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GM. This is Milk Road, your personal safety technician on the roller coaster ride that is crypto.

(Please keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle and remain seated at all times.)

Here’s what we got for you today:

• ✍️ US Crypto Reserve news pumps markets

• ✍️ What it will take to sustain this momentum

• 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: The Stablecoin Thesis: A Deep Dive Into Crypto's Trillion Dollar Opportunity

• 🍪 SEC drops another lawsuit

$SOL, $XRP, AND $ADA GET ADDED TO PROPOSED US CRYPTO RESERVE 💰

Today’s the day!

The curse of weekend memecoin madness has officially been broken. 🤝🥲

And in its place, we got a heavy dose of bullish, market-moving news from the Trump administration! 

Here’s how it went down…

First, this hit our newsfeeds yesterday morning:

Then, a few hours later, we got this:

TL;DR: The Trump administration wants to launch a Crypto Strategic Reserve, ft. $BTC, $ETH, $SOL, $XRP, and $ADA.

The short-term market response?

Now, before you ask – lemme answer the two biggest questions that came with this announcement:

1/ Why is the US government speculating on crypto coins/tokens (I thought this was meant to be a Bitcoin Reserve)?

Short answer: They’re not.

Long answer: Sure, it kinda feels like they are – but that’s largely a bias we’ve all taught ourselves (because ‘crypto’ and ‘speculation’ often go hand in hand).

In reality, this is just a plain old currency/commodity stockpile proposal – something the US government does all the time (see their many: oil, copper, gold, and foreign currency stockpiles).

2/ Ok, but why Ripple ($XRP), Cardano ($ADA) – and even Solana ($SOL)?

Trump ran on the platform of ‘America First’ – so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that the first tokens added to the proposed reserve, after Bitcoin and Ethereum, are ‘made in the USA’.

Are there more significant tokens that could have been added? Depending on what angle you’re looking at it from – sure! 

But after Bitcoin and Ethereum – $XRP, $SOL, and $ADA are the largest cap tokens founded by US citizens (excluding stablecoins).

And while we wouldn’t be surprised to see other tokens added to the list further down the line – you can kinda connect the dots as to why these ones were added first:

Large-cap L1 + American made = getting Trump’s attention.

Alright, those are the ‘big two’ questions being asked.

But there’s also a third, which many seem to be assuming the answer to – and getting completely wrong. That is:

…are we back?

It sure feels like it – the vibes are certainly up! Prices over the past 24hrs? Not so much.

To find out why, and what it’s going to take to actually get us moving again – keep scrolling to the next article 👇

WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR THIS MONTH 📆

There are a BUNCH of macro, political, and regulatory events coming up this month – some bullish, some bearish, some just in between.

And while, they all kind of fit under the ‘Macro’ umbrella – we’re going to split them into their own categories for this article.

We’ll hit you with all the events you need to be watching first, then explain why we’re not ready to flip into ‘we’re so back!’ mode just yet.

Here’s what’s on the calendar:

1/ Macro 📊

👉 The US Treasury is selling assets from its Treasury General Account ($250B so far) and injecting it into the US economy – with more likely to come!

👉 China is printing (and may continue to do so…for the next decade)!

👉 The Federal Reserve meets to discuss rate cuts on March 19th, with the market factoring in a 93% chance of no rate cut…

Good news: this has already been priced in.

Even better news: this could change if February’s CPI data (set to be released on March 12th) starts to reflect Truflation data (which is currently at 1.44% – well below the Fed’s 2% target).

2/ Political 🏛️

👉 The US’ tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China start tomorrow…

👉 The first ‘White House Crypto Summit’ is happening on Friday…

👉 Something ‘big’ (?) coming from the White House tomorrow night (March 4th)…

3/ Regulatory ⚖️

👉 The SEC’s newly formed ‘Crypto Task Force’ is hosting a series of round tables, starting March 21…

Alright, now, let’s put a bow on all of this!

If you’ve been a Milk Road reader for long enough – you’ll have heard us harp on this point a whole lot:

News may move things in the short term, but liquidity (fresh cash) drives markets in the long term.

And while fresh liquidity is starting to find its way into markets – right now, it’s not enough to sustain the short-term pumps driven by lone news stories.

But that’s not to say liquidity isn’t on its way. 

(See: China printing, the TGA being drained, and the potential for rate cuts down the line!)

These are all super-bullish potentials! The catch is: they all take time.

So keep your ear muffs close at hand, allocate to fundamentally strong projects where you can, and summon all the patience you have.

‘Cause while things may remain choppy over the coming weeks – crypto’s 2025 outlook is still blindly bright!

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The brief: create a low-fee DEX, with no MEV on ERC-20 trades, that works across Ethereum/Base/Arbitrum/Solana, and is so easy to use that even our intern Raul could navigate it.

The result: Milk Road Swap. 

Here’s everything you need to know about your favorite new DEX:

• Milk Road Swap is the only DEX that allows you to trade both Ethereum and Solana-based tokens

• Boasts 0.15% fees via CoW Swap (ERC-20), compared to 0.25% with Uniswap or 0.5-1.2% with Coinbase, and has zero MEV on all ERC-20 trades

• Plus, it has super-simple guides on how to swap onchain for those that are new to crypto, baked right into the interface

Ready to consolidate your Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum and Solana trading into a single platform – AND save money in the process? 👇

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

Lido + Morpho = Sensible. If staking on Lido or lending on Morpho sounds too complicated, Sensible does it for you.*

A man on the inside? Someone took out $200M worth of long positions on $ETH & $BTC — with 50x leverage — just hours before the Crypto Reserve news broke.

New guys at the top of Ethereum Foundation! There were some demands in the change of leadership structure recently and we’re seeing exactly that.

SEC drops another lawsuit. This time, it’s Kraken. All talks are now around when they will drop the Ripple lawsuit.

February was definitely a difficult grind. To put matters into perspective, it was Bitcoin’s worst month since June 2022. Yikes. - DL News

We’ve got a special deal with Crypto.com for you. From 8% cashback to free Netflix, it’s got a little bit of everything.**

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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.