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GM. This is Milk Road. The crypto newsletter that spends all weekend reading (excessively) long industry reports, so you don’t pull a muscle in your scrolling finger.

Today, we’re gonna give you a rundown of the best from each of the reports in a new segment called CryptoZone.

It’s like NFL RedZone, except for crypto.

Welcome. This is your host, The Milk Man.

We have an action-packed morning that includes:

• VanEcks’ Trends To Watch

• Dead NFTs: The Evolving Landscape of the NFT Market

• Crypto Market Manipulation Report

They cover everything from DeFi to NFTs to stablecoins to market manipulation.

Buckle up. Your 4 minutes of commercial-free crypto…. starts now.

DEFI AND STABLECOIN VOLUME HAVE BOTH DROPPED

VanEck is an investment manager with over $77B in assets under management (AUM).

According to its recent monthly crypto report:

• Volume across DeFi protocols declined to $52.8B - a 15.5% decrease from July.

• The total value locked (TVL) across DeFi fell 8% last month.

• The firms' DeFi index fell 21% and underperformed BTC and ETH in August. (The index tracks the performance of the largest and most liquid tokens in DeFi - like Uniswap, Lido, Maker, Aava, Curve, and THORchain.)

• The market cap of stablecoins dropped 2% last month.

Why is this happening? There are two big reasons…

1/ Hacks: a handful of popular DeFi protocols, like Curve and Balancer, recently got hacked.

The attacks led to millions of dollars in stolen funds, liquidity problems, and trust issues among investors and users.

Nature is still healing over in DeFi-land.

2/High-interest rates: the elevated interest rates in traditional finance have incentivized people to shift their investment strategies.

As a result, investors have moved from stablecoins and DeFi → money market funds where they can earn 5% yield, risk-free.

It’s a big trend everyone should keep a tab on.

All eyes will be on Jerome Powell and the Fed later this week as they decide whether to hike rates or not.

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ONLY 5% OF NFT COLLECTIONS ARE WORTH MORE THAN $0

The headline says it all…

NFTs are down, bad. And dappGambl wanted to figure out just how bad.

The analytics firm looked at 73,257 NFT projects and found that:

• 95% have a market cap of 0 ETH. 69,795 projects are worth less than the lint in your pocket.

• 79% of projects failed to sell out their collections. The supply far outweighs the demand.

Then, dappGamble looked at the top 8,850 NFT projects (according to CoinMarketCap) and found that:

• 18% of those NFT projects have a market cap of 0 ETH.

• 41% of them are priced between $5 - $100. 

• Less than 1% have a floor price of at least $6,000.

Let this be your daily reminder to always do your research and due diligence.

NFT projects are a lot like Taco Bell’s Crunchwrap Supreme: empty promises, no beef.

DEFI HAS SEEN $2B+ IN WASH TRADING ACTIVITY

Wash trading is a (dirty) trick as old as time. It’s when someone artificially raises the price of an asset by buying & selling it multiple times.

Criminals do it. Investors do it. Walter White and Marty Byrde do it.

And apparently, it’s also happening a lot in decentralized finance (DeFi).

A recent report from Solidus Labs, (a crypto-native trade surveillance and risk monitoring company), found that since 2020...

• $2B+ worth of wash trading volume has occurred on decentralized exchanges (DEXs).

• 20,000+ tokens’ prices and volumes have been manipulated.

• 67% of the DEX liquidity pools they analyzed (~30,000 in total) had executed wash trades.

• 13% of the total trading volume in the liquidity pools was from wash trades.

Turns out DEXs are the laundromats of crypto - you don’t know if they’re used to do laundry or to do launder-y.

BITE-SIZED COOKIES 🍪

Phemex is bringing change to the world of crypto exchanges. Becoming the first semi-decentralized exchange after dropping their Soul Pass Soulbound token and Phemex token rewards. We took the time to review their offerings and broke it all down for you Roaders.

Mark Cuban was hacked for $870K worth of crypto assets over the weekend. Cuban downloaded a fake MetaMask app that drained his assets. The billionaire shark got phished.

The Japanese government launched a new policy that lets startups raise funds with cryptocurrencies. Under the new rules, startups can offer cryptocurrencies instead of stocks when raising money from investment funds.

CoinEx published an open letter to its hackers in hopes of negotiating the return of stolen funds. 🎵 “Dear Slim, I wrote you but you still ain't callin'. I left my cell, my pager, and my home phone at the bottom. I sent two letters back in Autumn, you must not've got 'em” 🎵

Krafton (the creator of PUBG) is launching a new NFT game called Overdare. The company has created its own blockchain (Settlus) for the game and will offer AI tools that let gamers create their own shooter games, role-playing games (RPGs), and action RPGs.

Animoca Brands is developing a new “metaverse ecosystem token” on the Bitcoin blockchain. Its subsidiary company (Darewise Entertainment) will launch the game and build a metaverse ecosystem around Bitcoin Ordinals.

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.