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GM. This is Milk Road, drilling through the crypto mountain to bring you the most precious gems. No helmet needed, just some reading glasses!

It’s Friday, let’s boogie:

• Satoshi Nakamoto, is that you? 👀

• We just made 3 new trades, here’s why…🤑

• Is Xbox dropping a crypto wallet soon? 🧐

• Pokemon cards are turning into NFTs 🍪

SATOSHI NAKAMOTO, IS THAT YOU? 👀

Hal Finney is a crypto legend. He…

• Was the first person to download the Bitcoin software

• Worked with Satoshi Nakamoto and helped find bugs in the software

• Was part of the first Bitcoin transaction ever (Satoshi sent him 10 BTC in 2009)

Some people even think Hal Finney = Satoshi Nakamoto. The creator of Bitcoin himself.

Well, check it out. This old video has been making its rounds across the crypto community.

It’s Hal Finney talking about zero-knowledge proofs, 25 YEARS AGO at the Crypto ‘98 Conference.

Here are a few of my initial reactions:

Reaction #1: “Hal has the voice of an angel super-nerd”.

Reaction #2: “Damn, there was a Crypto ‘98 conference?”.

It’s funny how we look at cryptocurrencies and completely skip over the first half of the word….crypto. 

Short for cryptography. Nerd for “this sh*t is locked up and secured”.

And, crypto has been around for a LONG time. So long, they had to whip out the ole’ overhead projector at conferences.

It’s been a true culmination of decades of work from the brightest minds.

Mad respect. Our next glass of milk is dedicated to these “crazy ones”.

Reaction #3: “Hey, I know that word!” while pointing at zero-knowledge proofs.

Zero-knowledge proofs are being implemented in many cryptocurrencies today. They help keep things private and secure.

Think of it as a way to prove you know a secret without actually sharing it.

And Hal was laying the groundwork for it, 25 YEARS AGO. A true visionary.

Reaction #4: “I thought Satoshi would be taller”.

All jokes aside, no one knows for sure if Hal Finney is Satoshi Nakamoto.

But the truth is… it doesn’t matter who Satoshi is.

And that’s one of the coolest things about Bitcoin: there isn’t any one person who controls things and makes all the big decisions.

No Mark Zuckerberg. No Elon Musk. No Steve Jobs.

A pseudonymous person created it 14 years ago, vanished into the shadows without taking any credit, and hasn’t been heard from since.

(Dopeness level: 1,000,000)

Today, Bitcoin…

• Is owned and used by millions of people

• Has an $500B+ market cap

• Is the 13th most valuable asset in the world

Bitcoin has become exactly what it was intended to be: an asset for the people, controlled by the people.

Cheers to whoever you are, Satoshi.

THE ALL-IN-ONE DEFI HUB

It feels like the world of DeFi is getting more complicated by the day.

Between bridging across chains, managing assets on different platforms and comparing protocols, it can be easy to lose track.

Well, it doesn’t have to be with ZKX. They just launched ZKX account - a central hub for all of your DeFi needs including perpetuals, swaps and staking.

Here’s everything you need to know:

• It’s completely self custodial (you stay in full control of your funds)

• ZKX leverages Starknet’s native account abstraction and their L1 to L2 bridge, providing users with trusted backing

• This is the first product on mainnet for ZKX

And the party's just getting started. Your ZKX account transforms your engagement with ZKX into a gamified journey.

Create your account and participate to earn exclusive NFT badges!

WE JUST MADE 3 NEW TRADES, HERE’S WHY… 🤑

We keep seeing this funky, weird terminology everywhere… perpetual futures.

On Monday alone, there was ~$74B of volume traded using these things.

So, we sent the Milk Man up Figure It Out Mountain™ to find out everything he could.

Turns out, perpetual futures are contracts that let you bet on the future price of an asset without buying the asset itself. And they never expire unless you close the position.

But rather than just gathering info, we decided to test perpetual futures out ourselves.

(Milk Road Rule #46: Don’t just read about it, be about it)

We made 3 trades/bets:

• A “speculation” bet. We opened a long position (with 10x leverage) betting the price of Bitcoin would increase.

• A “hedging” bet. We opened a short position (with 5x leverage) betting the price of ETH would decrease in the near term.

• A “yolo” (aka risky) bet. We opened a position (with 40x leverage) betting the price of Uniswap would increase. You only live once, so f*ck it.

We’ll give you a quick update next week on how our trades play out.

But for now, you can check out our step-by-step Guide to Perpetual Futures here. We dive deeper into terminology (leverage, short/long positions, open interest, etc.) and why we made the bets that we did.

Until next week!

Stay thirsty, my friends.

IS XBOX GONNA DROP A CRYPTO WALLET? 🧐

Xbox is one of the top-selling gaming consoles ever. (160M+ sales all time)

And it turns out the plans for the next Xbox are a lot like my kitchen sink - leaky. 

That’s right. The roadmap documents for the new console were leaked in court.

Which leaked to a gaming forum. Which leaked to my phone. And now, leaked to your inbox. #CircleOfLife

And while there were a lot of new updates, there was one that really caught our attention…

The new Xbox isn’t set to be released for another few years and it’s unclear whether the roadmap is outdated. (so don’t hold your breath)

But either way, it’s pretty cool to see major gaming companies at least thinking about crypto and how it can be integrated in the future.

BITE-SIZED COOKIES 🍪

A federal judge denied Sam Bankman-Fried’s list of witnesses for his upcoming trial. The judge also blocked the defense's effort to get rid of one of the government witnesses set to testify.

Tim Draper launched a crypto accelerator called Draper Goren Blockchain (DGB). The accelerator will work on DeFi innovations, Layer-2 scaling solutions, and consumer apps.

eToro successfully obtained a Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) registration in Europe. The firm can now provide regulated crypto services to all European Union countries.

Optimism Foundation sold off $157M worth of tokens in a private sale. There were seven buyers and the tokens are subject to a two-year lockup.

Pokemon cards are being turned into NFTs on Polygon. 175 PSA-graded cards were tokenized on the Polygon blockchain where users could buy packs and get a random Pokemon.

Proof of Play raised $33M to create web3 games. The company was founded by the co-creator of Farmville and is backed by powerhouse investors like Balaji, Naval, a16z, and Emmett Shear (the co-founder of Twitch).

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.