GM. This is Milk Road. We shed more light on the crypto space than a Lite-Brite.

Here’s what we’re serving up today:

• ETH hits an 8-month high ⚡

• OpenSea Pro is taking on Blur ⚔️

• Euler Finance: Crypto’s Comeback Kid 💸

• Trademark Thursday: Tencent & Web3 Gaming 📂

• Happy 48th birthday to Satoshi 🍪

Today's edition is brought to you by White Mirror NFTs, a community of filmmakers, creators, and movie fans looking to develop the next generation of A.I. films.

ETH HITS AN 8-MONTH HIGH ⚡

MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE… ETH just hit an 8-month high.

I repeat, ETH is higher than it’s been in 8 months. 🎵Yea we poppin’ champagne like we won a championship game🎵

ETH clocked in at $1,913 yesterday and was +5% on the day. It hasn’t been this good since Aug. 17, 2022.

Why the rise? 2 things:

1/ The sharks are swimmin’

Addresses holding 100-10K ETH are called sharks. (The Milk Man tells me they’re the second-biggest wallets in the Crypto Sea, behind whales.)

And lately, they’ve been eating up ETH like it was a scene from Jaws.

Sharks added 2.27M ETH to their wallets, worth $4.2B over the last 9 months. That’s around 1.4% of the total ETH supply.

So what? It’s seen as bullish when sharks accumulate this much of a digital asset. They own more ETH than they have in over a year, and that could be tied to ETH’s 8-month ATH.

2/ The Shapella Upgrade

Not to pull a fast one on you, but we’re calling Ethereum’s April 12 unstaking event the Shapella upgrade now.

Shanghai refers to Ethereum’s execution layer update. But the protocol’s consensus layer will get an upgrade known as Capella. That’s right, the Ethereum network is layered like an onion.

Shanghai + Capella = Shapella

Everyone’s been antsy for it. That anticipation could be what’s driven the price up over the past few months.

Who knows if ETH’s price might tank after the dust settles from the upgrade. But for now…we’re ordering the wagyu from the menu tonight.

MAKE AN A.I. MOVIE WITH WHITE MIRROR NFTS

I’ll say it: today’s movies suck. The story plots are predictable and the visuals haven’t improved since Avatar came out in 2009...

Well, there’s a new filmmaking wave coming - AI movies. But there’s a problem: the tools are confusing to use...

Introducing White Mirror NFTs, a community of filmmakers, creators, and movie fans looking to develop the next generation of A.I. films. By joining, you’ll:

• Get access to the who-is-who of A.I. filmmaking, like Tino Schaedler and others

• Join the creative process by voting on ideas, giving early feedback, and talking directly with the creators

• Learn how to use popular A.I. tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and more

• Be featured in the outro of the film that is created

The White Mirror NFT collection will be open for a full week and will start on April 13th. It’s an open-ended collection but there are special perks & benefits for the first 99 to mint.

This is a story that you don’t want to miss.

OPENSEA PRO LAUNCHES FOR SEASONED TRADERS ⚔️

OpenSea just made a power move. It launched a new NFT marketplace for pro traders called OpenSea Pro.

That’s right folks, it used the oldest trick in the corporate book: tack on “Pro” and call it a day.

Here’s everything you need to know. It will:

• Be a separate platform from the OG OpenSea. The new “Pro” version is just the new name for Gem V2, an aggregator platform it bought 6 months ago.

• Have NFT listings aggregated from ~170 marketplaces. That’ll help traders get the best deals out there.

• Charge 0% fees. For a limited time, you can list on OpenSea with no fees through OpenSea Pro for the most popular collections. The OG platform will also go back to its normal 2.5% fee (boo!)

• Reward users with NFTs…somehow. Other platforms, like Blur, reward users with tokens, but OpenSea plans to reward users with: NFTs. We don’t know much yet, but ~43K users have already claimed their early access NFT rewards.

• You can use it on your phone (!!!!) This is a biggie; OpenSea users could only ever view, not trade, NFTs on mobile devices.

So what? OpenSea bought Gem last year to target pro traders. Now that Blur has launched and taken the NFT marketplace throne, it looks like OpenSea finally made its counter-move.

It’s trynna be that buddy that lets you win at ping pong early on so you think they suck, but then they come back and kick your a**.

Who knows if OpenSea Pro will beat Blur - 69% of NFT trades were on Blur in March vs. 20% on OpenSea, but we’ll get a better idea in the next couple of months.

In the meantime, we get to just sit back and use all the cool new features while they duke it out.

EULER FINANCE’S COMEBACK 💸

Wow, do we have a comeback story for you. I’m talking about a Supa Hot Fire type comeback that had everyone in crypto like...

Enter Euler Finance - the lending protocol that got hacked for ~$200M. After a wild turn of events, they’ve recovered most of it back.

The last time we covered this there was a battle of the hackers, failed negotiations, and more drama than an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

Since then:

• The Euler hackers had some internal fights and threatened to turn on each other.

• They realized money laundering is a lot harder than it looks like on that Netflix show Ozark. Respect to Marty Byrde.

• A bunch of blockchain investigators teamed up to track the hackers’ movements.

In the end, the hackers had a change of heart and decided to return the funds.

So what? History has been made - it’s the largest recovery of stolen funds, EVER, and Euler’s customers get their money back.

Several protocols had their funds stuck on the platform and some lost their entire treasuries.

Now, the day is saved. FINALLY - a crypto story with a happy ending.

TRADEMARK THURSDAY 📂

Some of the biggest companies in the world are hopping aboard the Web3 train. And it’s moving faster than Elon's Hyperloop.

So just in case you blinked and missed something, Trademark Thursday is here to get you up to speed:

• Polkadot files trademark for a blockchain communication platform. Marking their debut to social media and messaging.

• Walmart files trademarks for Sam's Club that include: Virtual clothing, appliances, augmented environments & VR content. Live better in the metaverse.

• Tencent Games files trademarks for NFT and VR-related services/goods. *Another giant enters the web3 gaming group chat*

• Bobbi Brown files trademarks for virtual goods & cosmetics used in online virtual worlds and related entertainment services.

MILK & COOKIES 🍪

Happy (belated) 48th Birthday to Satoshi Nakomoto. No one knows who the creator of Bitcoin is, but the birthday on their foundation profile page is April 5, 1975. Cheers to Satoshi, whoever you are and wherever you are.

MicroStrategy bought another 1,045 Bitcoin. It now owns 140,000 Bitcoin and 1 out of every 150 Bitcoin that will ever exist. Can’t stop, won’t stop.

Ralph Lauren is now accepting crypto payments in its Miami store. It partnered with BitPay to make it happen and will be accepting BTC, ETH, DOGE, and more. Crypto 🤝 Fashion.

MILKY MEME 🤣

That's a wrap for today. Meet us on Twitter to talk all about it. It’s kinda like a family BBQ but better - no screaming kids, awkward photos, or drunk uncles telling weird stories (@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.