GM. This is the Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that’s like a surprise chicken nugget in your order of fries. You know it’s about to be a great day when that happens.

Here’s what we got for ya today:

• Twitter crypto payments? Maybe one day

• National Parks, Bitcoin, and Gorillas

• Bitcoin 🤝 NFTs

• You can make Dungeons & Dragons NFTs now

ELON REINVENTS PAYPAL INSIDE OF TWITTER

Crypto payments could be coming to Twitter.

Elon “Mr Tweet” Musk is throwing back to his PayPal mafia days and developing an in-app payments function that will first support fiat but could be used for crypto transactions, according to the Financial Times.

Twitter, despite its recent chaos (and wtaf is that For You tab?), still has 240 million daily users. That dwarfs the number of people using former chief twit Jack Dorsey’s Cash app. 

If implemented, this could be the easiest on-ramp into crypto use we’ve seen. 

Here are some other highlights:

• Musk wants people to use Twitter to send money to each other, open savings accounts, and use debit cards

• It’s all part of his plan for Twitter to be a messaging, commerce-heavy, payments-driven “everything app”

• Elon is asking for VC $$$ to hire engineers and design payment software

• Twitter is looking to rake in ~$1.3B via payment revenue by 2028

• It’s looking for alternative revenue streams after its ad business took a beating

The goal is to have all the regulatory hullabaloo signed, sealed, and delivered within a year. Then Twitter will start looking for that green-light overseas. 👀

Dogecoin, the meme coin beloved by Musk and his posse, shot up ~8% after the news before settling down a bit.

You know Elon Musk is up to some sh*t when Dogecoin is on the move.

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Book a call with MorphoMFG now today and get started.

NATIONAL PARKS, BITCOIN MINING, AND GORILLAS

Sure, it’s getting increasingly more difficult and expensive to mine Bitcoin, and with less reward. And yeah, it creates a lot of controversy due to the immense energy that Bitcoin mining uses. 

Well, check it out - this is the story of how a national park used Bitcoin mining to avoid going bankrupt and help protect its forests & wildlife.

Virunga National Park is located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It’s the oldest national park in Africa and is home to some cool ass animals, like mountain gorillas.

But the park has been plagued with issues over the last few years: 

• Operational costs are expensive. The park has to pay for security, employee salaries, etc and the Congolese government only provides ~1% of the total budget

• COVID shut tourism down. Tourism accounted for ~40% of the revenue for the park, so when COVID forced the park to shut down, it lost a lot of its $$

• Local militia attacks on the park. Over the years, employees and animals have been killed & kidnapped frequently - one park ranger has died every month since 1996 and there are less than 1000 mountain gorillas left in existence🤬 (less revenue from tourism = less money for security)

Virunga National Park was on the verge of going bust when they turned to a new solution to make money…. Bitcoin mining. And a recent report from MIT Technology Review shows how it all happened.

In 2020, the national park set up a mining operation and successfully mined its first Bitcoin. Since then, the park has made significant revenue from mining. It was making ~$150k per month during the bull run and almost entirely offset the lost tourist income due to COVID.

The best part? It all runs on clean energy. The mining is powered by hydro plants within the park. 

In a monkey nutshell, the national park is monetizing its untapped natural resources by mining Bitcoin and is using the profits to fund operation costs in order to support the park & wildlife. 

Now the park is looking to set up more mining centers in order to help supply power & electricity to surrounding towns that don’t have any.

Talk about the circle of life. The National Park is saved. The mountain gorillas are protected. And we’ve avoided a Planet of the Apes type invasion (for now). Phew

SAY HELLO TO BITCOIN NFTS

NFTs are coming to the Bitcoin blockchain. Ordinals protocol is launching “digital artifacts” that can be held and transferred across the Bitcoin network.

That’s right, NFTs 🤝Bitcoin. Some people are happy NFTs are moving to the most popular blockchain out there. Others are claiming that Bitcoin is now “under attack”. 

And it’s reintroduced a long-time debate…Should NFTs be on the Bitcoin blockchain?

Let’s take a look at both sides of the debate:

Pro-Bitcoin NFTs: Bringing NFTs to the Bitcoin network shows it has more use cases than just a peer-to-peer payment system. 

More use cases = more people using the network.  

Plus, NFTs have gotten a lot of new eyeballs over the last few years and the blockchains that support them have been some of the ones that have grown the fastest. (i.e Ethereum, etc).

Anti-Bitcoin NFTs: Bringing NFTs to Bitcoin will only congest the network and make it slower than it already is. 

More transactions = more congestion & a slower network

Plus, Bitcoin was built for one thing, and one thing only: A peer-to-peer payment system. It was created as a decentralized monetary system as an alternative to fiat currencies run by governments. And the Bitcoin OGs argue that their founding father, Satoshi Nakomoto, never mentioned other use cases in his Bitcoin whitepaper. Therefore, Bitcoin NFTs shouldn’t be a thing.

Who will win the debate? Who knows. But things are getting spicy. We haven’t seen a debate this big since Twilight came out and everyone was fighting over Team Jacob or Team Edward.

MILK AND COOKIES

NFT ban = slayed. The creators of Dungeons & Dragons are abandoning plans to ban creators from basing NFT projects on the game’s content after receiving backlash from the community. 

In the red. Celsius has had serious problems dating back to 2020 and was allegedly using customer funds to borrow stablecoins, per a new examiner’s report. The bankrupt lender was also reportedly never profitable. 

Clawback war. Alameda, FTX’s sister investment firm, is suing bankrupt crypto lender Voyager for $446M, claiming it repaid those loans close enough to FTX’s bankruptcy filing that the funds qualify for clawbacks.

Unmasked. The identities of two people that posted Samuel Bankman-Fried’s $250M bail will be revealed around Feb.7, a federal judge ruled. 

MILKY MEME

🤣🤣

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.