GM. This is Milk Road, your life raft in a sea of noise, bad takes, and messy data.

Here’s what we got for you today:

• ✍️ Top 5 sectors

• ✍️ COTD: crypto = life raft

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: The US Economy Is Re-Accelerating & Why Cutting Rates Now Would Be a Disaster w/ Danny Dayan

• 🍪 Lol, just kidding!

Yield Seeker gives you a personalized AI Agent that goes out and earns yield on your stablecoins. Grow your crypto with Yield Seeker today.

THE TOP 5 BEST PERFORMING SECTORS (OVER 30 DAYS) 🥇

In May, our Top 5 Performing Sectors chart showed the market was drunk on risk – with a mix of dicey sectors leading the charge over the trailing 30 days.

In June, it showed us that the hangover had kicked in with only 3 of the top 5 sectors showing any gains at all (and even then they were ~3% at best).

But now we’re back in the green and drunk as a skunk once again.

(Hair of the dog baaaaby!)

Here are your Top 5 Performing Sectors by weighted average, for the past 30 days:

1/ NFT Applications 🖼️

(Can I get a “huh??”)

These are tokens tied to NFT projects – and right now, the sector has one token to thank for its crazy outperformance: Pudgy Penguins’ $PENGU.

Side note: APENFT is not associated with Bored Ape Yacht Club.

2/ Gen 1 Smart contracts 🧠

These are smart contract blockchain tokens that HAVEN’T been rebuilt from the inside out. 

(E.g. Ethereum, the original smart contract chain, wouldn’t be included as its 2022 Merge update changed how it fundamentally worked.)

Here’re the 3 leading performers of the sector:

3/ Oracles 🔮 

These are blockchains that take in real-world data and log them onchain.

E.g. Say you own a crypto platform where folks can bet on US farming output (niche, but you do you).

That platform might use an oracle to pull in weather data and determine the likelihood of increased/decreased crop yields.

Here’s who’s doing the heavy lifting:

4/ Memecoins 🪙

…NFT apps are outperforming memecoins – what is this, 2021?

What’s more surprising is that $BONK – one of the larger memecoins (and therefore: harder to move in price) – is leading the pack in gains.

This is likely thanks to its recently launched ‘BonkFun’ memecoin launchpad, which has had a habit of consistently flipping PumpFun in daily revenue over the past few weeks.

(That said, this revenue outperformance appears to be largely driven by incentives right now.)

Here’s who’s taking first/second/third place:

BTW: we took a closer look at $BONK (and its potential to climb higher from here) in a recent edition of Milk Road Degen – sign up for any further updates (for free) here!

5/ DePIN 📌

Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks = crowdsourced infrastructure.

E.g. Helium Mobile pays people to share their WiFi and 5G signals with its network of cell phone subscribers.

The cooler part: they share that data access with other major mobile networks – so everyday people are using blockchain technology, without even knowing it!

If you count out $PENGU’s insane data-skewing outperformance, this list turns into a strange, relatively even mix of stodgy infrastructure and sugary, high-risk sectors.

And honestly, none of them were on our bingo card — picking these kinds of winners can be a tall task.

(Our cheat code is to lean on our PRO team for that kind of thing — their PRO Portfolio is up 42% over the past 30 days.)

Our guess is: the riskier sectors will likely continue to outperform over the coming months.

But as we mentioned on Monday, we’re waiting for Bitcoin dominance to break below ~59% and ISM PMI data to break above 50 before we get too excited.

COTD: CRYPTO = ECONOMIC LIFE RAFT 📊

“Crypto is a solution looking for a problem.”

We hear this one a lot at family get-togethers (looking at you, Terry).

And from a certain perspective, we get it.

(Why should Terry go through the hassle of onboarding into crypto when he has his financial needs met by a bank account, credit card, and Venmo?)

But zoom out, and you’ll see crypto isn’t a ‘nice to have, but not really needed by most people’ kinda solution – it’s a global economic life raft!

In countries where economic freedoms and/or stability is threatened – blockchain technology thrives.

Specifically: stablecoins. 

Check out these year-on-year transaction volume increases by country...

(Nuts!)

And that’s not to suggest that slower volume increases mean stablecoins are a dead technology in the west.

They’re already being used by web2 giants like PayPal and Stripe to optimize their existing systems by making them faster/cheaper. 

…something that will likely bleed into the traditional banking system now that the US has set regulatory guidelines via the GENIUS Act.

The best part: 

All of the above will drive global adoption of blockchain technology further from here.

P.S. If you want to go DEEP on stablecoins – check out this PRO Report.

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

Are fan tokens the next big thing? Our article covers why Chilliz’s fan tokens could be a game-changer for sports fans around the world.*

“Hold my beer” — $BTC. A recent report from Sygnum shows $BTC is easily outpacing Visa in annual volume, $13T vs. $20T.

Lol, just kidding! The SEC approves, then immediately pauses the launch of Bitwise’s multi-coin crypto ETF.

The market’s getting frothy. These are the tokens LG is watching over at Milk Road Degen.

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 sponsored content.
**this is partner content.

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