GM, this is Milk Road. We're like an open window - giving you a breath of fresh air to start your morning.

Here’s what we got for you today:

• Binance(US) is suspending USD deposits 👀

• Arbitrum ran outta gas ⛽

• Funding Friday 💰

• Optimism completes a successful upgrade 🍪

BINANCE (US) IS SUSPENDING USD DEPOSITS 👀

Binance.US just dropped a bomb… it’s moving to a crypto-only exchange.

No USD deposits. No USD trading pairs. No USD, at all. Nothing. Zip. Nada.

Why? Binance.US’ banking partners are suspending USD channels as early as next week.

So, the crypto exchange won’t be able to complete any fiat deposits or withdrawals once that happens.

Here’s everything you need to know:

• Starting today, all USD deposits and recurring buy orders are suspended

• Binance.US will transition to a crypto-only exchange

• Starting next week, Binance.US will delist all USD trading pairs (i.e BTC-USD, etc)

• All customers have been encouraged to withdraw their USD from the platform by June 13, 2023

• Any USD balances remaining on the platform after June 15 can be converted to stablecoins

It looks like this could be the beginning of the end for Binance.US. We’re pouring one out for another fallen homie…

P.S - If you still have any USD funds on Binance.US., we highly recommend getting it out while you can.

ARBITRUM GOES DOWN ⛽

Arbitrum is one of the most popular Layer 2s (L2s) out there. It provides cheaper fees, faster transactions, and recently airdropped a token.

Here’s a quick analogy for L2s: Ethereum is like the highway with tolls.

Everything is great, until rush hour. Traffic moves slower. Patience runs lower.

Arbitrum is like an EZ-Pass. It lets you skip the line and processes the tolls later.

But Arbtrium had a major roadblock earlier this week and stopped processing transactions for a few hours.

What happened? A software bug.

• Arbitrum bundles transactions off of the blockchain and then sends them back to Ethereum to be completed at a later time

• The piece of software that bundles these transactions is called a “sequencer”

• The sequencer needs funds to pay for the transaction fees. There is code that “auto-refills” the wallet when there’s a low balance

• There was a bug and the sequencer ran out of money until the Arbitrum team (Offchain Labs) fixed the bug

It’s kinda like when you forget to pay your electricity bill and the lights turn off in the middle of your shower.

The result: The Arbitrum network was backed up for hours.

So what? During the outage, $2B+ in assets were stuck on Arbitrum. And it’s the 4th time this has happened.

It also highlights how centralized a lot of these projects still are.

If there’s still one central entity (Offchain Labs) controlling everything, is it really decentralized?

Luckily, the Arbitrum team says that “eventually, sequencing affordances could be given to a distributed committee of sequencers”.

We’ll have to wait and see…

FUNDING FRIDAY 💰

It’s Funding Friday! This week, ~$77M was raised by crypto companies.

Here’s who got the money:

Lens Protocol got $15M to pioneer the future of Web3 social media. They call it the people-powered social layer.

Taiko Labs got $22M for their layer 2 scaling solution. It utilizes zero-knowledge technology and is compatible with Ethereum dApps.

Meanwhile Insurance raised $19M for their Bitcoin-based life insurance offering. Bringing life insurance policies to the blockchain.

Argus got $10M to build their Web3 gaming studio. Game details still yet to be released…

Demox Labs raised $4.5M for their privacy-focused crypto wallet. They are building on Aleo’s blockchain.

Check out the full database of companies that have raised money this week, right here.

MILK & COOKIES 🍪

Optimism successfully completed its “Bedrock” hard fork. 1/ That’s what she said. 2/ The upgrade includes cheaper fees and ETH is now a native token on the Layer 2.

Kraken launched its NFT marketplace on the Polygon network. The marketplace will support over 250 NFTs across multiple blockchains - including Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon.

Animoca Brands announced it will shift its focus to crypto opportunities outside of the U.S. Regulators are scaring everyone away. And we ain’t talkin’ bout Nate Dogg and Warren G.

A U.S. judge has dismissed the case against PoolTogether. The defi platform was being sued over $12 in damages. Finally, good legal news for crypto.

MILKY MEMES 🤣

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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.