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GM. This is Milk Road, we turn crypto into an easy-to-follow recipe.

Here’s what we’re cookin’ today:

• Lessons from a $4.4M mistake 🤕

• Quick hitters from Twitter 💥

• The U.S. government is selling $130M+ in BTC 🍪

LESSONS FROM A $4.4M MISTAKE 🤕

Imagine this….you’re sitting on a mountain of digital cash. 

$4.4M to be exact. 

The source? Irrelevant. 

Maybe you timed the market perfectly (for once). Maybe you won the lottery.

Doesn’t matter. What matters is you have it. You’re rolling in digital dough. 

Now it’s time to transfer this fortune to your trusty cold wallet, where your millions can sleep safe and sound. 

It’s a process you’ve done a thousand times before. 

At this point, you know your wallet address like the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song. Every digit, a familiar note. 

But… you’re feeling lazy. 

So instead of manually entering that (stupid-long) crypto address, you search through your transaction history to copy/paste it from there. 

With the ease of a seasoned pro, you sift through the transactions and then… 

“Ah, there you are.” 

Your eyes lock onto the last 4 digits of that oh-so-familiar crypto address. 

Like a confident LinkedIn recruiter you click copy, paste, and send. 

Job done. You sit back, relax, and wait for the $4.4M to hit your cold wallet. 

A minute goes by, nothing…. 

2 minutes go by, still nothing… 

You’re nervous. Your palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy. 

(There’s vomit on your sweater, mom’s spaghetti). 

You check the transaction on Etherscan. That’s when the gut-wrenching realization hits you… 

The address you thought was yours? Not yours. 

Similar, but not identical. And just like that… *poof*... the $4.4M is gone. 

Crazy, right? 

Well, this is called “address poisoning” and it happened to this crypto user earlier this month:

How does “address poisoning” work?

• Scammers use something called a “vanity address generator”. Normally, addresses are created randomly but vanity address generators let you pick some of it.

• This lets scammers create a wallet address that’s similar to yours. Think of it like a fraternal twin — an evil one. 

• Then, the scammer sends small transactions from the evil twin wallet to your real wallet. This “contaminates” your transaction history. 

In the example above, the address the victim was trying to send funds to was:

0xbA83cE92A03d2FEf24f36DB9FC04f8BA3305c0E6.

And this was the evil twin address they actually sent the money to:

0xbA8BA758357D82A2862e1369D51C983A2A05C0e6.

The first 5 digits/letters are the same. So are the last 6.

So when the victim scanned their transaction history and saw the first and last digits matched, they probably assumed it was the right wallet.  

Big mistake. (*narrator voice: it was at this moment they knew, they f*cked up*)

And that, ladies & gents, is how you lose $4.4M in a few clicks. 

So, what can we learn?

• Always double triple quadruple check where you’re sending money. 

• Check the ENTIRE address to make sure it matches. 

• Do a “test send” (i.e. send $1) before transferring all your funds. Sending $4.4M without doing a test first is crypto’s version of an extreme sport. 

• Use an ENS (Ethereum Name Service). These are domain names for your wallet. So instead of having a long alphanumerical address, we use milkroad.eth.

Stay safe out there, Roaders.

QUICK HITTERS FROM TWITTER 💥

It was a slower news day, so let’s do some quick hitters:

1/ Solana hasn’t had downtime in 337 days. 

Solana’s been on fire over the last year:

• SOL is up +268%. 

• At one point, it had more NFT and DeFi volume than any other blockchain.

The best part? Solana hasn’t had any downtime in almost a year. 

For reference… Solana had 14 outages in 2022, leading to a total downtime of ~4.5 days. From 14 → 0. Nice. 

Some people call it impressive. Others say it should be expected. 

We’ll see if Solana can keep the streak alive. 

2/ The amount of ETH held on centralized exchanges is plummeting.

Since July 2022, ETH held on centralized exchanges has dropped from 21% → 12%. 

Fun fact: it’s shrinking faster than the amount of BTC held on exchanges.

Why this matters: Less ETH on exchanges = less ETH that can easily be bought. 

And with all the narratives around Ethereum right now…

• A potential ETH ETF getting approved.

• The Dencun upgrade.

• Long-term holders (i.e. investors holding for over 1 year) recently hit 74%.

… it could eventually lead to a supply shock.

3/ A look at the top 20 NFT projects, by market cap.

Let’s do a quick check-in on the expensive JPEGs and scribbles. 

Here are the top 20 NFT projects as of now:

A few takeaways:

• The top 8 projects are all on Ethereum. 

• There are only a handful of Solana projects. Mad Lads is the highest ranked at #9. 

• Only 2 of the top projects are on Bitcoin. NodeMonkes and Bitcoin Frogs.

Interesting. There have been days where both Solana and Bitcoin get more NFT volume than Ethereum, but one thing’s clear… 

The blue chips are still on Ethereum.

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

The U.S. government filed a notice to sell $130M+ in Bitcoin. The funds are linked to the infamous Silk Road (no relation). 

Spot bitcoin ETFs saw the highest level of net outflows in a single day. Grayscale Investments’ Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC) continued to weigh the group down, with $429 million leaving the fund. 

The numbers are in… Base acquired ~2M users last year. Impressive for a 6-month-old chain. 

Ethereum developers confirmed the next Dencun upgrade test run dates. Next up: Sepolia on January 30th. Then: Goerli on February 7th. (Yup, ETH is going on tour).

Swan Bitcoin launched a new mining business. It technically launched back in July, but has been in stealth mode. Swan has mined 750+ BTC since then. 

Tesla still holds 9.720 BTC (worth $385M). The electric car maker didn’t buy or sell any BTC last quarter - it stayed in “Park” mode.

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.