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GM. This is Milk Road, the newsletter that’s beating Santa to the punch and bringing you some early Christmas presents.

Here’s what we got for you today:

• ✍️ Crypto’s ‘App Era’

• ✍️ A $100B crypto AI project in 2025?

• 🥛 Milk Road PRO Portfolio updates

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Why 2025 Will Be the Best Crypto Year of Your Life w/ Jesse Eckel 

• 🍪 The IRS confirms crypto staking is taxable

CRYPTO’S APPLICATION ERA 📲

You ask for a trip to Disneyland for Christmas → you go to a water park instead.

Is it the same thing? No.

Is it at least a directionally accurate attempt by your hard working parents to give you what you want? Yes.

Same thing goes for the progression of the internet and cryptocurrency. 

Is the trend identical? No. But it’s directionally correct.

Crypto is being adopted at roughly the same rate as the internet was. 👇

The cool part of all of this is that around this point in its adoption curve, the profit center for the internet started to move away from infrastructure (modems, routers, cables – i.e. boring stuff) and towards applications (Amazon, Google, YouTube – i.e. cool sh*t).

While it's fun to nerd out about the growth of blockchain infrastructure (and how to profit from it) – it makes for a hard sell to newcomers.

E.g. You spend an hour or two onboarding a friend, and the proceeding conversation goes like this:

• Friend: “What can I do with this now – what’s the most popular use case?” 

• You: “Er, stablecoin payments and earning interest on your holdings via staking.”

• Friend: “So…exactly what I already do with my bank?”

• You: “Shut up. It’s cool. 👇”

Well! It looks like those days could soon be coming to an end. 

‘Cause right now, the revenue generated on Ethereum and Solana is trending away from infrastructure and towards applications.

The more money there is to be made with blockchain apps → the more will be built → the higher the likelihood we end up with a bunch of ‘cool sh*t’ to recommend to our friends.

Hell yeah.

WILL THERE BE A $100B CRYPTO AI PROJECT IN 2025? 🤖

The total collective market cap for AI crypto projects currently sits at around $43B…

If, like us, you believe crypto AI will be one of the major narratives of 2025 – how high do you think this total market cap will go?

($100B? $500B? A trillion!?).

Here’s something to consider…

Memecoins – which are completely speculative and have been the larger narrative overall in 2024 – currently have a collective market cap of $112B.

While speculative, AI tokens have much clearer applications:

• BitTensor – hosts machine learning models onchain

• Virtuals and Zerebro – allow you to build/grow AI influencers

• Griffain – gives access to AI assistants that will execute trading strategies on a users behalf

Point is: there’s clear use cases behind them.

Now, with that context – how high do you think this sector can go in 2025?

Jesse Eckel believes there will be a single crypto AI project valued at a $100B market cap in 2025!

How do we know that? ‘Cause he joined us on today’s episode of The Milk Road Show!

In this episode, we cover the coming crypto AI boom, as well as:

• The 3 bullish catalysts Jesse sees coming in 2025

• Why 2025 could be crypto’s own “dot com era boom”

• Why the crypto gaming space is full of undervalued gems

Check out the full conversation below! 👇

YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

MILK ROAD PRO PORTFOLIO UPDATES 📊

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… the Milk Man sharing his latest portfolio changes.

Like clock-work, every Tuesday, we’re here to share our updated list of investments from the Milk Road PRO Portfolio. 

Disclosure: We are not a day trading portfolio so don’t expect a high volume of trades. Read our “how to build a crypto portfolio in 2024” report to learn more about our portfolio strategy.

Portfolio performance 📉

The Milk Road PRO Portfolio saw a notable decrease over the past 7 days. Our portfolio value is at $124K, down 11.40% since last week.

The markets weren’t too thrilled with the latest FED meeting, even though it confirmed a rate cut—which means cheaper borrowing.

But the rest of the speech didn’t quite bring the upbeat vibes people were hoping for.🤔

That said, the economy is still going strong, so there’s really no need to stress. We’re feeling positive about what’s ahead in the new year.💪

Portfolio changes 👀

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

J’JO35 is a simple, automated index that invests in the top 35 cryptocurrencies for you. Exhausted from endless research? Tired of monitoring the market? J’JO35 does all that for you.

The IRS confirms crypto staking is taxable. This news has been making waves on Twitter but just so you know, this has always been the case. If you’d checked out our staking page, you’d already be in the loop.

Ethereum ETFs see inflows while Bitcoin ETFs see the opposite. Could this be the ETH/BTC flippening we’ve all been waiting for?

MicroStrategy continues its Bitcoin buying spree. Yesterday, it was Metaplanet, and today it’s MicroStrategy. News like this feels like it’s popping up every other second these days.

We’re hiring! Calling the brightest minds in crypto to join our team but hurry, there’s only 4 roles left.

AI agents are the hottest new narrative right now. Zerebro, a popular AI agent, evolves as it interacts with more people online. Not sure whether I should feel excited or queasy about this. Probably both.*

* This is sponsored content.

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.