Today’s edition is brought to you by Kraken Pro - the one-stop shop for pro traders backed by one of the most trusted names in the industry.
GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter you can always lean on to get you through the day.
🎵“Lean on me, when you’re not strong…” 🎵
Here’s what we got for you today:
- CPI figures are in 🔢
- Use case of the week: NFTs and luxury watches ⌚️
- Crypto inflows are UP 📊
- Wanna track crypto market moves? 📉
- ARK sold $11.8M in Coinbase shares 🍪
Prices as of 9:15 AM ET.
CPI IS LOWER THAN EXPECTED AGAIN 🔢
If you missed it, yesterday was another Consumer Price Index (CPI) day.
(The second worst day of the month, behind Rent Day.)
CPI shows how much the prices of goods & services have risen or fallen over the last 12 months.
The results: inflation came in at 3.0%.
That’s lower than the expected 3.1% and down from May’s 4.0%.
The index is now the lowest it’s been since March 2021.(woo!)
Feel free to take a party break.
So why does this matter? Because inflation data indirectly affects crypto prices.
If it goes up, federal interest rates likely do too. And that makes people not want to spend money on risky assets like crypto.
But the index went down (woo!) and prices at least stayed about the same instead of plunging.
The next thing to watch: what the Federal Open Market Committee has to say about future interest rate hikes - they have a big meeting on July 15th.
Fingers crossed. 🤞
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Disclaimer: Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves the risk of loss. Kraken does not offer services to residents of Washington or New York.
USE CASE OF THE WEEK: NFTS & LUXURY WATCHES⌚️
Everyone wants to know one thing… how is the blockchain being used today?
Well, we came across a pretty cool use case earlier this week.
It involves NFTs, luxury watches, and collateralized loans.
Here’s what happened:
- A person (we’ll call them the borrower) wanted to get a loan and use a Patek Phillipe luxury watch as collateral
- The borrower sent the watch to an escrow company
- In return, the escrow company gave the borrower an NFT that represents ownership of the watch
- The borrower then listed the NFT on a DeFi lending protocol called Arcade.xyz, in order to get loan offers
- The borrower received a few loan offers and finally accepted one: a $35,000 loan at a 12% APR
- The NFT was sent to an escrow wallet to be locked up until the loan term is up (60 days) or the borrower pays off the loan
- If the borrower defaults, the lender gets the NFT (and ownership of the watch)
Why this is cool: Sure, you can go to a local pawn shop to try to do the same thing but this opens up a new Door of Opportunity™… global liquidity.
This’ll be an interesting trend to keep an eye on as more and more Real World Assets (RWA) get tokenized.
(P.S. - big shoutout to Cirrus for putting this on our radar.)
CRYPTO FUNDS SAW A 3RD STRAIGHT WEEK OF INFLOWS 📊
We love a good winning streak.
Hitting the hay before 9 pm 7 days straight. A whole month doing 12/3/30 workouts.
And we really love that crypto investment products saw inflows for the 3rd week in a row, amounting to $470M.
- Total inflows last week were $136M
- $133M of that was BTC
- Altcoins like SOL and XRP saw inflows
The best part? This 3-week streak has corrected the previous 9 weeks of outflows.
Balance has been restored in the crypto universe…
CRYPTO MARKET MOVES 📉
Crypto prices have been wild this year. One moment, they’re up. The next moment, they’re down.
It reminds me a lot of that TurboTax commercial…
It’s a guy working in an office. Then he gets a phone notification: “You’re a millionaire!”
He starts writing his “I quit” letter, but gets another notification: “Not a millionaire!”
Then, he’s in a meeting. Gets another notification: “You’re a millionaire, baby!”
He’s getting ready to toss his boss the middle finger and moon everyone else on his way out. But then gets another notification: “Nope, not a millionaire!”
Yup. Crypto’s felt a lot like that this year. And it’s been hard as f*ck to keep track of.
Luckily, the Milk Road Pro team has been tracking it all - BTC. ETH. Alternate Layer-1s. NFTs. You name it.
Just check out the weekly L1 market movers.
And we’re releasing all the results (10+ pages) tomorrow to our Milk Road Pro subscribers!
Wanna get in on the action? Only a few more days to nab that 50% off…
MILK & COOKIES 🍪
ARK Invest (major asset manager) sold $11.8M in Coinbase shares Tuesday, the same day COIN rallied 9.78%. ARK still holds ~8% of the company's total shares ($711.24M.)
Starbucks is teaming up with the popular NFT project Aku for its next digital Stamp. Starbucks continues to kill it in the NFT world.
Coinbase added an encrypted messaging feature to its crypto wallet. It’ll allow any two Ethereum addresses to chit-chat.
Celsius (bankrupt lender) and CEO Alex Mashinsky were sued by the SEC, DOJ, CFTC, & FTC this morning, and Mashinsky was arrested. The suits allege he misled customers and cost them billions. Tune in for more analysis tomorrow…
MILKY MEME 🤣
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ROADER REVIEW OF THE DAY
VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY
happy Thursday, Roaders
— Milk Road Images (@MilkRoadImages)1:20 PM • Jul 13, 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.
