🥛 Can a crypto billionaire save Robinhood?

GM. This is the Milk Road where we teach you the ABC’s of crypto and make it as easy as 1,2, and 3.

This was one of the wildest weeks in crypto, if you missed anything, we got you covered:

• Monday: Handling the market's gut punches

• Tuesday: CHAOS! Luna Part 1

• Wednesday: Chaos Continues! Luna Part 2

• Thursday: The move we made during the crash

Now, let's boogie:

Estimated read time: 2 minutes and 47 seconds

• 💸 Sam Bankman-Fried buys 7.6% of Robinhood

• ⚾️ Sorare & MLB ink a new deal

• 🤑 Funding Friday

• 🤣 Meme of the Day

SAM BANKMAN-FRIED BUYS 7.6% OF ROBINHOOD

Sam Bankman-Fried (the founder of FTX) bought 56M shares of Robinhood for ~$648M and is now the third largest shareholder in the company.

SBF is honestly living his best life:

• Worth $11B+

• FTX just became the 3rd largest exchange by volume in the world (and it’s only 3 years old)

• And now owns 7.6% of Robinhood

• Was just in the Bahamas kicking it with Tom Brady and making TikToks

Some boss shit.

And this honestly couldn’t come at a better time for Robinhood....they just announced an 18% decline in revenue for Q1, laid off 9% of their employees, and have struggled to regain trust after their whole Game Stop drama last year.

They’ve also seen their stock go from $55 all the way down to $8 since they IPO’d. With the news of SBF buying in yesterday, the stock price has already increased by 26% and is currently ~$10.50.

But Robinhood does have one thing going for them: crypto. In Q1 they saw a 13% increase in crypto trading revenue, so having one of the best minds in crypto as a shareholder could be a game changer for them.

And vice versa, FTX just launched a way to trade stocks on the platform, so they're clearly trying to take some market share there.

Milk Road Take: At the rate FTX moves, it wouldn’t be shocking to see them acquire Robinhood down the line and add it to their arsenal.

THE CHAINSMOKERS DROP AN ALBUM AND NFT

The Chainsmokers are dropping a new album today and 5,000 NFTs with it.

Everyone is dropping NFTs...so, what? Now, these NFTs aren’t your normal NFTs.. they come with a special utility: the holders will split a 1% share of the royalties for the entire album + you’ll get to kick it with the duo from time to time.

This is a first for music NFTs. We’ve seen other artists give out royalties for specific songs, but never for an entire album.

The coolest part? There won’t be an initial public sale for the NFTs. 5,000 die-hard fans have been picked by the Chainsmokers to get them for free.

How did they pick who got the NFTs? Hand-picked based on music streams, concert sales, and social media engagement.

The Milk Road's Take: This is cool, but even if the Chainsmokers can deliver $10m of royalties/year from the album that's only $20 per year per NFT holder in royalty payments.  Not bad for a free NFT and status symbol, but don't go run to build your cash flowing asset portfolio around these!

SORARE IS COMING TO THE BIG LEAGUES

After partnering with 230 soccer clubs and the MLS, Sorare just announced that they’re launching a fantasy NFT game with the MLB in the next few months.

Here’s how it works:

• You buy licensed NFTs of specific players (I.E. Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, etc)

• You use your NFTs to build lineups

• You enter your lineups into tournaments

• If you rank high enough in these tournaments, you win NFTs and ETH

At first glance, that looks just like Daily Fantasy Sports (ya know what FanDuel and DraftKings do) - how does an NFT make it better?

Well - because each player is an NFT with a limited supply (I.E. there are only 1,000 Mike Trout NFTs), you can sell it after a few good games, even if the lineups don’t win.  

The concept has caught fire with over $325M of Sorare NFTs traded in 2021 and we only expect that number to go up now that they’re coming to the MLB.

FUNDING FRIDAY

Every Friday we recap all the web3 startups that got funding. This week we saw $1B invested in crypto companies and $1B into crypto-focused funds. Who got the money this time?

Talos got $105M to build the infrastructure to help institutions break into digital asset trading. They’re also the newest crypto unicorn.

MechaFightClub got $40M to build a UFC-styled play to earn fighting game. The twist? You use robotic chicken NFTs as your fighters. And they fight in the Cocktagon.

Casa got $21M to build an app to secure your bitcoin. Casa Multisig protects your bitcoin with multiple keys, so losing one key doesn't mean losing funds.

KuCoin got $150M as a global crypto exchange. They now have a $10B valuation and the battle for best crypto exchange just got more interesting

Freeverse.io got $10.5M to develop “Living Asset” NFTs. Aka Dynamic NFTs that can change based on multiple factors - this will be big when it comes to crypto gaming!

Paper got $9.3M to provide the easiest NFT experience possible - create a wallet with your email and use credit cards to buy stuff. So easy your grandma could use it!

Check out our full database of companies that have raised $$ here

MEME OF THE DAY

Add Arizona Iced Tea and you got the Holy Trinity

Shaan aka “Elon’s chocolate milk” & Ben "2% Milk" Levy

See ya next week!

A Review from the Road...

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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.