June 20, 2024

🥛 AI vs. Crypto: A battle or a beautiful dance? ☯️

Today’s edition is brought to you by PayPal – the PayPal stablecoin PYUSD is live on Solana.

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GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that's as gratifying as hitting all green lights when you're running late.

Here’s what we got for you today:

  • ✍️ Yin and yang: Crypto vs. AI

  • ✍️ Fox Corp announces Layer 2 on Polygon

  • 🥛 PRO Portfolio Updates

  • 🎙️ Introducing… The Milk Road Show

  • 🍪 MicroStrategy buys 11,931 Bitcoin for $786M

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YIN AND YANG: CRYPTO VS. AI ☯️

The crypto world and AI are doing the tango, and trust us, it’s a dance you don't want to miss.

Inspired by Balaji's recent spicy tweet, we're diving into how these two titans are more interconnected than you might think. 

Let’s explore this milky comparison:

The AI vs. crypto narrative is like yin and yang:

  • AI is the yin – dark, mysterious, and brimming with creativity. It’s the force driving innovation with its fancy algorithms.

  • Crypto, the yang, shines bright with transparency and logic, creating a decentralized world where trust is built on math and cryptography.

Let’s breakdown a few of the points made in this tweet:

AI generates vs. crypto authenticates

  • AI: Churns out tons of content – from articles to videos, showcasing creativity and innovation. The problem? It’s hard to tell what’s real.

  • Crypto: Checks everything with fancy digital signatures. It’s the bouncer at the digital club, keeping out the fake ID’s.

AI is probabilistic vs. crypto is deterministic

  • AI: Operates on probabilities, making decisions based on a wide array of likely outcomes.

  • Crypto: Functions with the precision of a Swiss watch – outcomes are predictable and consistent, ruled by mathematical algorithms.

AI breeds accessibility vs. crypto verifies

  • AI: Brings forth vast amounts of research tools, making knowledge more accessible.

  • Crypto: Uses blockchain to verify and secure information, ensuring it's genuine and trustworthy.

AI is digital abundance vs. crypto is digital scarcity

  • AI: Floods the digital world with unlimited content and data. It's a buffet with no end in sight.

  • Crypto: Plays the role of the wise economist, introducing ownership and limited supply to create digital scarcity and preserve value.

Now let’s look at one of AI and Crypto’s greatest intersections, chips (GPUs).

Yep, Nvidia recently became the most valuable company in the world with a jaw-dropping $3.41T market cap. 

That’s bigger than the entire crypto market cap standing at $2.41T. 🤯

Over the past four quarters:

  • Nvidia pulled in about $80 billion in revenue

  • They sold $34.5 billion in AI chips alone. 

  • That’s 43% of their revenue

  • Making an assumption, that equals a cool $1.3 trillion of their market cap from AI chips. 

It's crazy to think that Nvidia isn’t even the whole AI market, but AI isn’t all that Nvidia does either…

So let’s zoom out and try to take a peek where AI, Crypto, and the Internet adoption overlaps:

The synergy of AI and Crypto

  • AI as a catalyst for crypto adoption: Imagine AI-powered chatbots guiding you through setting up a crypto wallet.

  • Crypto as a tool for AI development: Incentivize AI developers with crypto rewards, pushing for a decentralized and open-source AI ecosystem.

  • Enhanced security: AI can sniff out fraud, while crypto secures data transfers – a match made in cyber-heaven.

  • DeFi applications: Picture AI analyzing market trends to optimize DeFi applications, making finance smoother than butter.

🥛Milk Road Take:  AI and crypto are interconnected realms, like peanut butter and jelly – they need each other. If you’re bullish on one, you should be bullish on both.

They’re not adversaries, they’re dance partners in the grand ballroom of tech innovation. One pushes, one pulls. Yin and Yang.

This dynamic duo is set to reshape the future, and it’s going to be a wild ride!

For a deeper dive into AI tools and their impact, check out AI Tool Report – a leading AI newsletter with over 550,000 readers from top companies like OpenAI, Nvidia, Meta, and Microsoft. 

They scour the web for the latest developments to help you save time and earn more with AI.*

*partner content

The PayPal stablecoin PYUSD is live on Solana. PayPal has over two decades of payments experience, and is now making low-cost, high-throughput web3 payments possible through the PYUSD on Solana launch. 

Learn about PYUSD on Solana and start building the future of payments.

PayPal, Inc. is licensed to engage in virtual currency business activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services.

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INTRODUCING MILK ROAD RADIO THE MILK ROAD SHOW 🎙️

Crypto has a big problem: it’s lacking good educational content that’s also short, sweet and punchy. 

That’s why we created the Milk Road newsletter – a daily, 5-minute good read, with high-quality information and decent dad jokes. (You’re a legend 🫵 for reading this daily).

But it’s not enough – people crave content they can listen to. So a few months ago, we launched Milk Road Radio – a podcast with 1-hour episodes, delivered 3x/week.

Then we thought… Seriously, who’s got time for 1-hour long interviews these days???

So we’re rebranding! Let us introduce The Milk Road Show – a daily show delivering the latest crypto news & investing alpha. 20 minutes, 5 days/week. 100% for free. 

  • Stay on top of crypto news that actually matters 

  • Learn how macro events impact your investments

  • Understand where we are in this cycle 

  • Gain real alpha from top crypto experts

We’re bringing in the best crypto investors and industry experts every day . Here are 4 you’ll hear from frequently:

Zeneca: Founder of ZenAcademy, creator of Denizens & author of Letters from a Zeneca. Made tens of millions trading NFTs & memecoins in 2021.

