GM. This is Milk Road – the .zip file of crypto newsletters (we compress everything you need to know into an easy daily read).
Here’s what we got for you today:
- ✍️ What is the market doing/where’s it headed?
- 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Crypto Looks Broken… But This Bull Market Isn’t Over w/ Kyle Reidhead
- 🍪 Strategy (MSTR) just bought the dip
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WHAT IS THE MARKET DOING AND WHERE IS IT HEADED? 🥴
If you’re scratching your head and asking:
“What the hell is going on with the crypto market??”
First: you’re not alone.
Second: we just read a banger tweet from The Kobeissi Letter that breaks down what’s been happening in the crypto market of late.
So we’re going to use it as a jumping off point, then dig into what this all means for crypto in the short and medium term – as well as what market events to watch for in the coming days/weeks.
Let's start by ripping off the band-aid:
1/ This sucks (crypto is down 25%+ in less than two months)
In dollar terms, this 25%+ drop equates to more than $1T leaving the total crypto market cap (top-to-bottom).
2/ Ok, that’s no fun. But why is it happening?
As far as ‘bearish catalysts’ go – we’ve seen worse in the past and been affected less.
Trump’s 100% China tariff threat kicked things off in early October, but was almost immediately walked back.
(And given that the market has gotten pretty darn used to seeing these as empty threats, it’s hard to pin 100% of the market’s weakness on this).
…so maybe it was the government shutdown? Again, fair enough assumption – but there isn’t a strong historical correlation with shutdowns and market pullbacks.
(Sometimes they’re bearish, sometimes they’re neutral, sometimes they’re bullish.)
Right. So maybe it’s a combination of things? For example…
3/ Institutional outflows & increased leverage
I.e. This:
(Mix that with crypto’s tendency for higher-than-normal leverage, and things can get ugly.)
Here’s how leverage can have an outsized effect on price…
Many crypto trading platforms let users take out up to 100x leverage (e.g. put $1 down and take out a $99 loan to make the total trade size $100).
Doing this to go ‘long’ (betting the price will go up) would mean that:
If the price goes up 1%, you would make $1 (doubling your $1 investment)...
But if it goes down, you’d lose your $1, and the remaining $99 loan would be automatically sold to repay your lenders.
(On the flip side, if you were to go ‘short’ and bet the market is going to go down with 100x leverage, a 1% move up would wipe you out and force you to buy back in & repay your lenders.)
Here’s a cheat sheet showing how seemingly tiny moves in price can cause forced liquidations.
(Moves down wipe out leveraged longs and cause selling pressure, while moves up wipe out leveraged shorts & cause buying pressure.) 👇
The math on all of that, relative to the recent crash?
Billions of dollars of institutional selling + crypto traders’ tendency to over-lever themselves = an outsized, cascading downward price reaction.
Yikes! That ain’t good.
Next questions:
- Where are we in the broader cycle (are we going up or down from here)?
- What are the medium term catalysts that could hurt/help things?
- What are the short term events to watch for this week?
Keep scrolling to the next article and we’ll tackle just that…
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WHAT IS THE MARKET DOING AND WHERE IS IT HEADED (P2)? 🥴
The age old question in times of market weakness:
Is this a correction within a larger uptrend, or the beginning of a bear market?
Let’s dig into that…
1/ Where are we in the broader cycle?
If you’ve been reading Milk Road even semi-recently, you’ll know we believe we’re about to see an extended cycle (meaning the top is not yet in).
Which feels a little ‘hopium-rich’ in the current market environment – but lemme give you some closer context on our thinking.
We believe there’s a good chance that the cycle isn’t extending as much as it is resetting.
Crypto cycles are typically correlated with economic growth (more money sloshing around the global economy = more money finding its way into crypto).
And in recent history, we’ve been seeing 4 year cycles (3 years of growth → 1 year of retraction → repeat).
The current cycle of economic growth was predicted to peak in October of this year – which, so far, looks to be playing out…
But with the tariff-driven growth scare from April/May of this year kind of resetting everything – it’s looking to us like it forced economic growth to bottom out and start afresh.
Meaning we could well have seen a full cycle complete from mid 2022 to early 2025 (instead of late 2025) – and are now starting a new one. 👇
BTW: we went deeper on the current state of the economic cycle in a recent Macro PRO Report – read it here!
2/ What are the medium term catalysts to watch for?
Simple: look for anything that adds/subtracts money from people’s bank accounts and/or hurts their buying power, as well as anything that makes crypto more/less accessible.
Good:
- Interest rate cuts
- The rumored $2k tariff stimulus checks
- Government workers getting paid again (with back pay)
- The passing of the Market Structure Bill and Clarity Act
Bad:
- Potential for rising inflation
- Rising unemployment
- Flat or increased interest rates
- Roadblocks for the Market Structure Bill and Clarity Act
3/ What are the short term catalysts to watch for?
Any narrative/event that could spook or juice the market.
This week, there’s really only one event on that calendar: Nvidia earnings. 👇
Why so? ‘Cause, right now, Nvidia is guiding the broader tech industry.
And a measly 2% shift up or down in its stock price is equivalent to ~$90B +/- (that’s more than the entire market cap of Solana, entering/leaving the US stock market on a 2% move).
So where to from here?
Our Head of Research, Kyle Reidhead, just sat down with LG to do an emergency podcast to cover just that.
Click below to watch it now. 👇
YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
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Literally zero surprise here: Strategy (MSTR) just bought the dip, adding $835M worth of BTC to their treasury - their largest buy in 4 months.
Death & Taxes: The White House is reviewing a proposed IRS rule that would allow them to tax Americans' foreign crypto accounts.
Aave goes consumer: Aave Labs unveils new savings app offering up to 9% returns on deposits — DL News
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