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GM. This is Milk Road. The newsletter that’s fresher than new sheets on a cold winter’s night.

Here’s what we got for you today:

• ✍️ Innovate or die: PumpSwap vs. Raydium

• ✍️ 7 nations solving big problems w/ stablecoins

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Why Ethereum & Solana Are Not Built for Mass Adoption

• 🍪 Another legal win for crypto

INNOVATE OR DIE: PUMPSWAP VS. RAYDIUM 🥊

ICYMI: Pumpdotfun just launched its own DEX, called ‘PumpSwap’.

Meaning that every new memecoin that reaches its funding goals on Pumpdotfun will now be migrated to trade on PumpSwap, instead of Raydium.

The key changes here? 👇

Now, this could create some issues for Raydium – ‘cause a whooole lot of their volume/revenue is made up of Pumpdotfun memecoins.

1/ 39.4% of Raydium’s daily swap fees came from Pumpdotfun tokens over the last 30 days

And those numbers got as high as 50% in early January! 

2/ 44.7% of Raydium’s AMM volume came from Pumpdotfun tokens over the last 30 days

Again, these numbers were breaching 50% in early Jan.

3/ As scary as that seems, so far the market has been pretty chill about it…

Raydium’s $RAY token took a 9.5% hit after the news was announced, but made a slight rebound shortly after – and is still up 7% over the last 7 days (as of this writing).

Now, it’s not like Raydium took this lying down. 

Just two days prior to the PumpSwap announcement, news broke that Raydium was planning to create its own memecoin launchpad…

The question here: is this too little too late?

From where we’re sitting, this all hinges on liquidity. 

(The more liquidity there is on a platform, the faster/easier an asset can be bought or sold without a significant price change.)

If PumpSwap can entice enough liquidity providers to its platform, our guess is they’re going to own a good chunk of the memecoin market on Solana.

On the upside (for Raydium) – while their revenue has been heavily floated by Pumpdotfun over the past year or so, 50% of their swap revenue is still made up of memecoins outside of Pumpdotfun.

Plus – if/when a new sector blows up on Solana, they’ll likely be able to soak up more of that trading volume, as they’re not known as a ‘memecoin-only’ platform.

Meanwhile, even though PumpSwap supports a range of tokens outside of memecoins, it’s likely still going to be seen as ‘a memecoin platform’.

The takeaway: 

You need to innovate to survive – and do so well ahead of time.

Raydium fulfilled the former, but dropped the ball on the latter.

Which means they might have to take a hit in the short term.

THESE 7 NATION STATES ARE SOLVING BIG PROBLEMS WITH LOCAL STABLECOINS 💪

New Zealand, Turkey, Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria, Canada, Indonesia…

What do they all have in common? Entities within these countries are all coming onchain with their own stablecoin.

Why? Well, there’s a range of reasons…

• Timezones make it hard to do business globally 🇳🇿

• International transfers take multiple business days 🇹🇷

• Underbanked population is getting stung with insane transfer fees 🇲🇽

• Criminally high foreign exchange fees are blocking them from the global economy 🇧🇷

• Their slow/illiquid economy struggles to support modern financial services 🇳🇬

• Their government has a nasty habit of freezing citizens’ accounts when they protest 🇨🇦

• Their banking system leeches ~$720M a year from its citizens via remittance fees 🇮🇩

These are all issues stemming from the ‘modern’ global banking system.

We know stablecoins can feel like a total snooze fest – but once you compare them to the existing global banking standards, it starts to feel like you’re comparing a Toyota to a Ferrari.

👉 Transfer times: from days to seconds

👉 International wire fees: from $50+ to less than $0.01

👉 Operating hours: 9-5 Mon-Fri, now 24/7

👉 Permission: from ‘required’ to ‘not needed’

👉 Control: from third party, to individual

The global proliferation of stablecoins is money’s “moving out of mom’s basement” moment.

It can do what it wants, when it wants, without asking permission from anyone.

Private entities from within these 7 nations are bringing their local currencies onchain to solve problems specific to their country.

…but eventually, all currencies will need an onchain presence – simply to compete globally!

‘MASS ADOPTION WILL COME FROM GAMING (NOT DEFI)’

We just sat down with Sui co-founder, Adeniyi, on today’s episode of The Milk Road Show, to get his thoughts on the current market and the future of the industry.

The TL;DR of Adeniyi’s takes:

• He’s bullish on crypto despite current uncertainty

• Believes gaming will drive mass adoption (not DeFi)

• Thinks blockchain will revolutionize digital advertising

Wanna hear his reasoning? Click below to listen! 👇

YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

We're going to Consensus Toronto! Want to join us? Get 15% OFF your ticket with the code ‘MILKROAD’ and come hang at our meetup!

Imagine a bunch of guys in suits discussing how to improve regulation of crypto assets. That’s the crux of the first ever “crypto roundtable” happening today.

Do people still talk about NFTs? Seems like it because Canary just filed for a Pudgy Penguins ($PENGU) ETF.

Want to swap Solana and Ethereum tokens within a single DEX interface? Milk Road Swap is the (only) place to do it!

Another legal win for crypto! The sanctions for Tornado Cash have been lifted. The regulatory scene for crypto has really eased up recently. No complaints.

We’ve partnered up with NordVPN. Buy any 2-year NordVPN plan, get a 72% discount and an additional 6 months of free VPN. If you ask us, this is actually a crazy deal.**

*this is sponsored content.
**this is partner content.

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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.