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GM. This is Milk Road, your personal blockchain microscope.

(We bring you a clearer view of crypto and its inner workings).

Here’s what we got for you today:

• ✍️ What the hell is going on with $XRP?

• ✍️ The dino coin revival: explained 

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: XRP Near ATH: Is the Market Overheating? w/ Kyle Reidhead 

• 🍪 Ethereum’s onchain volume hits yearly high

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WITH $XRP? 😦

I’d like to formally apologize to the Uber driver that took me from Sante Fe to Albuquerque.

When you said “$XRP will have its day in the sun”, I didn’t take you seriously.

Boy was I wrong. 👇

Ripple’s $XRP token is now the 3rd largest crypto in the world above Solana and even Tether (!!!), with a face melting $255B fully diluted market cap (FDV).

For context: that’s almost double Solana’s FDV and more than half of Ethereum’s. 😳

…oh, and get this:

Hell – ‘XRP’ is even out-ranking ‘Crypto’ in Google Searches right now!

So, naturally, two big questions come to mind:

1. How did this happen?

2. Has anything changed about $XRP fundamentally?

1/ How did this happen?

Right as the last bull run was getting started in December 2020, the SEC sued Ripple → $XRP plummeted from $0.50 to $0.21 → it failed to reclaim its previous all-time high of $3.40. 

(And still hasn’t).

…though, more recently: 

• Ripple won its case against the SEC

• Gary Gensler stepped down as SEC chair (suggesting further appeals in the case may not happen)

• Trump won the presidency on a pro crypto format, offering tax cuts to US-based/founded crypto projects (of which Ripple is one of a very small handful).

Bada-bing, bada-boom, 80%+ gains in a week:

2/ Has anything changed about $XRP fundamentally?

Short answer: No. Not really.

In 2013, when $XRP first launched, it was one hell of an idea!

International money transfers were slower than my uncle Terry trying to tell a story about that rare stamp he found in 1982, and more expensive than an ethically sourced organic avocado at Whole Foods.

Ripple came along and said: 

“Instead of sending money between banks – what with all the crazy transfer fees, wait times, and foreign currency exchanges – send it to us! 

We’ll convert it to $XRP, transfer it instantly via the blockchain, and convert it into the receiver’s local currency. Cheap, fast, easy.”

And in 2013, that was a big idea! (Stablecoins didn’t exist yet).

…but today, they do – and they provide the same solution as $XRP (plus a whooole lot more!).

So zooming out, what’s the story here exactly? 

If we had to put it in a single sentence, it’d go something like this:

A cryptocurrency with a long standing fan base just had the boot of over-regulation lifted from its throat and is making up for lost time by getting a little wild. 

Kinda like a newly-single person at a speed dating event (has anything fundamentally changed about them in the past week? No. They’re just freer now).

…want a professional opinion from one of our NOP’s (Nerds On Payroll)?

Our head of research, Kyle Reidhead, joined us on today’s episode of The Milk Road Show to go deep on the $XRP rally!

Covering:

• Is this a local top signal?

• Is modern day $XRP a memecoin?

• Can $XRP find an edge in the current market?

Check it out below! 👇

YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

THE DINO COIN REVIVAL 🦖

Someone call Dr. John Hammond – ‘cause a bunch of degens just stole his idea to revive dinosaurs!

$XRP isn’t the only dormant token to pump of late. 

Over the last seven days, a whole range of altcoins that caught varying degrees of hype in previous bull runs have started to pump:

• $IOTA (112.1%)

• $HBAR (94.8%)

• $EOS (62%)

• $ALGO (56.9%)

• $VECHAIN (55.6%)

• $NEO (48.9%)

• $FIL (39.5%)

• $DOT (24.3%)

• $ADA (11.6%)

Ok, same question as $XRP: Why? 

Our theory is this… 

Fundamentally, not much has changed for most of the projects in question (they’re called dino-coins for a reason: they’ve struggled to evolve).

What has shifted is retail interest in the crypto space.

Retail users have returned after the Trump pump → gone on the hunt for yet-to-rally tokens → found a bunch of familiar names from last cycle → aped in.

And once these tokens start to pump, they show up in the ‘top movers’ section of many exchanges, getting even more investor attention thanks to FOMO.

E.g. Not 5 hrs ago, my dad opened his exchange account, clicked ‘sort by performance,’ showed me his phone and asked: “Should I be buying $IOTA?”.

(The answer: “No. You should’ve bought $SOL at $20, like I told you.”)

Plus! On top of all of this, most if not all of these tokens can be found on just about every centralized exchange out there. 

Which means no need for returning crypto users to set up and navigate a new Phantom wallet (like they would if they were looking to get into memecoins).

They just add funds → browse → buy.

The takeaway: this is how the bull run tries to tempt you out of your convictions. 

A random sub-sect of tokens will pump → you’ll get FOMO → make the jump → they’ll stagnate/crash → you’ll wipe out your gains.

Stay strong folks. Stay strong.

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Ethereum’s onchain volume hits yearly high. Seems like Ethereum is taking the quote “The comeback is greater than the setback” a bit too seriously.

South Korea declares martial law, crypto prices take a big hit. Bitcoin’s price in the Korean crypto market fell to $61K. Just wonder if we fell back down to $61K right now, yikes, scary stuff.

You can now buy physical uranium with blockchain technology. Okay let’s face it, we all have that one friend who has shilled Uranium to you as the next big thing. Well, guess what? That headline^ is what he sent to me today.

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Bitcoin dominance is sliding downwards. Yep, we’re inching closer to the all-glorious banana zone. The lower it drops, the nearer we get to altcoin season.

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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.