Today’s edition is brought to you by Stier Trade – an innovative platform that makes your DEX trading smooth, safe, and automated. 

Start trading memecoins with Stier!

GM. This is Milk Road, a newsletter so thick with sauce you might as well call us Alfredo.

Here’s what we got for you today:

• ✍️ Tap-to-pay w/ crypto, on iPhone (incoming)!

• ✍️ 3 things to watch out for this week

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: 5 Ways to Invest in Crypto Without Owning Crypto w/ Tyler D 

• 🍪 Trump’s crypto portfolio revealed…

TAP-TO-PAY. WITH CRYPTO. ON IPHONE (INCOMING) 📱

Faster / cheaper / easier.

☝️That’s a recipe for a successful technology product.

• Uber used it to take over the taxi industry

• Amazon used it to win in the online retail space

• Ford used it to topple the equine (horse) industry in the early to mid 1900’s

As for crypto? Crypto is many things – fast n’ cheap? Sure….but ‘easy’? 

That ain’t one of them.

Which is why tweets like this get us tied up with anxious excitement:

Yep! Tap-to-pay with crypto on an iPhone “incoming soon” 💪🥲

Now, before you start helping little old ladies cross the street to pay your good karma forward, remember: this is still very far from being a reality.

(I mean, you should still help her – just know the karmic cheque is yet to clear).

Apple only recently announced they’d be allowing third party developers to tinker with their proprietary payment chip…but now that it’s possible, it’ll most likely happen.

And it could become a HUGE adoption driver for crypto.

Think we’re over stating? There’s a chance you’ve become accustomed to crypto’s annoying quirks n’ processes (we’re much the same).

Think about it like this:

Picture a relative of yours - the one with the shortest temper and strongest aversion to new technology…

Now, on a scale of 1 to ‘throwing their phone in a dumpster,’ which of these scenarios is going to p*ss them off the least…

Telling them that, in order to make an in-store USDC payment with crypto, they need to:

1. Move crypto from their self-custody wallet → to an exchange (using a 42-character wallet address) → to their bank → so they can then use tap-to-pay w/ iPhone.

OR

2. Just…tap-to-pay w/ iPhone, as per usual.

You are correct, the answer was B.

(Though we would have also accepted C) “This is irrelevant, my uncle Steve has a flip phone and only uses cash”).

Now, with that context set – let’s all take out our crystal balls and gaze into them…

What future is being shown to you? Cause all we’re seeing is this:

Faster ✅ cheaper ✅ easier ✅

WHAT TO WATCH FOR THIS WEEK 📅

Welcome to another edition of What To Watch Out For – where we stayed plugged into the non-stop crypto news cycle, so you don’t have to!

Here’s what’s catching our attention this week:

1/ Macro events 📊

A series of important economic reports and events are on the agenda this week:

• Fed Meeting Minutes - Wednesday: Find out what the Fed talked about in their July 30/31 meeting and gauge their general sentiment on the market.

• S&P Global Services PMI data - Thursday: Purchasing managers from 28k companies, across 40 countries spill the beans on their purchase rates.

• July New Home Sales data - Friday: With all these new homes that are being built – is anyone buying them? We find out Friday.

• Fed Chair Powell Speaks - Friday: Get ready to go through Jerome Powell’s speech with a fine-toothed comb, looking for clues about the Fed’s first rate cut.

Why It Matters: Positive economic sentiment from the Fed, sustained/increased purchasing from Global Manufacturers, and growth in new home sales all contribute to, and forecast healthy economies. 

The more good news we get from each of these events, the better our outlook! So keep your eyes peeled 👀

2/ Earnings season 💣

Another week, another wave of Q2 earnings! Here’s what the surf cams are showing on the horizon:

Reports from Target, Lowes Hardware, and Macy's will help pull back the curtain on the current state of US in-store retail. 

While Zoom, Workday, and Intuit will give us a glimpse into the health of B2B enterprise software in the US.

Why It Matters: Financial markets are like a sailboat, and positive earning reports are the wind in their sails – the more green we see across the week’s reports, the more momentum the market will gain.

3/ Token unlocks 🔓 

Last week’s unlock schedule: “We’re unlocking $177.08M worth of tokens”
This week’s unlock schedule: “Hold my milk…”

In the week ahead, we’re seeing a total of $210.15M in token unlocks!

Here’s what’s dropping:

• $AVAX: $196.56M (2.4% of circulating supply) Tuesday

• $ID: $6.62M (4.3% of circulating supply) Thursday

• $ENA: $4.17m (0.8% of circulating supply) Sunday

Worth Noting: The majority of the $210.15M is coming from $AVAX’s team allocation – keep an eye on sell pressure here, cause if the team largely holds, it indicates their faith in future development on the chain  👀

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

"The US Treasury's $1 trillion liquidity injection will send Bitcoin price to $100k" This giga-bull Banana Zone-coded statement, brought to you by Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX — via DL News.

5M US crypto owners push Kamala Harris to fire SEC chair Garry Gensler, before election. Honestly, if you want to win the hearts and minds of crypto users without making any specific policy announcements – this wouldn’t be the worst strategy.

Crypto analyst Benjamin Cowen doubts Bitcoin dominance is ‘going back up’ to 70% again. Good news for altcoin holders, if true. Lowering dominance from Bitcoin typically means altcoins are going up!

Trump’s crypto portfolio revealed…and he’s an $ETH maxi? BTC maxis, avert your eyes…according to government documents, Trump's portfolio is dominated by $ETH holdings – 492.72 Ether total – which at the time of writing is worth approximately $1.27M.

Crypto Sleuth ZachXBT just uncovered a massive $238M Bitcoin theft. Real question: when does this guy sleep? ZachXBT identified two victim addresses, both with links to Genesis Trading, and has already uncovered the sophisticated attempt to hide the funds across six protocols and platforms.

MILKY MEMES 🤣

RATE TODAY’S EDITION

ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

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.