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GM. This is Milk Road. Happy ‘Liberation Day’ to those who celebrate (or was it ‘Liquidation Day’?)

Here’s what we got for you today:

• ✍️ Circle’s financials ain’t great

• ✍️ The most powerful man in finance preaches blockchain

• 🥛 PRO “Where are we in the cycle?” indicators

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Is the Bull Market Already Over? Zeneca Gives It a 20% Chance

• 🍪 Trump has gone all in on tariffs

CIRCLE’S FINANCIALS AREN’T GREAT 🥴

A few hours after we hit publish on our ‘Circle may soon IPO’ article this past Tuesday – Circle went and made the whole thing official.

And with that came an S-1 filing – which is finance nerd talk for ‘pulling back the kimono on their finances’.

You know what that means? 

Time for a simplified breakdown of everything that we’ve learned post-filing. 👇

1/ Circle is looking to IPO at a $5B valuation, with $156M in net income in 2024

That’s a valuation of *counts on fingers* 32x earnings! 

Those are some crazy multiples for a company whose revenue is only up 16% year-on-year, and saw net income drop -42% in the same time.

2/ Circle’s gross margins are getting rinsed with distribution costs

Translation: Circle is paying big money to other companies in exchange for them supporting $USDC.

E.g. Circle earned ~$1.7B in revenue in 2024 (ok, not bad!) and paid out $900M+ to Coinbase as a distribution partner (oooft)!

(Meaning Coinbase made more from $USDC than Circle did!) 👇

But that’s not to say these partnerships aren’t working… Coinbase has been a massive growth driver for $USDC.

Plus, Circle has inked a deal with Binance to store $3B of their corporate funds in $USDC.

And BlackRock has agreed to prioritize Circle stablecoins for all stablecoin-related payment use cases and not launch a payment stablecoin of their own.

3/ Competition is coming

Speaking of competition, Circle’s core market (the US) is quickly gaining regulatory clarity, with the STABLE Act passing the House Financial Services Committee just a few hours ago. 

This means the banks & financial institutions that have been itching to compete, by launching their own stablecoin, just got one step closer to being able to do so.

4/ Rate cuts are coming (which is good for crypto, bad for stablecoin issuers)

Typically, if the Federal Reserve hikes interest rates, yields on treasuries go up. If the Fed lowers rates, treasury yields tend to go down.

Right now, the market expects at least two rate cuts this year (lowering yields).

…and guess who makes the bulk of their money from treasuries? (Hint: it rhymes with ‘merkle’).

5/ How does Circle find its windfall in the face of this?

Option A:

If $USDC can outpace the competition and become the stablecoin of choice – the market would likely be willing to look past Circle’s crazy multiples, distribution costs, and declining take rates.

Why? ‘Cause the market they’re looking to take over (money) is so freakin’ huge!

Option B:

A bigger fish (think: Coinbase, Visa, or even Ripple) acquires Circle at a discounted price, before it IPOs – though a post IPO acquisition wouldn’t be off the table either.

Alright, that’s everything you need to know for now! 🫡

THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN FINANCE PREACHES BLOCKCHAIN 🙏

Every year, Larry Fink – ‘The Finkmeister’* to his friends (*unconfirmed) – publishes an annual letter.

Larry is arguably the most powerful man in finance, heading up BlackRock (the world’s largest asset manager with ~$11.5T in assets under management).

So when Larry talks, the big-dogs of the financial world listen.

And in this latest letter, the Finkmeister was spitting bars! 👇

“Right now, the country focuses heavily on preventing people from hitting the floor, as we should. But the U.S. needs to put just as much effort into helping people climb to the ceiling—through investing.”

(Chills, literal chills.)

It’s a doozy of a letter – so we’ll let you read it in your own time.

But for now, here’s a TL;DR of what Larry had to say about crypto & tokenization:

👉 Bitcoin could eat away at the U.S. dollar’s reserve status. If the U.S. doesn’t get its debt under control, if deficits keep ballooning, America risks losing that position to digital assets like Bitcoin.

👉 Tokenization is a system update. The world’s money moves through plumbing built when trading floors still shouted orders and fax machines felt revolutionary. Tokenization changes all that. Assets move instantly, sidestepping intermediaries.

👉 Tokenization allows for fractional ownership. That means assets could be sliced into infinitely small pieces. This lowers one of the barriers to investing in previously inaccessible assets (like private real estate).

👉 Tokenization brings wider access to yield. Some investments produce much higher returns than others, but only big investors can get into them. Why? Legal, operational, and bureaucratic friction. Tokenization strips that away.

Now, if you’ve been in crypto for a while, most (if not all) of these ideas will feel like old news.

But it’s not what is being said here that’s important – but who is saying it.

Remember: when Larry talks, the big-dogs of the financial world listen.

And right now, Larry is preaching the gospel of blockchain technology.

Bullish!

PRO “WHERE ARE WE IN THE CYCLE?” INDICATORS 🤔 

New tariffs just hit…markets are red…should we be worried?

Let’s check in with our trusty crypto cycle indicators!

Knowing where we are in the crypto cycle is crucial for capturing the best opportunities.

The goal is to spot the bull market peak before the inevitable bear market hits your bags hard.

Since timing the top perfectly is almost impossible, we use various indicators to give us a better shot at taking profits before it's too late.

Below are the 6 indicators we track, with a color-coded system to show how close they are to signalling the market peak:

🟢 Plenty of room to run 🏄

🟡 Getting closer to the top signal, but haven’t yet reached the mark ⚠️

🔴 We’ve hit the market top indicator 🚨

Every Thursday, we update these 6 indicators exclusively for PRO members.

Our advice? Don't wait for all of them to hit 🔴. It's better to take profits as they get closer to that point.

Let's dive in and see if we're anywhere near the top of this bull market. 👇

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

Wanna earn some yield on your $ETH? Check out how you can do exactly that by lending it out to borrowers.

Trump has gone all in on tariffs. We’re all a little confused on its consequences, so here’s Ray Dalio’s take on how it could play out.

Bitcoin is king, baaaby! Bitcoin dominance just hit 61%, the highest it’s ever been since 2021.

A big win for crypto regulation. The STABLE Act, a bill aimed at regulating stablecoins, is now one step closer to being enacted.

We now have no-fee crypto IRA. Fidelity now lets you invest in $BTC, $ETH & $LTC directly into your retirement account with zero fees.

The Ledger Flex now comes with $70 worth of Bitcoin. On top of getting top-tier security for your crypto, you also score some free $BTC along with it. If you ask us, that’s a pretty sweet deal.**

**this is partner content.

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