AI agents don't have that problem. They can pay fractions of a cent, thousands of times a day, across dozens of different services, without ever making an account.

That means a business charging $0.003 per image generated or $0.01 per web scrape doesn't need to worry about free tiers, churn rates, or cancellation flows. It just needs to be good enough that when an agent scans its options, it gets picked.

No relationship. No retention strategy. Just: are you fast, cheap, and reliable? Cool, here's your money. 👇

Source: Imgflip

Now - here's where crypto becomes the main character…

We’ve harped on about it a lot recently - but it bears repeating:

These micro-transactions (we're talking sub-penny payments, thousands of times per day) aren't exactly what Visa and Mastercard were built for.

But stablecoins were practically designed for it. Fast settlement, tiny fees, no middleman needed.

The protocol powering this marketplace is called MPP (Machine Payments Protocol), built by Stripe and Tempo. It lets agents pay with cards OR crypto in one HTTP request (basically a few lines of code). 

The rails are live, the plumbing works - and Noah's big takeaway? 

The infrastructure isn't the bottleneck anymore. The opportunity now is in building the actual businesses that sit on top of these rails.

The next generation of companies might do away with homepages altogether, and instead just opt for an API endpoint (a URL that machines can talk to) and a price list.

Their only customers? 

Robots with wallets.

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

Higher earnings rates. Lower borrowing costs. Up to 0.5% cashback. New U.S. clients get these benefits on Nexo for 30 days.*

The lines continue to blur: apparently Hyperliquid now has MORE onchain futures volume for TradFi than its entire crypto book.

Role reversal: Gold is supposed to be the safe haven when geopolitical tensions spike... but BTC just moved up against gold.

The most dangerous bet in AI... and it could control everything.

Look out! We just launched a brand new page covering the best crypto trading terminals (spoiler: We think Genius is the best).*

*this is sponsored content.

Sign up here for a free $10 and start trading.

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @ToolySOL

Source: @naiivememe

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that's more addictive than refreshing your portfolio during a bull run.

​Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• ✍️ Bittensor. So hot right now.

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Bitcoin’s Next Move Hinges on THIS Date (April 15 Warning) w/ Matt Hougan & Ryan Rasmussen.

• 🍪 NYSE to launch 24/7 blockchain stock trading.

Nexo is back in the U.S. - and new clients get 30 days of Wealth Club Premier perks! Higher yields, lower borrowing rates, and crypto cashback - start here.

Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Trade today with Milk Road Swap.

BITTENSOR'S GOT THE BIGGEST NAMES IN TECH TALKING. BUT WHO’S PAYING? 💸

ICYMI: Bittensor is a decentralized AI network with its own token (TAO) - and it is having a MOMENT right now.

While most tokens/projects are suffering a narrative drought… 

It feels like everyone in the tech/crypto space is talking about Bittensor.

E.g. Jason Calacanis from the All-In Podcast helped to push TAO’s price up ~10% (bottom to top) in the span of ~8hrs last night, after he tweeted "$tao > $btc":

Source: TradingView

So what's got everyone so excited?

Of late, the main focus has been “Covenant-72B”, a 72-billion parameter AI model that was trained on Bittensor’s decentralized network.

No data center. No billion-dollar GPU cluster. 

Just 70+ independent contributors training it across regular internet infrastructure.

Chamath recently pitched it as "a pretty crazy technical accomplishment" to Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang, on the All-In Podcast - and got this response:

Source: @MilkRoad

Now, it’s worth flagging: 

The All-In crew isn't just cheerleading from the sidelines here. They've got chips on the table.

Chamath has publicly discussed investing in Bittensor… 

Jason went further, launching Stillcore Capital last year, a fund exclusively focused on TAO and Bittensor subnet tokens (subnets are specialized mini-networks within Bittensor that handle different AI tasks). The fund's stated goal? Own 1% of the circulating supply…

And their co-host David Sacks, is the current White House Crypto & AI Czar.

Point is: they have clear financial incentives to talk TAO up. 

And so far? It’s working.

… but, when something moves fast enough in one direction, not everyone is going to agree on what’s driving it.

Pine Analytics just published a deep dive on Bittensor, and the findings paint a very different picture.

BITTENSOR'S GOT THE BIGGEST NAMES IN TECH TALKING. BUT WHO’S PAYING? (P2) 💸

The question Pine Analytics asked: 

Can the network generate enough real revenue to justify its $2.6B (now $2.9B) market cap?

Their answer? Not yet. And maybe not for a while.

Right now, the total identifiable revenue across the entire Bittensor network is roughly $3M to $15M per year.

The biggest subnet, Chutes (which sells AI computing power, kind of like a decentralized version of Amazon Web Services), looks great on paper. 

400,000+ users, 5M+ daily requests. Impressive stuff!

But those cheap prices aren't from efficiency. They're from subsidies.

Chutes receives roughly $142,000/day in TAO emissions (that's ~$52M annualized). Estimated actual customer revenue? Around $1.3M to $2.4M per year.

Source: @PineAnalytics

Translation: for every $1 customers pay, the network kicks in $22 to $40 in token rewards to keep things running.

"But this is the Uber playbook! Subsidize now → raise prices later!"

Pine thought of that too. Uber built a strong foundation of ‘switching friction’ during its subsidy phase (driver networks, proprietary platforms, enterprise integrations, etc.). 

Bittensor's models are open source. The APIs are standard. Users can bounce to any provider with zero friction.

Pine is essentially asking: when subsidies shrink, what is there to keep anyone around?

And on top of that…

Against a $2.6B market cap, Pine estimates TAO’s revenue multiple sits somewhere between 175x and 200x.

So what is TAO actually priced on?

• AI sector hype. 

• Bitcoin-like scarcity (21M hard cap on tokens). 

• A pending Grayscale ETF (exchange-traded fund). 

• Some very loud co-signs from Silicon Valley's inner circle.

A TAO position built on narrative and scarcity? That might do great regardless.

A TAO position built on Bittensor becoming a real AI services business? From what Pine Analytics found, the evidence for that may still be lacking.

The takeaway:

If you’re seeing the headlines about TAO and considering taking a position - understand the bet you're making.

(Narrative and scarcity seem to be in the driver’s seat right now.)

But hey - if it works, it works ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

LAST CHANCE: SEE WHAT WE’RE BUYING 👜 

Want to see what the Milk Road team is actually holding in our portfolios?

The new Milk Road PRO is available for just $1 until tonight.

One of us sold 50% of our portfolio last week… and there’s only one way to follow what happens next.

Show me the portfolios

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

Higher earnings rates. Lower borrowing costs. Up to 0.5% cashback. New U.S. clients get these benefits on Nexo for 30 days.*

Niiiice! NYSE just partnered with Securitize to build a 24/7 blockchain stock trading platform.

Woah, ok - Mastercard just built an AI that predicts your next purchase the same way ChatGPT predicts your next word.

Will the war cause a global recession? One analyst warns of a “pandemic-style” shutdown.

Looking for an all-in-one DeFi control panel? Genius is an onchain trading terminal that combines charts, token data, and trading across 11+ blockchains in one place.

*this is sponsored content.

👉 Get started here

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @ToolySOL

Source: @naiivememe

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY