Today's edition is brought to you by Clave – the all-in-one mobile smart wallet bridging DeFi and everyday finance.

Set up your Clave account in a flash!

GM. This is Milk Road. Happy Halloween Bitcoin Whitepaper Day to those that celebrate!

Here’s what we got for you today:

THIS MAP IS YOUR GUIDE TO THE CRYPTO MARKET 🗺️

Ever noticed how Google Maps won’t be able to pinpoint your exact location in built up areas with skyscrapers?

The buildings block your GPS signal somehow, and your pinned location starts floating between city blocks.

Same thing happens with the Business Cycle.

The Business Cycle is like a Map for financial markets — but just like Google Maps in a big city — your position is never certain.

See, global markets move in four year cycles of contraction and expansion, with each 12 month stretch representing a ‘season’ of sorts…

And depending on what season you’re in, you should either be buying, selling, or holding specific assets.

What’s cool is – these seasons are predictable. 

They’ve been repeating over and over again for decades, and are driven by central bank monetary policy (which is publicly trackable).

It works something like this…

Let’s start with the Business Cycle trough:

Economic growth slows → markets/businesses/households begin to struggle → central banks lower rates and hand money out to banks → this puts money back into everyone’s pockets.

(Whether through access to loans, or lowered interest payments on existing debt).

Which takes us back up to the peak of the cycle:

Growth picks up → there’s more demand for goods → which causes prices to inflate → to battle inflation, central banks tighten rates → that pushes growth and market prices down again. 

(And the whole process repeats once again 🔁).

Here’s the trough and peak of the Business Cycle visualized:

“Ok, but what’re these ‘seasons’ you speak of?” 

Here’s how to characterize the seasons of the Business Cycle…

Spring - A disinflationary boom:

Inflation is falling due to the previous season's tightened monetary policy, while at the same time, growth begins to recover as the early stages of loosened monetary policy start to take effect. 

This is known as “early-cycle” and generally precedes the bottom in crypto markets.

Summer - An inflationary boom:

Central banks continue to loosen monetary policy which started in the Spring and the economy really starts to pick up, entering an expansion zone. 

Inflation begins to rise and near the end of this phase central banks begin taking their foot off the pedal (aka still printing money, but in smaller amounts).

Fall - Stagflation:

Growth peaks as central banks completely take their foot off the pedal and begin to tighten policy toward the end of this phase. 

Inflation continues to rise but its rate of increase slows down. This phase generally marks the top in crypto markets and would be considered “late-cycle”.

Winter - A Deflationary Bust:

Monetary policy is as tight as it gets, slowing down the economy and forcing growth into its contraction phase while sending inflation lower. 

Times are tough and in some cases, these slowdowns lead to recessions.

Now, here’s the key to leveraging this new found knowledge:

Depending on what season we’re in, you should be allocated to different assets with different risk profiles.

(E.g. Winter = risk-off, Summer = risk-on).

Knowing this can save you a lot of potential pain (the kind of pain our intern Raul is going to feel when winter hits and his memecoin portfolio craters).

It’s a little lengthy to get into here — so we’ve created a free guide that will walk you through each season and the exact percentage allocations to make in each.

So you can buy (and sell) the right assets, at the right times, with a solid level of confidence.

Just click below → leave your email → and we’ll send you the full guide 😊

MICROSTRATEGY IS LOOKING TO 3X ITS $BTC HOLDINGS 😧

The Sun is hot, water is wet, and MicroStrategy ($MSTR) is buying more Bitcoin.

So why’re we talking about it (again)?

‘Cause this time MicroStrategy is planning to buy 42 (four-tee-two) billion dollars worth of Bitcoin over the next three years.

Here’s some further context that’ll make you go “Oh damn, Saylor’s redefining ‘bullish’ with this one”:

Ok, so where the hell is Saylor getting this money? (Who’s gonna lend $42B to a company that’s worth $50B??).

MicroStrategy shareholders.

That’s the plan at least. $MSTR is planning to create/sell $21B worth of new shares, and a further $21B of interest yielding IOUs (aka: fixed income securities) over three years.

Why would shareholders fork over that sort of money?

Cause it’s been yielding results for them so far:

Bravo Michael, bravo. 👏

P.S. Want more on $MSTR’s upcoming $42B purchase?

Zeneca joined us on today’s episode of The Milk Road Show to talk about $MSTR’s Bitcoin strategy, and more! Click below to watch it now 👇

YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

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

You know that Business Cycle indicator we featured in our first article?

Want to see exactly what season we’re in, and where you should be allocated?

We update you here, in this section — every dang Thursday. So you know where you should be allocated at all times 🫡🤝

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 🍪

Unlock Prime offers exclusive perks like $ETH rewards, premium event management tools for side events, and more. It's designed to enhance onchain creative projects with advanced features and partner discounts, all built on Unlock Protocol by the team at Unlock Labs.*

Canary Capital has filed to launch a spot Solana ETF in the United States. How do we know about this story? ‘Cause Chevy wouldn’t shut up about it all morning. But as we keep reminding him: If (IF!) it gets approved, it’s going to take a hot minute.

This guy claimed to be Satoshi → held a $500 per ticket event → then when the moment for his ‘big reveal’ came, claimed his laptop wasn’t working. Did he learn nothing from Craig Wright?? Everyone point and laugh!

Digital asset wealth platform, Nexo, gets a glow up. A new website and revamped user-interface, helping to attract both retail and institutional investors from across more than 200 jurisdictions? Hell yeah.

Navigate gives you full control to own and profit from your data in the age of AI and DePIN. Revolutionize your data ownership with a decentralized future built for privacy, profit, and innovation at NVG8.io.*

*this is sponsored content

MILKY MEMES 🤣

RATE TODAY’S EDITION

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

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.