TylerD: Founder of LuckyTrader & writer at The Morning Minute, Tyler has over 50% of his portfolio in memecoins. Recently, he pulled a 100x trading $WIF. 

Lark Davis: Founder of Wealth Mastery, Lark is an OG crypto investor and content creator. He’s been educating millions of people about crypto since 2017. 

Kyle Reidhead: Owner & Head of Research at Milk Road, Kyle has been in this space since Bitcoin was at $3k and $ETH at $150. 

These amazing people (and more), will appear on the Milk Road Show every single weekday, with one goal in mind: to help you find the best opportunities in crypto. 💰

Subscribe to The Milk Road Show on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode!

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RISE OF ENTERPRISE L2’S 🔝

Earlier this week, Polygon announced that Fox Corp. is launching an L2 on Ethereum called Verify—a protocol for content authentication of articles, audio, and images across various Fox News Stations. 

Fox has already verified over 300,000 pieces of content on Verify!

AND they’ve just announced a partnership with TIME Magazine, marking TIME as their first external publishing partner. Fancy stuff, huh?

But, this isn't just about Fox flexing their blockchain muscles. It signals a bigger trend: enterprise L2s are coming, and they’re coming fast. 🌪️

What Are Enterprise L2s, anyway?

By now, you Roaders know the drill: blockchain means storing and moving value cheaper, faster, and more transparently. 

Now, enterprises are getting in on the action.

But instead of building their own blockchains or using general-purpose ones like Optimism or Solana, they’re creating their own L2s on Ethereum.

Here’s why:

  • Simplicity: Launching an L2 is less complex than building a whole new blockchain.

  • Control: They own the L2, they control the user experience—like making it gasless.

  • Efficiency: Cut out middlemen for business operations.

  • Profitability: Coinbase’s L2, Base, generated over $60 million in revenue in its first year. 💰

Check out Base’s cumulative revenue over the last year:

This movement started with the crypto native companies:

After the outstanding success that Base has had so far, non-crypto companies are beginning to set up shop too:

  • One of the biggest e-commerce companies in India, FlipKart, is using an L2 to scale its loyalty program: FireDrops

  • And of course FOX News as mentioned above with Verify protocol.

🥛Milk Road Take: Enterprises are moving onchain to create products and ecosystems that simply are not possible offchain, and they are choosing to do so with L2s.

This is big for Ethereum, as its main focus is to become the settlement layer for the internet and enterprise adoption is key.

It appears to be achieving exactly that, finding product market fit as a settlement layer for onchain ecosystems like:

  • Gaming L2s (IMX, Ronin)

  • Social L2s (Lens, Friendtech and Farcaster)

  • And now enterprise L2’s!

Milk Man is bullish $ETH 🚀

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MILK ROAD PRO PORTFOLIO UPDATES 📊 

Crypto markets are always a rollercoaster – full of ups and downs that can make your head spin.

The secret to long-term success? Stick to your plan, no matter what the market throws at you.

That's why we created the Milk Road PRO Portfolio, showing you how we navigate the crypto seas.

Here's the latest on our simulated investments and key news affecting the assets. 👇

FYI: We are not a day trading portfolio so don’t expect a high volume of trades. You can learn more about our portfolio strategy here.

Portfolio performance 📉

The Milk Road PRO Portfolio saw a slight decrease over the past 7 days. Our portfolio value is at $109.5K, down 2.3% since last week.

The crypto markets experienced significant volatility last week, with large swings up and down. 

Unfortunately, the total crypto market cap is still 20% below its all-time high, even as the NASDAQ and S&P 500 reached new highs. 

This could indicate that crypto is lagging behind stocks, presenting a potential opportunity to enter at favorable prices.

Let’s dive into any changes to our portfolio & our best/worst performing assets over the past 7 days. 👀⤵️

Portfolio changes 👀

We haven't made any changes to our portfolio over the last 7 days. 

The Milk Road PRO Portfolio is available for Milk Road PRO members only.

GO PRO AND UNLOCK:

  • Full access to the Milk Road PRO Portfolio. 👆

  • Our weekly reports that help you invest successfully in crypto. 💰

  • Full access to our weekly bull market peak indicators. 📊

  • Full access to the Milk Road PRO community. 🫂

PRO REVIEW OF THE WEEK

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BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

ZRO hits $1.1B market cap post Airdrop. LayerZero’s token launched and quickly reached a trading price of $4.40. The airdrop includes 23.8% of the supply, with users needing to donate $0.1 in crypto per token to claim it.

BNB Chain activates hard fork, reduces fees by 90%. The blockchain just had a makeover with the Haber hard fork, optimizing data storage and slashing layer-2 costs. Now, optimistic rollup layer-2 solution opBNB will see its network fees reduced to around $0.0001.

MicroStrategy acquired 11,931 Bitcoin for $786M. The average purchase price for this latest acquisition is around $65,883 per bitcoin. Their total stash now stands at 226,331 BTC, bought for about $8.33 billion. Michael Saylor’s crypto obsession continues!

CertiK claims responsibility for identifying Kraken's critical bug. Sparking controversy, CertiK revealed they found the bug allowing attackers to inflate balances. The drama escalated with CertiK claiming Kraken threatened them for a quick repayment without giving an address.

Jupiter exchange proposes token burn. The proposal (yet to be voted on) plans to burn 30% of its $JUP tokens, mainly from the team’s allocation. This move aims to enhance tokenomics, make tokens scarcer, and boost community engagement.

'Metal Gear Solid' game maker Konami launching Avalanche NFT platform. Konami is diving into the NFT world with their new platform, Resella, on Avalanche. Forget about external wallets; this platform promises to be user-friendly and gas fee-free.

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MILKY MEMES 🤣

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ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

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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.