🥛 The next $PEPE is here 🐸

GM. This is Milk Road Degen, the crypto newsletter your risk manager warned you about.

Here’s what we got for you today:

✍️ The perp wars have begun
🎙️ Milk Road Degen Podcast: The Next Trenches Are on Binance w/ Mando
🍪 Kalshi overtakes Polymarket in prediction market volume

Swords of Blood is a fast-paced role-playing game where players battle, progress, and earn rewards. Play the game now.

Prices as of 10:00 AM ET.

THE PERP WARS HAVE BEGUN

Listen guys, I may suck at my job.

I sit at my desk every day hunting for the next narrative. Memes, Pokémon cards, robots - whatever it is, I’m scanning X, digging through threads, reading every newsletter.

Always chasing the signal, dodging the noise.

And yet last Wednesday, right in the middle of the FOMC press conference, I almost missed the biggest one: $ASTER.

The thesis? A perp DEX running natively on Binance designed to compete with Hyperliquid and grab a sliver of their $5M in daily fees.

By the time I figured out how to buy it, it had already 5x’d. Normally that’s my cue to chill since I hate top-blasting tickers.

But the consensus was undeniable:

CZ (yes, the Binance founder) was backing it.
$BNB had just cracked $1,000.
Everyone from giga traders to shitposters was screaming “buy”.
Even Mando (legend, never trades trenches anymore) said this could mark the start of Binance Season.

And sure enough, $ASTER 4x’d again over the weekend. Rumor has it CZ controls 95% of supply, making the real market cap closer to $500M, not the $11B FDV listed.

Heck, even Mr. Beast aped in.

Source: @arkham

But here’s the bigger picture: it’s not just $ASTER.

Every chain’s perp DEX is catching a bid. Hyperliquid’s dominance was always going to spark challengers, and now the race is on.

So here’s a little menu of horses to pick in this race:

$AVNT - The Base horse

Avantis is the perp DEX flying the Base flag. Token was dropped just weeks ago, and it’s ripping hard. Backed by big names (Peter Thiel included), they offer up 500x leverage on more assets than Hyperliquid, including equities.

Source: @avantisfi

Smart money has been flowing in while the price pushed past $2. Tokenomics look solid: ~26% circulating, with most unlocks pushed out for a year or more.

Source: @titoarbitanum

This is Base’s horse, no doubt.

How to buy:

Trade it on Definitive (my referral code here)
Trade it on most Tier 2 / Tier 3 exchanges (Kraken, ByBit, etc.)

IS THIS THE NEXT 100X GEM IN GAMEFI?

GameFi has been quiet…

But with the bull market heating up, this sector is primed for a comeback.

The project to watch? Swords of Blood by Hit Box Games.

It’s a fast-paced role-playing game where players battle, progress, and rack up rewards:

50,000+ total users
8,000 daily active users
41% 7-day retention rate

And here’s the kicker: the game goes live before the token ($HBOX) launches.

A proven game + smart tokenomics = the perfect setup for liftoff.

Don’t miss the $HBOX presale.

THE PERP WARS HAVE BEGUN (P2)

$ASTER - The hot bet

We can’t ignore the one that started the frenzy. Jampz said it best on this Wednesday’s upcoming pod: he hasn’t felt this since $PEPE in 2023.

Source: DeFiLlama

But despite all this hype, are there any actual catalysts coming up? Well, an actual Binance listing for one, plus a tokenomics twist at month’s end when $APX stops being convertible 1:1 to $ASTER.

And despite already sitting in the $1-2 range, many are saying the magic number is $4, based on CZ’s iconic pic.

Source: @ZeekoSol

How to buy:

You can buy directly on the site by depositing other currencies.
Trade it on Definitive (my referral code here). Be sure to bridge to $BNB on Binance using Rabby or Relay, then deposit the BNB to Definitive to buy.

$ORDER - The darkhorse backend

If you want broad exposure to this perp narrative, $ORDER is your play. It powers the matching engines and shared liquidity for 50+ DEXes across chains.

It’s already doing strong perp volume, but still priced far below $ASTER or $AVNT. Could be a solid catch-up trade.

Source: @inf_liquidity

That being said, it may not find the same ecosystem support as Avantis, Hyperliquid, or Aster - there may not be a cabal at play here.

How to buy:

I bought it on Binance in Definitive, same as $ASTER
You will also find it on Solana, Base, Arbitrum, and Ethereum Mainnet.

Honorable mentions

I doubt this meta is done picking horses for the race; after all, up until last Wednesday, none of us knew what the hell Aster even was.

LIGHTER: No token yet, but it's coming soon and this is one of the hottest platforms on the market right now. It recently surpassed Hyperliquid on the 24h trading volume chart.
$STBL: A new stablecoin protocol on Binance, backed by Tether’s co-founder.
$ZEX (now $BULLIT): A Solana perp DEX with a tiny market cap.
$DUST: Mascot coin for $ASTER, already ran 10x but might have legs.

And of course, don’t forget the almighty $HYPE, which is the owner of the pie that everyone wants a piece of here. They still have 38% of their token dedicated to community rewards, and can wield that to draw in volume and users at any moment.

Plus, they have flexed their supremacy and confidence by listing both $ASTER and $AVNT on their perp dex. Bold move, Jeff.

Wrapping up

Narratives move fast, degen.

PumpFun had its streamer run. Solana memes are quiet. Pokémon cards had their flash. Avalanche already cooled off.

But this perp DEX wave? It’s different. This is the big leagues - blockchains going to war over revenue. That meta’s been hot all year, and it feels like it could define Q4.

Or, it means we need to stay sharp and look for the next hot thing:

Source: @sjdedic

BNB SEASON IS HERE 💸

In today’s episode, we sat down with Mando to talk about spotting meme coin trends, cultural narratives, and why BNB is quietly dominating post-Fed-pivot.

Take a look at what surprised us: