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GM. This is Milk Road, the newsletter that’s jumping on the Ghibli craze. 

Here’s what we got for you today:

• ✍️ How a trader almost broke Hyperliquid

• ✍️ How to pick long-term winners using stablecoin growth

• 🥛 PRO “Where are we in the cycle?” indicators

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: From Wild West to Wall Street: The New Era of Crypto

• 🍪 The Ghibli craze sparks another wave of memecoin frenzy

HOW A TRADER ALMOST BROKE HYPERLIQUID

Someone just pulled off one of the biggest giga-brain move ever, on Hyperliquid.

Here’s the story:

A random token called Jelly-My-Jelly (yes, I giggled when I heard it as well) exploded 522% in just one hour. 👇

And while this chart may look like your classic pump-and-dump scenario, what lies beneath the surface is a cold, calculated attack.

Here’s how the trader set up to exploit Hyperliquid:

• Open a massive $6M short position on $JELLYJELLY.X ( ▲ 26.43% ) (a token with a $20M market cap - tiny)

• Buy spot bags of the same token to pump its price

The aim? To liquidate their own leveraged short position.

“What? Why would anyone try to liquidate themselves?”

Because on Hyperliquid, large liquidations on small, illiquid tokens require the Hyperliquid Vault (HLP) to take up the position. 

And guess what? That’s exactly what happened. 👇

So now, Hyperliquid had no choice but to enter a $5M short position on $JELLYJELLY.

Things got worse when Binance and OKX listed $JELLYJELLY, sending the price even higher (which some are speculating was no coincidence). 

So, Hyperliquid was just sitting there with their hands tied while their short position racked up massive losses. 👇

But Hyperliquid stepped in and delisted $JELLY perps, force-settling positions at the original price of $0.0095, saving their own ass and leaving the attacker at a loss.

But this whole debacle gave a peek behind the curtains, showing that Hyperliquid (and decentralized perps protocols in general) have some serious issues. Most notably that they’re “decentralized” until something goes wrong.

Just another average weekday in crypto. 🤷

HOW TO PICK LONG-TERM WINNERS USING STABLECOIN GROWTH 🥇

That first story was a real doozy. I feel like we need to calm ourselves down with some good-old fundamentals. 

(Okay, maybe I need it more than you do.)

Dune and Artemis recently dropped a banger of a report on the current state of stablecoins.

So we figured we’d use it as an opportunity to give you a glimpse into what’s going on in the world of stablecoins, and show you how to use this information to pick long-term winners.

Sound good? Alright. Let’s get into it!

1/ Growth stats

Market cap: the total supply of stablecoins increased by 63%, from $138B to $225B between Feb ‘24 and Feb ‘25.

Active wallets: Between Feb ‘24 and Feb ‘25, the number of active addresses holding stablecoins increased from 19.6M to 30M (moving up 53% year-over-year).

Volume: Stablecoin monthly transfer volume more than doubled in 2024, moving from $1.9T in Feb 2024 to $4.1T in Feb 2025 (that’s a 115% year-over-year increase).

2/ Token leaders

Tether ($USDT) – which grew from $96B to $146B but lost market share as new competitors entered the market in 2024 (dropping from 69% market share to 64%).

Circle ($USDC) – doubled from $28.5B to $56B, gaining 4% and now accounting for 24.5% of the market.

Honorable mention – Ethena’s $USDe – which 10x’d from $620M at launch in Feb 2024 (0.45% of total stablecoins) to $6.2B in February 2025.

3/ Blockchain leaders

#1 Ethereum 🥇 – dominates stablecoin supply ($130.1B today), thanks to its massive lending and trading infrastructure.

#2 Tron 🥈 – which holds a stablecoin supply of $65.3B today, and handles 29% of peer-to-peer transfers.

#3 Solana 🥉 – which holds a stablecoin supply of $11.7B today, seeing 5x growth between Feb ‘24 and Feb ‘25, thanks to memecoin mania and its partnerships with PayPal.

Honorable mention – Base (Black) – which saw its monthly transfer volume go from $3.9B in Feb ‘24, to $1.9T in Feb ‘25! 👇

“Ok, seeing blockchain technology proliferate is cool and all…but I really don’t care about stablecoins – I’m looking for returns baaaby (not fixed prices)!”
– You, probably.

Look, I hear you! But believe me: 

Stablecoin growth is way more important than it seems at first glance – and it contributes to long-term value accrual to a range of underlying tokens.

Lemme frame it like this:

Say you’re looking to move your business to a new city. Do you choose… 

• City #1: with a dwindling population and aging infrastructure?

• City #2: with a growing population and newer/sturdier infrastructure?

(Yuh. Easy question to answer.)

The vast, vast majority of onchain actions require stablecoins → the more users/infrastructure there is on a blockchain, the more stablecoins are required.

Growth in stablecoin supply = growth in blockchain ‘population density’ = growing infrastructure = number go up over time.

(Look at which blockchains are seeing significant stablecoin growth → pick future winners → grab those tokens on Milk Road Swap 😉)

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

Ah. The age-old questions. 

Are we only heading down? Have we bottomed yet? Is the bull cycle over?

The answers to some of those questions lie below.

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 🍪

If you’re a dev / builder, this one’s for you. The Okto SDK not only makes building cross-chain dapps much easier, but also improves the user experience (by a lot and this is a big deal).*

The Ghibli craze sparks another wave of memecoin frenzy. With ChatGPT now generating images with ease, memecoin creators are cashing in on it.

Trump’s tariffs are back! This time, it’s 25% tariffs on all cars made outside of the U.S.

Wyoming is set to launch a state-issued stablecoin. It honestly seems like stablecoins are popping up as frequently as crypto ETF filings now.

Wanna grab a coffee with Milk Road? We’re hosting a meetup at ETH Bucharest where you can hang with fellow crypto enthusiasts!

*this is sponsored content.

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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.