GM. This is Milk Road, the only newsletter that gives you the same feeling as when you poke your head out the sunroof on a nice summer day.
It's Friday. We're feeling good. Let's boogie:
- Do Kwon got arrested 🔒
- The SEC strikes again 👊
- ARB token’s shaky debut 👀
- Funding Friday 💰
Today's edition is brought to you by 1inch Wallet, a fast and secure mobile application for storing, receiving, and sending crypto assets.
DO KWON GOT ARRESTED 🔒
Ladies and gentleman, we got him…
WE FINALLY F*CKING GOT HIM.
Do Kwon has been arrested. That’s right, the guy that….
- Singledhandledly caused the collapse of the $40B Luna empire & sent the crypto industry into a death spiral
- Has been accused of fraud, financial crimes, and is wanted by Interpol, SEC, DOJ, and the rest of the alphabet soup
- Lost the Milk Road ~$1M
- Has been on the run for 320 days and has been harder to find than Waldo..
…. has finally been caught.
Where? Podgorica.
Which sounds like a distant cousin to Puerto Rico, but it’s actually in… Montenegro.
The country’s interior minister tweeted Thursday that police had detained Do Kwon at an airport with falsified documents that included a Costa Rican passport, a Belgian passport, 3 laptops, 5 phones, and 0 dignity.
So, what now? First, we celebrate and cheers to a great day. It’s been a long 320 days (and nights). We’ve been like Arya Stark reciting the names of our enemies who cost us money...
Kwon has been #1 on that list. So it’s music to our ears that he finally got got.
Secondly, they gotta figure out where to send him. A handful of governments like South Korea, Singapore, and the U.S. have all charged him. So, where to first?
I say send him on a world jail tour. Let him rot in all the prisons.
But regardless where they send him, they should make him do the Walk of Shame (Game of Thrones-style).
We’ll be front row with our tomatoes.
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THE SEC STRIKES AGAIN 👊
The Securities Exchange Commission has been busy making moves against crypto. And this week, it was working overtime.
Here were the big moves:
1/ Sent a Wells Notice to Coinbase
1/ Today Coinbase received a Wells notice from the SEC focused on staking and asset listings. A Wells notice typically precedes an enforcement action.
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong)9:29 PM • Mar 22, 2023
A Wells Notice is a warning from the SEC that it has identified violations of securities laws and is often followed by legal charges. It’s a notice that things are, indeed, NOT well.
Coinbase says the potential enforcement actionswould be tied to parts of the exchange’s spot market and other products like Coinbase Earn, Coinbase Prime, and Coinbase Wallet.
We’ll wait and see if official charges follow, but things are heating up quicker than some 90-second rice for the largest crypto exchange in the U.S.
Coinbase wasn’t alone either, the SEC also..
2/ Charged Justin Sun over fraud and other securities law violations
Today we charged crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun and three of his wholly-owned companies for the unregistered offer and sale of crypto asset securities Tronix and BitTorrent. Read more: sec.gov/news/press-rel…
— U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (@SECGov)8:10 PM • Mar 22, 2023
Justin Sun is a crypto billionaire and founder of companies like Tron Foundation, BitTorrent, and Rainberry. Here at Milk Road, we call ‘em Sun & Sons.
They’ve all been charged for selling unregistered securities, fraud, and market manipulation. Sun allegedly used his companies in an “extensive wash trading” scheme.
The SEC is also suing Akon, Soulja Boy, Ne-Yo, Lindsay Lohan, and other celebrities for allegedly promoting crypto companies without disclosing they were paid to do so.
Why this matters: The SEC has been on a tear.
It forced Kraken to shut down its staking service and is now coming after the largest crypto exchange in the U.S., our childhood heroes (Lindsay Lohan, Soulja Boy and Akon), crypto projects like SushiDAO, and others.
It’s probably only the beginning too. Gary Gensler and the rest of the SEC have made it crystal clear that they’re coming for crypto and won’t stop.
So, these are just the first moves before the SEC hits the industry with “As per my last email”...
All eyes are on who the SEC targets next…
ARB’S ROCKY LAUNCH 👀
Arbitrum dropped its new token, ARB, yesterday. And its first day on the market was nuts, to say the least.
- The website crashed. Users claimed 42M ARB tokens in the first hour of the airdrop which led to the site crashing like Netflix when Stranger Things Season 4 came out...
- The wrong token pumped. ARbit token pumped 2,000% because people thought it was Arbitrum’s, but it was a dead coin from 2015 instead. Buncha rookies...
- There was a huge sell-off. There was $27M in trading volume during the first hour and the price plummeted from $8.67 --> $1.40. It was $1.41 EOD Thursday.
Talk about a rough first day. It was like one of those Mondays when you spill your coffee, your WiFi goes down, your dog sh*ts on the carpet, and you’re still a bit hungover from Saturday night.
But hey, it happens to the best of us. Besides, we knew the launch wasn’t gonna go smoothly…
The biggest airdrops we’ve seen have had hiccups, too (cough Aptos & Optimism cough.) It just shows that no matter how much hype there is, DeFi projects still have some work to do when it comes to onboarding hundreds of millions of users at once.
Airdrops: 0
Network congestion: 927,492,365
FUNDING FRIDAY 💰
It’s Funding Friday - this week, $200M+ was raised by crypto companies. Here’s who secured the bag:
Gryfyn got $7.5M to launch a custodial wallet solution. It’s built on top of Hex Trust's infrastructure, will be an "NFT-centric, multi-chain" solution, and has bank-grade security.
Carbonable got $1.2M to track carbon contributions using the Ethereum blockchain. The goal? Prevent greenwashing.
Turnkey got $7.5M to develop simple APIs to securely manage private keys.
OP3N got $28M to build a web3 AI-powered platform that connects creators, fans, and commerce in one place. It’s WhatsApp meets Amazon.
Check out the full database of companies that have raised money this year, right here.
MILKY MEMES
🤣🤣
That's a wrap for today. Meet us on Twitter to talk all about it. It’s kinda like a family BBQ but better - no screaming kids, awkward photos, or drunk uncles telling weird stories(@MilkRoadDaily)
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A ROADER'S REVIEW
VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY
Thanks for the plug V God
— Milk Road (@MilkRoadDaily)12:13 PM • Mar 24, 2023
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.
