GM. This is Milk Road. We’re that friend that actually remembers your bday without seeing your Instagram story.

It’s Saturday, y’all. Go touch grass after you read this: 

• Crypto’s A+ Q1 earnings 🌟

• Visual of the day: ETH gas fees hit 1-year high 📈

• Stripe releases a new fiat-to-crypto on-ramp 💲

• FTX wants $4B from Genesis 🍪

Today’s edition is brought to you by Axelar + Squid. They offer a cross-chain DEX powered by Axelar GMP that lets you swap tokens across blockchains natively and securely. 

CRYPTO REPORTED SOLID EARNINGS 🌟

My parents always had one date circled on the calendar each year: my birthday report card day. AKA the day we’d see if I got an A in anything other than P.E.

Well, turns out report cards never go away. You grow up, start working for a company, and it just gets renamed to an “Earnings Report Day.”

And 2 crypto players just had their earnings reports released: Coinbase and Cash App. Let’s see how they did…*gulp*

1/ Coinbase

• Reported a rise in revenue to $773M, beating the expected $655M.

• Net loss was just $79M (76% less than what was expected,) & the platform’s user base grew 14.3% in Q1

• Coinbase stock jumped 17% after earnings came out.

Looks like ARK’s recents Coinbase stock buys paid off, including the $8.46M the funds bought Monday & the $7.55M Tuesday.

Cathie Wood somewhere:

2/ Jack Dorsey’s Cash App

• Reported $931M in profits in Q1 (a 50% rise on the year) & total gross profit of $1.71B.

• $50M of gross profit was from selling BTC to customers. Bitcoin revenue (total sales of BTC to customers) was $2.16B, an 18% increase from Q4 & a 25% on the year.

• Stock was up 5% on the news.

Looks like Coinbase & Cash App both got A’s. Time to whip out the gold stars…

TODAY'S EDITION IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY AXELAR + SQUID ROUTER

Blockchains are a lot like countries. Want to do cool stuff in them? You need to use specific currencies & tokens.

Using USD in Europe is like wearing flip-flops to a fancy restaurant - you won’t get in and you will get judged.

But there’s a problem: bridging tokens between chains sucks. You gotta buy it, wrap it, swap it… bop it, twist it, pull it… just to use the right token.

Introducing Squid, a cross-chain DEX and liquidity router, powered by Axelar. With Squid, you can:

• Easily swap tokens and access apps across different chains

• Avoid risky bridges and deal cross-chain in native assets

• Build apps that tap into cross-chain liquidity and scale to anyone with a crypto wallet, no matter the blockchain

Squid is powered by Axelar's General Message Passing (GMP), a protocol that carries any payload cross-chain: no more bridges or wrapped assets.

Why swim in one blockchain when you can surf across them all?

VISUAL OF THE DAY: ETH GAS FEES HIT 1-YEAR HIGH 📈

Gas prices are through the roof. And not just for your car..

On Thursday, the average gas fee to make a single transaction on Ethereum was $15.82. I’d rather walk…

Ethereum gas fees haven’t been this high since May 2022.

Why? Pepe, the 2-week old memecoin that everyone & their mother is trading. It hit $150M in trading volume on Uniswap and is close to hitting a $1B market cap. It’s PEPE’s world, we’re just livin’ in it.

Since PEPE launched, the average price of gas is up 50%.

Rise in trading volume = rise in fees to process each trade.

And the rise in MEV searchers isn’t helping.

They watch for big transactions in the mempool (the queue of trades waiting for validation AKA the “line to get in.”)

Then they order a trade and include a higher gas fee - that prioritizes their transaction to be placed instead of others. It’s like sliding the bouncer $20 to cut the line

No fear, Roadies - we’ll brave this memecoin szn together.

STRIPE DROPS A NEW FIAT-TO-CRYPTO ON-RAMP💲

The crypto industry gets attacked in a ton of different ways. Hacks, scams, regulations, bankruptcies, and jokes from your aunts & uncles at the family reunion BBQ.

Crypto has survived it all.

But lately, the industry’s Achilles' heel has been targeted: fiat-to-crypto on-ramps. This is important for how easily users can convert fiat → crypto to use in the Web3 world.

Well, over the last few weeks, crypto has lost all its big fiat-to-crypto partners like Silvergate and Signature. While other partners have flat out run away.

Just when it looked like all hope was lost, a new hero has emerged… *drumroll*...

Stripe. The financial giant announced it's launching a new fiat-to-crypto on-ramp solution to make it easy for customers to purchase cryptocurrencies.

Here’s everything you need to know:

• There’s an embeddable on-ramp that lets developers insert a crypto-purchasing widget directly into their own website or app with just 10 lines of code.

• There’s a Stripe-hosted on-ramp that uses a link that companies can direct US-based customers to.

• Users can buy crypto for immediate use.

• It includes built-in fraud tools and identity verification to support companies in meeting KYC and compliance requirements.

Who knows if Stripe's new feature will save all the fiat-to-crypto problems the industry is facing, but it could be a huge help. And props to them for standing their ground while others run away. #BuiltDifferent

MILK & COOKIES 🍪

FTX filed court documents seeking to clawback $4B from Genesis. It accused the bankrupt crypto lender of being a primary feeder fund for FTX’s “fraudulent business model.”

Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon could face 40 years in jail, The Wall Street Journal said. He’s still locked up in Montenegro at the moment.

Ex-OpenSea product lead was convicted of fraud & money laundering in an insider trading case. It’s the first insider trading scheme that involves digital assets.

China-based tech giant Alibaba is launching a metaverse platform called Cloudverse. It’ll allow brands to build virtual experiences.

MILKY MEMES 🤣

HIT THE INBOX OF 250K+ CRYPTO INVESTORS

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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.