GM. This is the Milk Road, the only crypto newsletter with flavor.

Hey editor, hit em with the saltbae emoji.

It’s Monday, let’s get after it:

• What happened to prices over the weekend?

• DAO of the month: OrangeDAO

• Quick bites

• Meme of the day

WHAT HAPPENED TO PRICES OVER THE WEEKEND?

Only a few weeks ago crypto prices were pumping. We were all singing Kumbaya. Order was restored.

Fast forward to this weekend:

• Bitcoin crashed below $20k

• Ethereum plummeted below $1.5k

So what happened? Well, it was a three-headed beast...

1/ Jerome Powell gave his annual Jackson Hole speech. What’s normally a 30-minute speech ended in 8 minutes. Ole Jerome went the Milk Road way - short & to the point.

What'd he say?

• The Fed will continue to raise interest rates to bring inflation back under control

• Warns “more pain” coming for households and businesses

What next? We wait for the FOMC meeting coming up in September where the Fed announces interest rate hikes. 

2/ S&P500 and NASDAQ prices react to the speech. And it wasn't pretty...

• S&P dropped ~3.5%

• NASDAQ dropped ~4%

• ~$1.25 trillion was lost in total U.S equities. That's more than the entire crypto market combined

Bad news for crypto because it's becoming more & more correlated with stocks. The correlation hit an all-time high earlier this year. 

Just look at how similar the price movements have been recently...

Translation: If stocks bleed, crypto bleeds too.

3/ Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt.

To make things worse, people were worried that the old crypto exchange Mt. Gox would start returning 140k Bitcoin to its users over the weekend (causing a major sell-off).

But it turned out to be fake news. According to an actual Mt. Gox creditor:

• Mt Gox hasn’t set a date to return funds

• The repayment system isn’t live and users don’t even have the ability to choose the exchange they want their funds sent to

• Refunds will happen in tranches, not all at once

In a nutshell - Mt. Gox isn’t returning any funds this week. Or next week. Or the week after that.

With all that being said…. How are you feeling about the markets right now? Reply with the letter that best describes how you feel right this second:

a/ extreme fear - SeptemBear incoming

b/ fear - I’m sleeping with the nightlight on

c/ neutral - call me Switzerland

d/ greed - Lovin’ the discounts! Keep em comin’

e/ extreme greed - Fear isn’t in my vocab. I feast while others diet

Last week 82% of you were either feeling neutral or greedy, is that still the case? We'll post the results again in tomorrow’s edition. 

DAO OF THE MONTH: ORANGEDAO

We’re coming back with another edition of: DAO of the Month. Where we highlight an interesting DAO that we saw. This month we got… *drumroll please*.....

OrangeDAO - a group of 1,300+ Y-Combinator founders.

• They raised $80m to invest in crypto startups

• The DAO increases deal flow. Members can source deals and they say they’re seeing 10x more deals because of the power of the collective group

• They fund a fellowship program that pays ~10 YC founders to work on web3 projects for 10 weeks

OrangeDAO is doing something we're bullish on - taking an alumni group (in this case, YC founders) and turning it into a DAO.

Now, they can all benefit from helping one another vs. today founders help other YC founders out of the kindness of their hearts.

TODAY'S EDITION IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY INTERNET GAME

Ever wanted to own a Bored Ape, but didn't have $100k to blow on it? Well, now you can win one by playing some mini-games. 

It’s called Internet Game. It’s elimination-style games with blue-chip NFT prizes.

Season 1 launched earlier this year. And it was a big success:

• Built 5 simple mini-games with NFTs as prizes

• In total, they had 110 NFTs worth $1.1m - including Bored Apes, Mutant Apes, Doodles, CloneX, etc

Now they’re back for Season 2 - Bear Market Battle. And it’s bigger & better than before.

• More games (6 total this time - 3 multi-player & 3 single-player).

• Already have a BAYC as a top prize ($100k+)

• And they have 2 dope hosts for the games: GMoney and Leah Lamarr

The public sale for an NFT pass into the games starts tomorrow (8/30)! It costs 0.069 ETH to mint and will be open for 24h.

If you missed out on Season 1, you definitely don't wanna miss out on Season 2 - we sure won't. We got our eyes on that Bored Ape 👀

Click here if you wanna join us!

QUICK BITES

BarrelDAO, a community-led brewery, drops Solana Summer Shandy. It’s an NFT you can redeem for a 16-pack, sell on the markets, or save for future drops.

Ethereum nodes may soon be banned from running on Hetzners’ cloud networks. ~10% of all nodes are currently hosted there. Uh-oh…

NearPay, a crypto finance protocol, is launching a new virtual crypto card and wallet. It will be available on iOS and Android and lets people use a virtual debit card to make online buys using crypto.

Eminem & Snoop Dogg performed at the MTV awards using their Bored Apes. If only it was 2006...does anyone still watch these things?

MEME OF THE DAY

That's a wrap for today, ladies & gents. See ya tomorrow!

If you want more, be sure to follow our Twitter (@MilkRoadDaily)

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

16. DAYS. LEFT. UNTIL. THE. MERGE

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.