🥛 Markets just broke (again) here's why 📉

GM. This is Milk Road, the daily newsletter that acts as your ‘crypto thermometer’ – we help you take the temperature.

Here’s what we got for you today:

✍️ Everything is f*cked / everything is fine
🎙️ The Milk Road Show: How Ethereum Becomes the World’s Most Valuable Asset w/ Vivek Raman & Danny Ryan
🍪 OpenSea pivoted into a multi-chain trading hub

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Prices as of 2:00 PM ET. Buy today with Milk Road Swap.

**EVERYTHING IS F*CKED / EVERYTHING IS FINE 🤷♂️**

I guess this is poetic, in a sense?

We started the week with a double edition breaking down a market dump, and we’re going to close things out doing the same.

This time, we’re breaking it up into two key themes:

Everything is f*cked 🤬
Everything is fine 🧘♂️

Or, if you’re more of a visual learner – this image, split in two…

Source: Giphy

So let’s rip the bandaid off and get the bad stuff out of the way first – starting with: what the hell just happened to markets?

Simply put – the Chinese government wasn’t stoked about the US’ 100% tariff threat.

And this week, they retaliated with:

1/ Port Fees

Starting on Oct 14, China imposed a ~$56 per net ton fee on US-owned, operated, built, or flagged ships docking at its ports, raising costs for US exporters.

2/ Sanctions

China sanctioned five US-based subsidiaries of South Korean shipbuilder Hanwha Ocean, causing Hanwha's shares to drop 8%.

3/ Probes

China launched investigations into the US' Section 301 probe, to ‘assess impacts on its maritime and supply chain interests’, fueling market uncertainty.

The result?

Increased global shipping costs, disruption to US exports, and heightened market uncertainty.

All of which managed to spook the market and flush out any remaining leverage (aka: loans taken out to trade in larger sizes) from the crypto market:

Source: @MilkRoadDaily

All of which makes this random forum post from December 2023, that predicted a $BTC market peak on October 6th 2025 (the date of Bitcoin’s current all-time high), even spookier. 👇

Source: @QuintenFrancois

Feeling shook? Ok, let’s balance the books.

Keep scrolling to the next article to get the other side of things. 👇

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**EVERYTHING IS F*CKED / EVERYTHING IS FINE (P2) 🤷♂️**

As we said in our article from Monday:

We’ve seen this movie before – we know how it tends to go…

Threats are leveled → negotiations are made → everything de-escalates.

We’re currently somewhere between step 1 and step 2, depending on where you’re standing – ‘cause while China is ramping up the threats, the US is moving towards the negotiation phase:

Source: @KobeissiLetter

Meanwhile, the US director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett is parroting similar themes:

Source: @DeItaone

(So while this feels bad in the moment, when you zoom out, it appears to be par for the course.)

To quote Tomas, from Tuesday’s edition of Milk Road Macro:

“My general view is that this is all just a negotiating process ahead of the upcoming meeting between Trump and Xi as both sides jostle for leverage.

After a few rounds of similar instances in the past few months - we know how these things tend to play out.”

Plus, outside of the geopolitical tit-for-tat that’s to be expected ahead of Trump & Xi Jinping’s meeting at the APEC Summit (Oct 31-Nov 1) – the macro setup is still bullish:

Source: @VirtualBacon0x

So how are we reading all of the above?

Lemme answer your question with another question…

You know how in the press conferences leading up to a big boxing match, both fighters will be full of venom, throwing around all sorts of:

“I’m going to end his career” and “If I see him backstage I’m gonna kill him”?

…but then, once the fight is over, they often hug, shake hands and sing each other’s praises for a well fought fight?

We’re expecting a muted version of that.

Hell – it’s pretty much the same playbook:

🥊 Talk sh*t (🏛️ threats are leveled) → 🥊 Fight (🏛️ negotiations are made) → 🥊 Shake hands (🏛️ everything de-escalates).

So yeah, while everything feels f*cked right now (and in a vacuum, it is) – big picture, we see this simmering down and equalizing over the coming weeks.

In the meantime, we’re sticking to our script:

Hold major tokens → zoom out → chill.

But where do you stand? Let us know by replying to this email with either:

Bullish
Bearish
Or Neutral

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

We’ve just added a new event to our conference page: Zebu Live. Use code “MILK” for a 20% discount on tickets.

This is a nice little context setter. Decrypt just catalogued the 9 biggest $BTC crashes in history, making the current pullback seem mild in comparison.

Come back, or rebirth? OpenSea just pivoted to become a multi-chain crypto trading hub.

Sony has its own Bank? Apparently so — and it just filed to launch a stablecoin in the US.

The lines between crypto and TradFi continue to blur. The crypto yield platform, Nexo, just added leverage trading across stocks, gold, oil, forex, indices.**

**this is partner content.