🥛 Reddit’s big move into NFTs & a blast from the past

GM. This is the Milk Road. The crypto newsletter you look forward to seeing every morning. We're like your favorite cousin you can't wait to see at family parties.

It's Friday! and I gotta say: It's been a pretty green week. And I ain't talking about the veggies I ate (summer bod incoming).

I'm talking about the thing we all love to see green: crypto prices. That's right, over the last 7 days:

• BTC: +13.1%

• ETH: +16.6%

• SOL +18.9%

It was basically green across the entire crypto board. It was so beautiful I damn near happy-cried.

Now, let's get into the action:

• A letter from one of the best VCs of all time

• Reddit's new NFT profile pics

• Celsius faces a new lawsuit from an ex-employee

• Funding Friday

• Meme of the day

HOW PANTERA VIEWED BITCOIN IN 2013

Pantera Capital was the first crypto fund ever created in the United States. The fund has been extremely successful (up ~27,000%). 

Yesterday, they had their 9th birthday! Man, those were some of the best birthdays amirite?

Dan (the CEO) shared some of the emails he wrote back in 2013. They were sent to investors and explained why he was so excited about Bitcoin.

 What did he say?

• Bitcoin is like buying gold in 1000 B.C (99% of financial wealth has yet to address BTC)

• More people will choose to pay with crypto > payment systems like VISA/MasterCard (fast, cheap, secure vs expensive, slow)

• It's the first borderless payment system ever

• It's the first global currency since gold

Dan says he has just as much belief in crypto today as he did back then. 

Time will tell if the prices start to "squeeze up like a watermelon seed" again soon. (that's some damn good copy there, Dan. I can just visualize that exact moment in my head)

REDDIT IS LAUNCHING A NEW NFT MARKETPLACE

It feels like every other day a new NFT marketplace is being dropped. Now, it’s Reddit's turn.

They’re launching a new marketplace that lets you buy NFT profile pics (and use 'em on Reddit) for a fixed rate. 

The cool things about this are:

• You won’t need any crypto to buy them. You can use your credit/debit card

• Limited-edition NFTs come with some licensing rights/ They aren’t as extensive as BAYC for example, but still interesting

• They've partnered with Polygon to mint the NFTs 

• Reddit has ~400M monthly active users. Thats a whole lotta eye balls on NFTs. Could be good for more adoption!

The NFTs are currently only available to members of the r/CollectibleAvatars subreddit (invite only), but Reddit is planning to make them publicly available in the upcoming weeks.

TODAY'S NEWSLETTER IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY MASTERWORKS

“And another one gone. Another one bites the dust…” so goes the Queen classic, and pretty much every crypto-related headline nowadays.  Certainly, it’s music to the ears of “crypto white knight” Sam Bankman-Fried, who is rescuing companies and buying assets at steep discounts.

This illustrates two key principles:

• Be greedy when others are fearful 

• Don't put all your eggs in one basket

This is exactly why we’ve been looking to diversify the Milk Road Portfolio with a few other assets. Real art has always been interesting - seems pretty durable & has been a good hedge against inflation in the past (it’s even outpaced gold). 

But to be honest it’s always felt like a “rich person's” investment. Then people started telling me about Masterworks. 

And now they’re actually a partner of Milk Road. So when they launched a Pablo Picasso, of course, we had to put some money in, cause that’s how we roll.

If you’re interested in diversifying into art, you need to check out Masterworks. Our readers can use this special link to get VIP access. 

See important Regulation A disclosures.

EX-EMPLOYEE IS SUING CELSIUS 

Celsius has been on a wild roller coaster lately.  From facing insolvency issues & suspending activity on their platform - to fully paying off their BTC debt & avoiding liquidation.

It looked like things might be ok, after all. 

But that ok was like when your girlfriend texts you back “ok”. Seems like it's all good, but it really ain't.

Now Celsius is being sued by Jason Stones, an ex-employee.

He dropped a 32-page lawsuit and here are some of the big allegations:

• Celsius was running a Ponzi Scheme. 

• Celsius spent $90M buying their own CEL token to inflate the price. 

• Celsius lied about their risk management strategies in place.

• Celsius' CEO transferred some of the NFT investments they had to his wife

The Milk Road’s Take: This is only one side of the story and it’s currently just an accusation, but holy sh*t.

FUNDING FRIDAY

Each Friday, we give you a rundown of Web3 companies that got funded. 

This week we saw ~$450M get invested into crypto companies. Here’s who got the money:

H2O Securities got $150M to tokenize water financing with their H2ON Token. The goal is to address water scarcity.

NFT Brands got $2.5M to provide end-to-end NFT development for brands & creators. 

Rubix got $100M to develop an eco-friendly blockchain.

Magic Square got $3M to build a community-driven App store. 

KoinX got $xM to simplify crypto taxes. Their motto? Calculate your crypto taxes faster than your grocery delivery. 

Hit this link if you wanna read our database of all the companies that raised money so far in 2022.

TRIVIA OF THE DAY

We're coming back at ya with another Milk Road Trivia!

What is the name of the final testnet before the Ethereum Merge?

(Hint: we talked about it in one of our editions this week...)

Reply to this email with your answer! We'll pick 5 people for a special prize. 

MEME OF THE DAY

Stay thirsty my friends, see ya next week!

Shaan "Chocolate Milk" Puri, Ben "2% Milk" Levy &  Diego "El Lechero" Salinas

A Review from the Road...

1/ Amazing shirt

2/ Vitalik looks like he could be an awesome comedian

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.