GM. This is Milk Road, your daily injection of crypto news, insights, and memes.

(Lift up your sleeve, this won’t hurt a bit.)

Here’s what we got for you today:

• ✍️ 3 big pieces of news

• ✍️ Eth turns 10 today!

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: The Ethereum Supercycle Has Begun: Here’s the Proof w/ Jake Brukhman

• 🍪 How to play the Zora meta

YEET is crypto’s casino featuring original games, slots and live events. Sign up with Milk Road for a shot at $10K.

3 BIG PIECES OF NEWS FROM THE LAST 24HRS 💪

The crypto news cycle doesn’t sleep.

But that’s why we have a team of crypto nerds on our payroll, strategically scattered across timezones: so you never miss a beat.

Here’s what they’ve got for you today:

1/ Crypto IPO momentum builds

When $CRCL ripped ~850% from its IPO price (bottom to top), one thing was made clear: the big dogs want greater access to crypto assets on TradFi rails. 

(And now, crypto companies are rushing to fill that gap in supply.)

One of the biggest names set to IPO in the next 12 months is Kraken, and today, we copped further insight on their current valuation. 👇

This rumored raise is like that rash cream you keep hidden in your bathroom cabinet: private, but important.

It’s likely a way for Kraken to get big institutional names on their investor roster before their scheduled Q1 2026 IPO (helping to boost the company’s pedigree in the eyes of Wall St).

Add this to the planned IPOs from other crypto heavyweights – like BitGo, Bullish, and Gemini – and it only adds further momentum to the public crypto sector’s growth spurt.

2/ (Yet another) new $ETH treasury company announced

ETHZilla (helluva name) plans to invest $425M into its $ETH treasury, which would put them at #6 on the ‘largest public $ETH treasury companies’ list if the purchase happened today.

BTW, you can learn how to pick the future winners of the public crypto treasury race here!

3/ $BTC options trading is about to explode

An option = a contract that allows you to buy/sell an asset if certain conditions/numbers are hit down the line (it’s a BIG part of institutional trading).

And BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF ($IBIT) just got permission to increase the amount of daily options it can offer by 10x!

Translation: more money can now flow into Bitcoin each and every day. 👇

The through line here:

TradFi’s hunger for crypto exposure via traditional markets is still far from being satiated — and the crypto sector is sprinting to catch up.

Increased demand + restricted supply = number go up.

$ETH TURNS 10 TODAY! 🥳

Ethereum just turned 10!

So to celebrate – here’re 10 quick hitting facts about $ETH that you might not have known.

(A bunch of them were news to us.) 👇

1/ Ethereum was almost built on Bitcoin

Almost! But a bunch of core Bitcoin devs refused the proposal, pointing to security and scalability risks.

2/ Peter Thiel funded Ethereum (kinda)

Peter Thiel (co-founder of PayPal / Founders Fund) has this thing he calls the ‘Thiel Fellowship’ where he pays students to drop out of college and work on their own projects.

Vitalik was a Thiel Fellow.

3/ The $ETH whitepaper started as a Reddit post

At least, the original kernel of the idea did – Vitalik shared it with another developer buddy, Gavin Wood, who then wrote the Ethereum ‘yellow paper’ off the back of it.

4/ People bought Ethereum’s 2014 ICO using $BTC

The Ethereum team raised ~$18M (31,500 BTC) at the time…or in today’s money $3.7B!

5/ Ethereum was almost called something else…

Platoneum, Executium, and Decentralia were all on the short list – but ‘Ethereum’ won out after Vitalik took a liking to the mythical concept of a fifth element called ‘Aether’ (pronounced ‘ether’).

6/ Ethereum exists thanks in part to World Of Warcraft 

Seriously. Vitalik had one of his hard-earned in-game spells nerfed by Blizzard (makers of World Of Warcraft) and it made him realize “what horrors centralized services can bring”.

7/ Vitalik was ‘the Milk Man of 2011’?

In 2011, when Vitalik was 17, he co-founded Bitcoin Magazine – where he personally wrote hundreds of articles on Bitcoin & crypto (dude, SAME! Except I’m 34 and not that bright).

8/ Ethereum’s genesis block shouts out Bitcoin

Bitcoin and Ethereum’s genesis blocks both contained the message: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks".

(A nod to the 2008 global financial crisis.)

9/ The founding team built a whole bunch of other blockchains/products

Cardano, Polkadot, and MetaMask are all brainchilds of Ethereum founding members (Charles Hoskinson, Gavin Wood, and Joe Lubin).

10/ $ETH might be about to break a ~4 year old resistance level

Couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate Ethereum’s birthday tbh. 👇

Happy birthday Ethereum, we’re so proud of you!

(Damnit. I promised myself I wouldn’t cry.)

WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH RATE CUTS? 🕵️‍♂️

Today is the FOMC meeting and markets are on edge.

To help you make sense of it all, we’re bringing in the big guns.

We’re going live on Milk Road Macro’s X account at 4pm ET with Tony Greer, right after Powell speaks.

He’ll be breaking down what just happened, what it means for markets, and how crypto might react.

Earlier this week, we kicked off the Milk Road Macro Podcast with PDS (ex-Soros macro chief).

He broke down how he’s thinking about the current macro setup and what people are missing about the AI revolution.

→ Catch the episode here

Want more like this?

Make sure you’re subscribed to the Milk Road Macro YouTube channel so you don’t miss future episodes.

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

We just dropped a review on Figure Markets: a platform where you can trade crypto, earn yield, and borrow against your assets (all while keeping full control of your funds).

Siiiiiiigh. An early preview of the White House Digital Assets Report has no mention of a Strategic $BTC/crypto reserve.

How to play the Zora meta. LG just walked us through the bull and bear case for $ZORA (the hot new social token).

Moooar RWAs! eToro just announced plans to tokenize 100 of the most popular US stocks & ETFs, on Ethereum.

Crypto cashback, baaaby! The Gemini Credit Card gives you 4% back on gas, 3% on dining, 2% on groceries and 1% on everything else.**

**this is partner content.

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MILKY MEMES 🤣

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

Today, we’re shining the spotlight on a standout review from Milk Road Degen:

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY