GM. This is Milk Road, the second best thing you’ll consume today (the first is a margarita later, let’s be honest.) Happy Cinco de Mayo.

It’s Friday, Roadies. Here's what we got today:

• Wtf is Sui? 👊

• 2 regional banks could sell 🏦

• Visual of the day: BTC is dominating 📈

• Funding Friday 💰

THE SUI BLOCKCHAIN & TOKEN JUST LAUNCHED 👊

Ladies & gents, a new player has entered the ring.

Please put your hands together for the rookie, the underdog: Sui.

It’s a new proof-of-stake blockchain that launched its mainnet & token ($SUI) on Wednesday.

Here's everything you need to know about the new blockchain & token:

• It was founded by ex-Meta developers. Specifically the same team that launched Meta's crypto payments wallet, Novi (RIP.)

• The blockchain is built to be faster & cheaper than other chains. We’re talkin’ faster/cheaper than your local Taco Bell

• It raised a TON of VC funding. Sui raised $300M from a16z, FTX Ventures, & others last fall. AKA it’s swimmin’ in that sweet sweet VC pool of cash

• Sui has a maximum token supply of 10B. Only 14% of the supply is for investors - the rest is for governance, gas, etc.

• It didn’t have an airdrop. Only ~528M tokens (5.28%) have been released into circulation.

So how'd the launch go for $SUI? It saw ~$1B in trading volume within the first 24h. And it also cracked the leaderboard for daily trading volume.

It peaked at $2.10 right after launch. It’s fallen 37% since to $1.33.

Fun fact: FTX could have had ~$1.1B in Sui tokens right now

FTX got 890M Sui tokens when it invested in Sui last year. FTX sold it all back to the Sui team for $96M last month. If it hadn’t, FTX’s stash would be worth $1.1B right now. Ouch.

Pour one out for those poor creditors…

The Milk Road Take: Sui’s got some major firepower behind it: Meta veterans, VC cash.

But who knows if Sui (market cap= $697M) can actually bite into a market dominated by other contenders like ETH (market cap = $210B) and SOL (market cap = $8.5B).

Sui could just end up added to the list of failed “Ethereum killers.”

2 BIG REGIONAL BANKS MIGHT BE SELLING 🏦

Not gonna lie, this week’s been rough…

Banks are failing. Interest rates shot up. And I lost one of my AirPods [again]... *Alexa, search cocktails near me*

Now there’s news that 2 big regional banks might be looking for a buy-out.

• PacWest

• Western Alliance (the bank claims its fake news. But we all know Milk Road Rule #27: where there's smoke, there's fire.)

The news sent shockwaves throughout the banking industry. And when I say stock prices are tanking…

So, what's next? We'll have to wait and see if any bidders emerge for PacWest or whether Uncle Sam will need to bail them out.

Someone needs to check in on Powell to see if he still thinks the banking sector is “sound and resilient"....

VISUAL OF THE DAY: BITCOIN DOMINANCE REACHES 22-MONTH HIGH 📈

Bitcoin is off to a hot start in 2023. It’s up 70% and breaks a new record every week. At this point, BTC has broken more records than Michael Phelps.

The latest headline? Bitcoin now dominates 49% of the total crypto market cap.

And it’s risen from 42% → 49% since March alone.

Why is this happening? Two reasons:

1/ Increased use cases such as Ordinals

Bitcoin used to be all about payments and store of value. Until it woke up Freaky Friday style this year and became a home for NFTs and meme coins.

The total number of Ordinals inscriptions just crossed 3M.

Some argue this was not the intention of Satoshi’s vision. But many others are happy to see Bitcoin spreading its wings.

2/ Ongoing banking crisis

Pop Quiz: What do you do when banks are collapsing left & right? You start your own bank.

How? Use Bitcoin.

Which is why the growing troubles at U.S. banks have people turning to BTC as a safe haven.

Why does it matter? It is a lot more impressive for BTC to be at this dominance level now than in the past.

This is because the rest of the crypto ecosystem has made major strides over the past two years, and up until ordinals and BRC-20, BTC was becoming a dinosaur.

FUNDING FRIDAY 💰

It’s Funding Friday! Over $80M was invested into Web3 companies in the past week. Let’s see how got the money:

ZK Link got $10M to keep building a multi-chain DEX for tokens and NFTs. Coming to a chain near you soon.

Zodia Custody got $35M to help institutions and corporations custody their digital assets. Talk about adoption.

Vibe got $4M to provide tools to creatives to launch and manage their own tokens. The funding round was led by Alchemy Ventures.

Giddy got 6.9M for their smart wallet that is making DeFi accessible to all. Say goodbye to lost seed phrases.

Entendre Finance got $4M for their crypto accounting and treasury software, powered by AI. Introducing CPA GPT.

Check out the full database of companies that have raised money this week, right here.

MILKY MEMES 🤣

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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.