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GM. This is Milk Road, where we serve up crypto knowledge like a master barista—strong and to the point.

Here’s what we’re serving up today:

• November recap: 3 winners. 1 BIG loser 👀

• Crypto makes an appearance on Forbes 30 Under 30 🍪

NOVEMBER RECAP: 3 WINNERS. 1 BIG LOSER 👀

That’s another month in the books for crypto. 

And November was like a Spanish soap opera…full of dramatic highs, heartbreaking lows, and the random “¡Ay, Dios mío!”.

Just in case you blinked and missed something, we got you covered with the biggest winners and losers of the month.

Let’s start with the winners. We got 3 of ‘em (and a few honorable mentions).

THE WINNERS

1/ COINBASE -

The biggest U.S. crypto exchange has been on a roll:

• Its stock price is up 66% over the last month. And up a whopping +280% year-to-date. 

• It’s been named as the custodian for 9 out of the 12 spot Bitcoin ETF applications. This means that if/when the highly-anticipated ETFs get approved, Coinbase would be the one holding onto assets on behalf of those firms (i.e. Blackrock, WisdomTree, etc.).

• For the most part, it has stayed out of trouble recently. Other exchanges like Binance and Kraken faced legal action from U.S. regulators this month.

Coinbase has been known to be a “slow and steady wins the race” tortoise-of-an-exchange, but turns out… being basic is based in the crypto world. 

It’s like a girl seeing her Tinder date has a fully furnished living room. Not a single bean bag or lawn chair in sight. A true grown-up. 

We’re grateful for companies like Coinbase for having their sh*t together. 

2/ SOLANA - 

The layer 1 blockchain had a historic month…

• SOL is up 73% over the last month. That brings its year-to-date performance to… +327%. Holy gains. 

• Decentralized exchange (DEX) volume on Solana hit ~$7B in November. That’s a new all-time high. 

• Solana NFTs are soaring. According to CryptoSlam, Solana NFTs saw $76.5M in sales volume last month - up from $28M in October. 

Skeptics have picked on Solana over the years - the network would go offline frequently, there wasn’t much adoption, and it was Sam Bankman-Fried’s favorite blockchain (yuck). 

But as of late, Solana hasn’t had any network issues and has seen a big increase in NFT and DeFi activity. 

3/ THORCHAIN -

• 2% of all spot Bitcoin volume goes through it now. THORChain, being one of the few decentralized exchanges (DEXs) that allows trading in Bitcoin, has experienced a significant increase in usage.

• It jumped to the 5th largest Bitcoin exchange in the world by volume. This includes centralized exchanges (CEXes). 

• It’s native token ($RUNE) is up 141% in November. And is up 411% year-to-date (!!).

In other words, business is boomin’ for THORChain.

Ok, now for some quick Honorable Mentions:

• Illuvium (ILV): +118% this month. The blockchain-based game debuted on the Epic Game Store earlier this month (180M users).

• Immutable X (IMX): +84% this month. The Layer 2 partnered up with Ubisoft to build a new web3 gaming experience.

• Avalanche (AVAX): +82% this month. The Layer 1 blockchain is prime for crypto gaming but also found a new use case this month: tokenized funds. 

And now, onto…. 

THE 1 BIG LOSER

Sam Bankman-Fried (aka “formerly-know-as-SBF”, or fkSBF for short) - after weeks of being called out by his former friends, colleagues, and girlfriend in court, fkSBF was convicted of 7 charges of fraud earlier this month.

He faces up to 110 years in prison. Oof.

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

Uniswap – the largest onchain marketplace for digital assets – is now on Android and iOS. It is the easiest way to get into DeFi and swap seamlessly. Download the app today.*

Crypto made a strong showing in Forbes '30 Under 30’ list of finance leaders. Nearly half of the slots were filled by professionals either working in or with ties to crypto.

MicroStrategy acquired 16,130 Bitcoin for $593M. #CantStopWontStop

Pando Asset is looking to launch a spot Bitcoin ETF in the U.S. That would bring the total number of Bitcoin ETF issuers to… checks notes... 13. 

Celsius has opened up crypto withdrawals for holders of some claims. According to the bankruptcy court, owners of some deposit accounts at Celsius will be able to withdraw 72.5% of their claims, minus transaction fees. 

Copper launched a new digital assets brokerage platform for institutional trading in the United Arab Emirates. The platform combines a suite of blockchain-based financial and custodial services, with securities financing and payments applications to follow in the next 12 months.

SoFi announced it’s shutting down its crypto trading service. All existing crypto customers will have an opportunity to migrate their assets to Blockchain.com. 

*This is sponsored 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.