GM. This is the Milk Road. The newsletter that quenches your daily crypto thirst.

Here's what we got going on today:

• 5 reasons Vitalik is excited about Ethereum

• Chart of the Day

• Quick Bites

• Milky Memes

5 REASONS VITALIK IS EXCITED ABOUT ETHEREUM

This is Vitalik.

Sure, he created a $150b+ blockchain and donated billions to India's COVID relief.

But we know him for being Uniqlo's top customer, adding red wine to his green tea, and wearing floppy hats.

And the founder of Ethereum just dropped a new blog post explaining why he is excited about the future of Ethereum.

Here's what you need to know in less than 90 seconds...

1/ Money

Vitalik thinks this is the most important application for crypto.

Let's go back to last Christmas. Vitalik was walking around Argentina looking for a coffee shop. After passing 5 closed stores, he finally stumbled into an open cafe. The owner recognized Vitalik and showed him his Binance account full of Ether.

Vitalik paid for his coffee and snacks in ETH. It was the first time he paid with crypto in Latin America and it opened his eyes to the value of crypto in countries with unstable currencies and authoritarian regimes.

But what about using crypto in rich countries. Does crypto make sense in a country like the U.S.? Vitalik thinks it does.

• Crypto makes donations more convenient

• Satisfies the "cashless society” narrative while not sacrificing privacy like CBDCs do

• Avoids de-platforming risk from payment processors

The issue with using crypto for money is the volatility, which is why we have stablecoins.

2/ DeFi

DeFi has been a rollercoaster. It went from 10 people trading coins on the internet to billion-dollar yield farming applications to promises of 1000% interest rates which predictably crashed, and now a more stable, possibly normal medium.

Besides decentralized stablecoins, Vitalik sees a few other promising DeFi use cases.

• Prediction markets

• Real world assets like stock indices and real estate

• Efficiently trade between assets like ETH, stablecoins, and real world assets

3/ The Identity Ecosystem

Vitalik thinks identity on the blockchain is important to the future of crypto. Here are some of the use cases being built right now.

• Basic authentication -> Sign In With Ethereum (SIWE) standard allows users to log into traditional websites without giving companies like Google or Facebook access to private information

• Names -> ENS (Ethereum Naming Service) makes it possible to name your digital wallet.

• Proof of personhood -> Proof of Humanity lets users prove they are unique humans, which is useful for airdrops and governance

• Attestations -> POAP (the "proof of attendance protocol") is a protocol for issuing tokens that represent attestations. I attended x event, finished y course, or met z person. (Vitalik has a POAP card that people can scan to prove they met him.)

4/ DAOs

DAOs are Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. Basically a group chat that shares a digital wallet.

One DAO wants to purchase an NBA team, another runs a weekly joke contest, and one even tried to buy the Constitution.

But DAOs are more than just comedy shows and investment groups. Vitalik says, "a DAO is a smart contract that is meant to represent a structure of ownership or control over some asset or process"

They can protect against inside threats (like FTX) and censorship, be more efficient ways to organize people in countries and jurisdictions with complex and unfair legal systems, and are better suited to interact with other decentralized institutions.

5/ Hybrid Applications

Hybrid applications are off chain actions that can be made better with blockchains.

Take a look at voting.

By using blockchain technology you could

1/ Increase the validity of voting processes on social media, petitions, and polls

2/ Create new forms of voting that allow citizens to give rapid feedback from their digital wallet (i.e. government wants public opinion on a referendum)

Vitalik sees a whole suite of applications that could benefit from a hybrid blockchain approach.

• Proof of Solvency for exchanges

• Government registries

• Corporate accounting

• Games

• Supply chain applications

• Tracking access authorization

CHART OF THE DAY

25% of Bitcoin hasn't moved in 10 years.

And 66% of the total Bitcoin supply hasn’t moved in the last year (new record).

There are lot of reasons to be bearish on crypto.

But, people are holding onto their Bitcoin more than ever before. That's a good sign.

TODAY'S EDITION IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY COMPOSER

Luck isn’t an investment strategy.

If we learned anything from 2022, it's that investments don’t always go up.

High-flying tech companies, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and heck even bonds have taken a beating so far this year. Portfolios are hurting.

But there is a better way to manage your portfolio than wishing for good luck. Investing with data and logic can help you weather the inevitable storms and grow your wealth year over year.

Enter Opus from Composer.

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You can bury your head in the sand with a robo advisor, or you can power your portfolio with data. Discover why over $1 trillion is managed by quant funds with Composer today.*

QUICK BITES

Crypto hedge fund Orthogonal Trading shuts down due to FTX collapse.

Vegas odds on which exchange will go bankrupt next. Vegas says the 3 exchanges most likely to blow up are Crypto.com, KuCoin, and Binfinex. Place your bets

Nexo crypto lending platform to cease US operations.

Circle USDC cancels plans to go public at a $4.5 billion valuation. We're going to tell our grandchildren bed time stories about the rumor of Circle going public.

Metaverse comes in second place for Oxford's word of the year. Right behind "Goblin Mode."

Goldman Sachs wants to spend tens of millions of dollars on distressed crypto companies. 

MILKY MEMES

That's a wrap for today. Stay thirsty & see ya tomorrow! If you want more, be sure to follow our Twitter (@MilkRoadDaily)

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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.