🥛 Should Coinbase be worried about this? 🥊

GM. This is Milk Road, the newsletter that risks public embarrassment so you can make sense of crypto.

(Read the first article, it’ll all click.)

Here’s what we got for you today:

✍️ Is Coinbase in trouble?
✍️ Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade explained
🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Why Galaxy Might Be the Most Undervalued Crypto x AI Stock w/ Duncan
🍪 Justin Sun had his $WLFI tokens frozen

Pyth is the source of truth for market data in DeFi — now revealing what’s next.

Prices as of 2:00 PM ET. Click here for our Fear & Greed Index.

IS CRYPTO TRADING ON TRADFI EXCHANGES A THREAT TO COINBASE? 🥊

A banger of a question about yesterday’s edition was dropped in the PRO All Access Discord channel:

Source: Milk Road PRO Discord

It’s a solid point! 🤝

If you make crypto trading easier to do on TradFi exchanges (the more widely adopted option for global asset trading) – won’t this make crypto platforms and treasuries less necessary?

When we’re talking like-for-like actions (buying and holding crypto) – yeah, it probably will.

But here’s why we think this will be a net-good for exchanges like Coinbase and treasuries like $SBET…

For my 12th birthday, I asked for a skateboard.

(Weird way to approach the topic of crypto trading dynamics, I know – but hear me out.)

I told my mom it would set her back $80, which was true…in a sense.

See, the deck alone was $80 – but that didn’t include grip tape, trucks, wheels, bearings, and the protective gear she was no-doubt going to insist I wear at all times.

All-in-all my sweet mother walked away $200 poorer that day.

(And that’s not including the pair of knock-off yellow-lensed Oakleys I’d eventually convince her to buy me, so I could look more like Bob Burnquist — yikes!) 👇

Source: Chevy’s mom’s family photo album

See where I’m trying to steer this thing? No? Ok, lemme land this plane…

While the deck was the most important part of the gift – it didn’t represent the entire thing.

The same way token ownership is the key step in onboarding to crypto, but doesn’t represent the entirety of what the ecosystem has to offer.

Once new users onboard to crypto via TradFi:

Where do they stake?
Where do they lend out their tokens?
Where do they access onchain applications?

(The likes of Coinbase and $SBET fill that void, letting users get exposure to a whole bunch of different DeFi features.)

The overarching idea being:

Buying crypto on TradFi exchanges might be the $80 skateboard…

But the DeFi-enabling products offered by crypto companies are the $120 worth of other stuff you find yourself purchasing along with it.

The more people onboard via TradFi rails → the more of them can find their way into other crypto products.

(Like Coinbase and $SBET.)

P.S. Wanna join discussions like this in the PRO All Access Discord? Get access here!

PYTH REVEALS ITS PHASE 2 PLANS

Think of an airport: hundreds of flights in motion, all summarized on one departures board.

That’s what Pyth is building for blockchains: a single source of truth for real-time prices so apps can trade, settle, and manage risk on the real price of everything.

It gives the world’s largest institutions direct access to live data across crypto, equities, FX, and more. Most people never see the real prices.

Why Pyth slaps:

600+ integrations
$1.6T+ in trades secured
2,000+ assets with millisecond updates

And after taking over crypto, Pyth isn’t stopping— so any system can price anything, anywhere, in real time.

Pyth is becoming the global price layer for all of finance.

Damn.

Discover Pyth’s full roadmap here.

WHAT THE ALPENGLOW UPGRADE MEANS FOR SOLANA 📆

ICYMI: Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade has been given the green light! 👇

Source: @kyledoops

Neat! So what does this get us? The 1000 ft view looks something like this…

A speed boost: Theoretical max transactions per second (TPS) will go from 65k to 107k, while permanent transaction confirmation times will go from ~12.8 seconds, to just 0.1 seconds.

A security boost: The cost to run a Solana validator is being cut in half – from ~$80k per year to ~$40k per year.

More validators being incentivized to join the network = more people monitoring bad behavior (e.g. bad actors trying to alter transactions) = more security.

A step closer to Solana’s end goal: The Solana team’s main goal is to support Nasdaq-speed trading onchain, by increasing throughput (TPS) and lowering latency (confirmation times).

The Nasdaq has hit 500k+ TPS in the past and confirms transactions within 1 business day. The above changes to Solana will either see it beat or bring those metrics closer to parallel.

The part we’re most excited for?

The Alpenglow upgrade is due to take place in Q1 of next year – so the Solana price catalyst calendar now looks like this: