🥛 Crypto vs. The Trade War 🥊

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GM. This is Milk Road, the newsletter that's cooler than the other side of the pillow…during a heatwave…with no AC.

Here’s what we got for you today:

✍️ Trade war updates
✍️ Corporate $BTC adoption peaks
🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Is This the Breaking Point? What the Fed, Trump & the Market Are Telling Us w/ James Lavish
🍪 More developments on the Mantra story

Prices as of 2:00 PM ET. Click here for our Fear & Greed Index.

TRADE WAR UPDATES (TARIFFS INCREASED, NVIDIA BLOCKED FROM CHINA) 🥊

Like a 35 year-old in a new relationship and ‘looking to settle down’ – this trade war is moving FAST:

→ Tariffs have INCREASED

→ Nvidia chip exports to China have been BANNED

→ China has agreed to negotiate (if the US stops talking SH*T)

Here’s everything you missed in – what has it been – like, 3 days?

1/ 145% tariffs on China were dropped and replaced with…

Source: @visegrad24

Translation: for every $1M worth of Chinese goods that US suppliers import – they’re going to have to pay (up to) an additional $2.45M in taxes to the US government.

2/ Nvidia banned from selling their H20 chips to China

Here’s the kicker – the H20 chip is an already watered down AI chip that Nvidia designed specifically for the Chinese market after the Biden government put restrictions on exports.

Source: @KobeissiLetter

This $5.5B drop in expected revenue caused $NVDA to drop close to 6% as of this writing – which, in TradFi asset terms, is A LOT.

(E.g. That ~6% drop wiped out the equivalent value of the combined market cap of $SUI and $TON from Nvidia.)

3/ China is open to negotiating…on a few conditions

The jury is still very much out on whether or not the US government will agree to these terms – but here they are:

Source: @TFTC21

TRANSLATION:

Condition #1 – You n’ your friends stop talking sh*t, and put some respect on our name.

Condition #2 – Make your mind up with these sanctions. Pick a rule and stick w/ it. Also, can we take Taiwan back already?

Condition #3 – Send us a representative to work out a deal (just make sure it isn’t JD Vance – we hate that guy after the ‘peasants’ remark).

The broader takeaway from all of this:

👉 Global monetary conditions are easing (this is good for crypto & risk assets)

👉 But uncertainty is still high thanks to trade war fears (this is bad for crypto & risk assets)

If these talks can lead to some form of agreement/clarity around global trade, we should have the missing piece of the puzzle for a ‘number go up’ environment.

THE FUTURE OF DEFI RUNS ON ALEPHIUM

We’ve written earlier about the fat app thesis.

But for apps to excel, they need a solid and secure foundation.

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Power of smart contracts: Trade RWAs onchain seamlessly

DeFi deserves a better foundation. Alephium is building it.

Learn more about Alephium

COTD: CORPORATE BITCOIN ADOPTION (Q1 2025) 📊

At first glance – this chart was giving off ‘nothing you haven’t already heard’ vibes…

Source: @BitwiseInvest

But when we dug into some of the numbers – assumptions started to break…

So, here are the top 5 takeaways you might have missed in this chart:

1/ We’ve seen (almost) constant buy-pressure for 5 years

Outside of Q2 2022, corporations have been net-buying Bitcoin, quarter-on-quarter, for five years straight! 💰

2/ Corporate demand is out-stripping new supply

In Q1 2025, there were 40,815 $BTC mined. In that same time, corporations acquired 95,431 $BTC. That’s *counts fingers* 2.3x more demand (just from corporations) than there is new supply. 💪

3/ Corporate ownership of total $BTC supply is bonkers

In Q1, corporations gobbled up 95,431 Bitcoin – that’s 0.45% of the total supply in a single quarter. And in total, corporations own ~688k $BTC – or 3.27% of all that will ever exist! 😧

4/ Saylor is a madman

You may as well replace the words ‘corporate’ and ‘corporations’ in everything we just said, and replace it with ‘Michael Saylor / $MSTR.’

Of the 688k $BTC that is currently held by corporations – 528k of them are held by Strategy ($MSTR)! Meaning the man & his company own 2.5% of the total Bitcoin supply! 💸

In summary... 👇

Source: Imgflip

THE FUTURE OF $SOL (W/ SOLANA’S CO-FOUNDER)! 🎙️

Whether you think Solana is “just a memecoin chain" or “a sleeping giant of global finance” – this conversation will change how you see it.

Yesterday, we sat down with Solana’s co-founder, Raj Gokal, to learn what’s really happening under the hood of the fastest blockchain in the game – including:

How memecoins stress-tested Solana’s tech
How Solana was built differently from Ethereum
And why Solana’s bazaar model will win in the long run

It’s a banger of an episode – you don’t want to miss it! 👇

YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

What’s the best platform to lend your Solana? We’ve put together a page on Solana lending that answers exactly that.

More developments on the Mantra story. After the entire debacle on Monday, the CEO of Mantra now plans to burn all his tokens to win back trust.

BNB Chain just completed its 31st quarterly token burn. In case you’re not familiar, burning tokens = reducing the token’s supply = value of token increases.

Raydium’s version of pumpdotfun, LaunchLabs, is now live! It’ll now be interesting to see how it performs against pumpdotfun.

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