The Only Crypto Projects Still Making Money in This Market w/ Kyle Reidhead
Summary
- The "Bid" Crisis: The crypto market is currently experiencing a liquidity vacuum. Retail capital has rotated into AI stocks, and institutional capital is sidelined awaiting regulatory clarity. The "infinite bid" from 2024—driven by entities like MicroStrategy raising debt to buy coins—has evaporated as premiums flipped to discounts.
- The Bifurcation Thesis: 95% of crypto assets are in a structural bear market because they lack utility or claim on cash flows. The only assets with a "floor" are DeFi protocols (Aave, Sky, Maple) that generate real revenue and execute token buybacks.
- The RWA Pivot: The next major growth driver is "Capital Formation" for the Real World Asset (RWA) capex cycle. With ~$640B allocated to AI/Data Center capex in 2025/2026, DeFi protocols are positioning themselves to fund the energy infrastructure (solar, wind) required to power this buildout, competing directly with traditional debt markets.
Trade Ideas
"Retail capital has gone into AI stocks... Institutions... are going and getting involved in the funding of all that stuff [data centers]... $640 billion of capex spent in 2025." Crypto is currently losing the "opportunity cost" war. Investors are choosing the tangible growth of AI hyperscalers over speculative tokens. Until crypto regulation clarifies, the "sexy" bid remains with the companies building the physical AI infrastructure. LONG. These are the current recipients of the capital flows that have exited the crypto market. Over-saturation of AI capex spending without immediate ROI.
Kyle Reidhead
Head of Research at Milk Road
Kyle states that protocols like Aave and Sky are becoming the "capital formation" layer for the $640B+ energy and AI capex cycle. He explicitly notes, "ETH is going to be a huge beneficiary... It's going to be the host for a lot of that." While Aave and Sky are the direct plays, they are tokens without liquid US equity listings. However, as these protocols grow their loan books and revenue by funding real-world infrastructure, the economic activity settles on Ethereum. ETH acts as the index for this "DeFi-to-Real-World" bridge. LONG. Ethereum is the infrastructure play for the digitization of private credit and energy financing. Regulatory delays in the "Clarity Act" could stall institutional adoption of DeFi on Ethereum.
Kyle Reidhead
Head of Research at Milk Road
"They were able to raise capital to buy ETH and Bitcoin through Michael Sailor... but now that they've gone into a discount rather than a premium, that's slowed down quite a bit." The flywheel of issuing equity/debt at a premium to buy underlying assets (BTC) has stalled. Without this mechanical "bid" in the market, the aggressive upward pressure on crypto assets from corporate treasuries is temporarily paused. NEUTRAL. The "infinite money glitch" for BTC accumulation is currently offline due to market structure dynamics. A return to NAV premiums could restart the buying engine unexpectedly.
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This Milk Road Macro video, published March 01, 2026, features Kyle Reidhead discussing GOOGL, AMZN, ETHE, MSTR. 3 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.
Speakers: Kyle Reidhead · Tickers: GOOGL, AMZN, ETHE, MSTR