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GM. This is Milk Road. Presidents Day? Never heard of it. The crypto news cycle doesn’t stop – and neither do we! 

Here’s what we got for you today:

• ✍️ The biggest rug pull in history?

• ✍️ Fundamentals: bullish, speculation: bearish

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: 8 Charts That Prove a Bitcoin Breakout Is Imminent w/ Bitcoin Magazine’s Lead Analyst

• 🔥 Want to put your brand in front of 300k+ of the smartest/coolest people in crypto? Apply to sponsor Milk Road here!

DID ARGENTINA’S PRESIDENT JUST EXECUTE THE BIGGEST RUG PULL IN HISTORY? 😳

We finished last Monday’s edition with a general plea for a chill weekend, free of any memecoin madness…

“We hope that this general cycle of weekend madness takes a break soon (we need a rest).” 
– Us, last Monday.

Our request was sadly denied.

On Friday, the President of Argentina (Javier Milei) did the following:

• Promoted the $LIBRA memecoin in a (now deleted) tweet…

• Said it was meant to stimulate Argentina's economy…

• Which helped it to reach a $4.4B market cap…

You’re probably already doing the math in your head and figuring that this isn’t where the story ends.

Unfortunately, you and your big brain are correct. 👇

You thought the $TRUMP and $MELANIA token launches were bad? Those two currently have their hands full, holding $LIBRA’s beers. 👇

(Jesus! Take the wheel.)

Doing some rough back-of-the-napkin math: 

$LIBRA gained $4.5B in market cap within the first 40 minutes of launch – then lost roughly $900M worth of market cap per hour, for 5 hours straight as insiders allegedly sold.

Now, let’s dig a little deeper…

Several key opinion leaders (KOLs) are said to have known the launch was coming and had allegedly been paid to promote the coin by the firm Kelsier Ventures.

(Crypto Twitter is currently calling for names to be released, dubbing it ‘the Epstein list of crypto’.)

Now, we don’t have the list as of yet – but what we do have is a conversation between Kelsier Ventures founder Hayden Davis and Coffeezilla. 

…a conversation in which Hayden may or may not have admitted to 7 different alleged crimes.

(Click the tweet below for the full list 👇)

The good news is the consequences of all of this are already starting to show themselves – and as the saying goes: 

“Consequences rarely show up lubed”. 👇

The takeaway?

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Or if you need something a little less aggressive…

Where do you stand on this? Reply to this email with:

• “🤝” if you’re all about the fundamentals
  Or

• “🙃” if you’re a proud degen

FUNDAMENTALS: BULLISH, SPECULATION: BEARISH 📊

This retail memecoin circus is creating one of the largest sentiment disconnects in recent history.

(And where there’s disconnect in sentiment, there often lies opportunity.)

Right now, if you were to do a general vibe check between institutional and retail crypto investors – you would find one hell of a chasm.

Hell – let’s do it, right here right now! Contrast everything we just covered in the last article with the following…

1/ The US' new Comptroller of the Currency used to be in Bitcoin mining

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is an independent bureau of the US Department of the Treasury which plays a crucial role in overseeing and regulating the national banking system.

2/ There’s talk (from inside the White House) about bringing the US Treasury onchain

Only a BSR (Bitcoin Strategic Reserve) could rival this as far as ‘massive global endorsements of blockchain technology’ go.

3/ Stablecoins (a fundamental lifeblood of blockchain tech) are at all-time highs

One of the main use cases of stablecoins = buying more crypto. Bullish!

Ok, that’s nice and all – but what does this fundamental strength look like in practice?

We took this list from James Ho, sprinkled in some additional tokens with strong fundamentals, and contrasted them with some of the more widely known speculative memecoins in one big chart…

Here’s the year-to-date percentage returns for:

• $BTC, $MPLX, $GEODN (in green, meaning they're up anywhere between ~1% to ~28%)

• $ETH, $SOL, $RAY, $JUP, $HYPE (in orange, meaning they're down anywhere between ~4% to ~18%)

• $PEPE, $TRUMP, $WIF, $MELANIA, $PNUT (in red, meaning they’re down between ~48% to ~78%)

The takeaway here:

Fundamentals aren’t a guarantee of performance (just look at $ETH) – but they tend to indicate a greater amount of staying power over time, and general ‘storm worthiness’ when the market is weak.

What we humans tend to fall victim to is thinking we’re geniuses when the market is strong – and not realizing a whole lot of it was sheer luck until there’s a pullback.

(What’s that analogy Warren Buffett loves to use?)

“Only when the tide goes out do you learn who’s been swimming naked”.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS: WE’RE GOING LIVE W/ BITWISE THIS WEDNESDAY 💪

Matt Hougan and Ryan Rasmussen (aka: The Bitwise Boyz) are joining us live on The Milk Road Show at 12:05 pm ET, this Wednesday on YouTube! 

We'll take questions in the chat, as well as cover:

• Matt's thesis that the 4-year cycle is over 

• Trump's crypto-related moves since taking office

• What a pro-crypto SEC means for the outlook for crypto

• The current mismatch between retail and institutional investor sentiment

Matt and Ryan are two of the biggest brains in the institutional crypto space (Bitwise is home to a $4B Bitcoin ETF) – you don’t want to miss it!

All you need to do is:

1. Click here

2. Subscribe to The Milk Road Show on YT

3. Set a reminder for 12:05 PM ET, this Weds

We’ll see you there! 💪

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

Crypto.com’s Visa debit card comes loaded with perks. Think free Netflix, airport lounge access, and more. The rewards just keep on coming.**

SEC explores adding staking to ETPs. The fact that the SEC is in talks with players like Jito is already a big step forward.

Aston Martin partners with Coinbase. Sure, both are big names but the biggest talking point? This is the first Formula 1 deal to be fully made in crypto ($USDC).

Eric Balchunas, Matt Hougan and Natalie Brunell. That’s the line-up for this week’s podcast so you really don’t want to miss out.

Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund is now the 7th largest holder of BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF. All that oil money has to go somewhere, right? - DL News

Lending Bitcoin is a good way to earn passive income in crypto. Aave and Nexo are probably the two best places to go about your lending business.

This is partner 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.