Gm. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that definitely knows a satoshi is one hundred millionth of a Bitcoin. 👀

Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• What’s up with these tokenized bonds?

• Binance is settling w/ DOJ & CFTC

• Someone uploaded a fart to the Bitcoin Ordinal network

• Funding Friday!

THE NAME'S BOND, TOKENIZED BOND

Here we were thinking Ordinals were the hottest topic of the moment (I mean, they still kinda are.)

But there’s another trend we’re seeing pop up faster than aliens above Alaska: tokenized bonds.

Whassat? They’re like regular bonds that companies/governments/etc. can issue to secure extra financing through individual investors/lenders, but on the blockchain.

Okay okay, so…why is this a big deal? Because:

• You don’t need any paper-based global bond certificates

• You don’t need any central clearing

• You don’t need a bank as a middleman to facilitate the bond to investors; it just goes straight to them

That means everything’s cheaper and quicker. Talk about easy peasy lemon squeezy.

And who started issuing these doo-dads? Siemens (big German tech kahuna) and the Hong Kong government.

Siemens issued its first one on the Polygon blockchain to three investors, and it’s worth a cool ~$64M. The 175-year-old corporation is one of the first in Germany to do this, and it took two days for the transaction to wrap up (it’ll mature in 1 year.)

Siemens collected the moolah via traditional banking means because the digital euro wasn’t ready yet, but STILL. Big deal. And it’s worth noting that Polygon didn’t even know what Siemens was doing, its cofounder tweeted. The whole thing is an example of how you don’t need permission or approval from blockchain networks to do yo thang.

And then there’s the Hong Kong government, which teamed up with the Bank of China and HSBC to use Goldman Sachs’s tokenization platform to issue a ~$101M 1-year bond on a private blockchain.

Theirs is extra special cuz it’s a tokenized bond with a side of tasty greens: it’s the world’s first so-called green bond that’ll be used to bankroll eco-friendly projects. 

Mother Nature would be proud.

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"NEVER SETTLE..." UNLESS IT'S WITH REGULATORS

Two big-time government agencies have been investigating Binance.

And looks like the crypto exchange is leaning towards saying, Look yo, can I just like, pay y’all and we can forget about all this?

Binance chief strategy officer Patrick Hillman talked to the Wall Street Journal about how the exchange is preparing to pay up to settle with:

1. The Department of Justice, which has been probing it over money laundering violations, and 

2. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which was investigating whether Binance registered its crypto derivatives trading properly

Hillman didn’t exactly say much to deny allegations…he said Binance was founded/run early on by software engineers that weren’t familiar with laws/rules designed to fight bribery, money laundering and economic sanctions.

Did your jaw drop? Cause the Milk Man’s sure did.

He also said Binance is “working with regulators to figure out what are the remediations we have to go through now to make amends for that,” and that he doesn’t know how much the fines will be or when Binance will come to an agreement with regulators.

Don’t know about you, but this Hillman guy has way too much chill.

BREAKING WIND AND BOUNDARIES

Someone woke up on Feb. 2 and chose violence. Flatulent violence.

An extremely bored person (or genius, depending on how you look at it) recorded a 1-second audio file of a fart and uploaded it to the Bitcoin blockchain network via an Ordinal that day.

(Quick recap: Ordinals are kinda like NFTs that are each inscribed directly onto a satoshi, the smallest denomination of a Bitcoin.)

This person also had the guts to try to sell it…and may have, one Reddit user said, for 12.3 Bitcoin.

That’s $280,000. For a fart.

It’s hard to verify for sure if they really did sell it, though; Ordinals are in their early days, and there isn’t a marketplace like OpenSea for the public to check.

But still…makes you think twice about how lucrative cut cheese can be.

FUNDING FRIDAY

Do you know what time it is?! It’s Friday Funding time, that’s what time it is.

This week, $170.7M was invested in Web3 companies. Here’s who got the bag:

Taurus got $65M to keep building out its digital asset infrastructure. Now it makes sense why Taurus are some of the luckiest Zodiac signs…

Empires not Vampires got $1M for its Paradise Tycoon blockchain-based multiplayer game. Wonder if the Cullens are fans.

Sending Labs got $12.5M for its decentralized instant messenger. That amount is…sending us…

Superplastic got $20M for its synthetic media startup. Regina George ain’t got nothing on it.

If you wanna see all the companies that got funded, check ‘em out here.

MILKY MEMES

🤣🤣

That's a wrap for today. Stay thirsty & see ya tomorrow! If you want more, be sure to follow our Twitter (@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.