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GM. This is Milk Road, your gateway drug to crypto investing.

(We’re the newsletter your mom used to warn you about.)

Here’s what we got for you today:

• ✍️ The Good News Roundup

• ✍️ Ethereum just got way (WAY!) better…

• 🥛 PRO “Where are we in the cycle?” indicators

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Markets Moved On. The Fed Didn’t. What It Means for Your Portfolio? w/ Dan Tapiero

• 🍪 Arizona establishes the first state crypto reserve

THE GOOD NEWS ROUNDUP 🔄

Welcome to the Good News Roundup – where we deliver positive news that will give you the zoomies!

Get your “Ocean Sounds Vol. 2” CD ready, ‘cause you’re going to need something to calm you down after this…

1/ Coinbase makes the largest crypto acquisition in history

Coinbase just bought Deribit (the world's largest crypto derivatives exchange) for $2.9B! 

Crypto derivatives allow traders to speculate on future price movements without actually owning the underlying crypto assets – and it's a BIG business (Deribit did over $1T in volume last year).

This is Coinbase taking another step towards becoming the ‘everything app’ of investing.

But it’s not like they don’t have competition…

2/ Robinhood is using blockchain to enable US equity trading in the EU

In a nutshell: EU customers will be able to trade US stocks on Robinhood, via the blockchain.

Several regulatory challenges have historically prevented Robinhood from offering US stock trading to its EU customers…

But weirdly enough – under the EU’s semirecent MiCA and DLT Pilot Regime (nerd talk for ‘rule changes’) – blockchain no longer increases regulatory complexity, but decreases it.

(At least, in this case.)

Chills, Matt. Chills.

3/ Stripe blurs the lines between stablecoins and fiat cash

Stripe users in 101 countries worldwide can now hold/send/spend stablecoins as if they’re fiat cash. 

Want to pay an invoice to a bank account using stablecoins? Stripe lets businesses do exactly that in a few clicks!

(Take what Matt said in the prior Tweet → swap the Robinhood story for the Stripe story → the same bullish ‘crypto-can’t-lose-long-term’ energy applies.)

4/ US-UK Trade Deal announcement 

The weird part here is the details of the deal aren’t groundbreaking – hell, they’re kinda ‘meh’.

• The UK makes up only 3% of US trade

• The 10% tariffs on goods from the UK into the US still remains

• But hey, at least the threat of 25% tariffs has been put to bed now

…so why is the market pumping on the news? ‘Cause the details don’t matter as much as the certainty of the deal.

The market now knows the rules of the game when it comes to US-UK trade, and is finding renewed hope that more deals may be inked in the future.

…deals with, say, China? Who knows… 🤷‍♂️

Dan Taperio might (aka: the macro genius with big glasses and an even bigger brain).

We just sat down with Dan, live, on today’s episode of The Milk Road Show to talk: China, tariffs, the recent Fed meeting, and more!

Click below to watch it now (it’s a certified banger). 👇

YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

GUYS, ETH IS ACTUALLY GOOD NOW! (ETHEREUM’S PECTRA UPGRADE) 😧

We’ve had 24hrs to play around with Ethereum’s Pectra update – and MAN is it a step up from what we had!

If you’re yet to explore the changes Pectra brought to Ethereum, lemme catch you up…

“Pectra is for the people. For years, upgrades made Ethereum work better. Pectra makes Ethereum feel better.” – Ethereum(dot)org

(Again: chills.) 

Pectra means fewer clicks to get things done onchain, smarter wallets, cheaper transactions, cleaner staking – and in practice, all of that looks a little something like this:

1/ Less clicks per action

No more double signing every time you want to take an action onchain, and no more of those dreaded "approve + confirm" loops that make you want to throw your phone at a wall.

2/ All pre-existing Ethereum wallets are now ‘Smart Wallets’

That means you can now batch transactions, skip approval popups, pay fees in any ETH-based token, run conditional payments (e.g. “Pay only if X happens first”), and sponsored transactions (i.e. third-party apps can cover your gas fees).

3/ Cheaper transactions

More data storage is being made available for transaction records, which will result in better scaling for L2s, and lower costs for users (especially when there’s a lot of traffic onchain).

4/ Cleaner staking

Validator caps just went from 32 to 2048 $ETH (enabling reward compounding and more flexibility to stake larger amounts without needing multiple validator setups)

Staking deposits just got quicker (meaning you start earning rewards sooner)

The staking withdrawal process can now be managed by smart contracts (making the process more customizable and efficient)

But honestly, why read about it when you can open up your Ethereum wallet and actively experience the changes!

(This is your cue to start exploring.)

PRO “WHERE ARE WE IN THE CYCLE?” INDICATORS 🤔 

Does this UK trade deal mean WE ARE SO BACK? Is it time for up only??

Let’s see what the crypto cycle indicators have to say about it…

Knowing where we are in the current crypto cycle is crucial for capturing the best opportunities. The goal is to spot the bull market peak before the inevitable bear market hits your bags hard.

Since timing the top perfectly is almost impossible, we use various indicators to give us a better shot at taking profits before it's too late.

Below are the 6 indicators we track, with a color-coded system to show how close they are to signalling the market peak:

🟢 Plenty of room to run 🏄

🟡 Getting closer to the top signal, but haven’t yet reached the mark ⚠️

🔴 We’ve hit the market top indicator 🚨

Every Thursday, we update these 6 indicators exclusively for PRO members.

Our advice? Don't wait for all of them to hit 🔴. It's better to take profits as they get closer to that point.

Let's dive in and see if we're anywhere near the top of this bull market. 👇

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

Want front-row access to Avalanche’s next chapter? Head to Avalanche Summit in London for all the exciting announcements!*

Arizona establishes the first state crypto reserve. New Hampshire was the first to a strategic Bitcoin reserve (two days ago) while Arizona is looking at broader crypto assets.

Coinbase users are losing $300M+ per year. To be clear, Coinbase itself hasn’t been breached but their users have been targeted by scam calls and emails.

Arbitrum foundation to invest in RWAs. They just approved an allocation of 35M $ARB tokens to tokenized U.S. Treasuries.

We’re hiring! We’re starting something called "Milk Road Macro” and we’re looking for a content creator to lead efforts on the podcast and X. Check out the role and see if it’s your vibe.

This DEX solves an actual UX issue! Milk Road Swap supports both Ethereum and Solana tokens in a single interface.

*this is sponsored content.

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