Home > Daily > 🥛 Best of May: 5 winners, 1 loser… ⏮️
May 31, 2023

🥛 Best of May: 5 winners, 1 loser… ⏮️

Today’s edition is brought to you by productivity expert Timothy Kenny. You can get his ultimate project management template being used by over 16,000 students. It’s FREE and comes with a guided course. 💡

GM, this is Milk Road. Reading us is like waking up to find out it’s a snow day. Every day.

Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

  • The winners and losers of May ⏪

  • Web3 Wednesday 🗒️

  • First class NFTs 🍪

Prices as of 7:30 AM ET

MAY RECAP: 5 WINNERS. 1 LOSER. ⏪

Somehow, ladies & gents, May’s about over.

And instead of flowers, the month was full of everything from MetaMask drama to FTX coming back to life…

But there can only be so many winners… and losers.

We rounded them up for you. Let’s start with the champs:

1/ Ordinals

Ordinals = NFTs on Bitcoin.

And the new trend has caused more arguments than Thanksgiving with the extended family. But that hasn’t stopped it…

In May, there were ~7M Ordinals inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain. That brings the total inscriptions to a whopping 10M+.

Dune Analytics

So what? Ordinals have brought a whole new wave of use cases to Bitcoin including stuff like NFTs, BRC-20 tokens (aka memecoins), and more.

And while everyone thought it would take a pump in Bitcoin’s price to attract the next wave of users, Ordinals jumped in and said “hold my beer”.

It’s like Bitcoin was put on an episode of Pimp My Ride Blockchain and got some new rims and a TV inside.

2/ BTC Miners

Bitcoin miners saw a huge month:

  • They averaged ~$2M / day in transaction fees. The rise in new use cases like Ordinals brought in more transactions, leading to more fees for miners. (Ordinals accounted for $35M of these fees alone)

  • The U.S. government's proposed tax on Bitcoin miners has been rejected (for now). This would have charged miners a 30% tax on the electricity they use for Bitcoin mining.

  • Core Scientific (the former largest BTC miner) is coming back from bankruptcy. Call it the Comeback of the Year.

So what? Miners are the foundation of the entire Bitcoin network – they’re like the backstage crew at a magic show. They help make the impossible possible, and you don’t even know they’re there.

More miners = higher hash rate = more security and a “healthier” Bitcoin network.

3/ BLEND

Blur launched its new lending platform, Blend, on May 1st. And boy oh boy, did it put up some BIG numbers in its first month…

  • Completed $300M+ in loans

  • Made up over 80% of all NFT lending volume for the month

  • Loans made up over 50% of total volume on Blur

Dune Analytics

It’ll be interesting to watch how things change as Blend continues to add new collections and its point incentives expire at the end of the year.

4/ Tether

It actually released some public info about what backs USDT – Tether said it held $2.44B in reserves at the end of Q1. Not too shabby.

Plus, it said it made $1.5B in net profits in Q1 – and it’ll start spending some of its future profits on BTC. 🪙

So what? You should be watching Tether this year.

It’s the king of the stablecoin kingdom right now since its biggest rivals were toppled from their throne:

  • Binance’s BUSD lost a big chunk of its supply when Paxos stopped issuing it

  • Circle’s USDC depegged from the U.S. dollar

USDT’s supply dominance has risen 13% since ~January. Someone’s poppin’ that good bubbly this year.

5/ ETH Staking

Everyone and their momma was saying Ethereum’s Shapella upgrade would be “The Great Unstaking.”

Well, the month of May proved that that’s more of a lie than canned water.

In total, 22.6M ETH ($41B) was deposited into Ethereum contracts this month. That means the amount of staked ETH is still rising, despite the ability to withdraw. Take that, h8ers

So what? Staking is still all the rage! More people engaging with Ethereum = a stronger network 💪

And now onto the Big Loser for the month…

Ledger.

It’s a big maker of hard wallets (i.e. the best way to store your crypto cause only you can access your private key.)

Well, it announced a new opt-in feature that would allow it to access encrypted shards of your private key and send it to 3 companies.

That’s like building customers an underground bunker and then also building a tunnel so they can get in too.

So what? Ledger lost 2 big things…

1/ Market share. Its #1 competitor, Trezor, saw a 900% jump in sales after the Ledger Fiasco happened.

You know you f*cked up when your competition is up triple digit percentages. Oopsies.

But most importantly Ledger lost…

2/ Trust. Crypto investors now trust their local weatherman more than Ledger.

If you’re gonna play in this space, you gotta talk the talk and walk the walk.

Moves like these are like fish tacos on a plane – users can smell that sh*t from a mile away.

BOOST YOUR PRODUCTIVITY AND TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR PROJECTS 📁

The Milk Man’s got a few problems.. Spilling milk, staying organized and managing several orders at once.

But when it comes to project management, he’s got a couple of tricks up his sleeve. Call him Dairy Blaine.

His favorite trick? Timothy Kenny

It’s a project management template that allows you to store and access more projects than you can handle. It’s already received over 16,000 downloads.

It also comes with a course that walks you through everything you need to know. And the template comes in all shapes and sizes: Notion, Word, Google Docs, OneNote, and Obsidian.

And the author has quite the resume:

  • He’s created over 65 courses on accelerated learning and productivity

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  • He’s used this project management system for over 3,000 projects over the last 5 years

See what all the hype is about and grab your FREE template and course below:

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WEB3 WEDNESDAY 🗒️

Welcome back to another Web3 Wednesday, Roaders. Time to check out what cool Web3 jobs are out there this week.

Here ya go:

P.S. – Are you trying to hire in Web3? Learn how to get your open jobs in front of 250K+ crypto enthusiasts here.

MILK & COOKIES 🍪

Access Labs just launched Scribe. Scribe aims to be THE publishing app for small and independent creators – and Milk Road readers can get priority access to their beta.*

Bitcoin was trading at a 20% discount on Binance Australia. A result of them halting bank transfers earlier this month. Binance has more on its plate than Joey Chestnut.

Japan’s largest airline launches an NFT marketplace. All Nippon Airways is the latest to punch a first class ticket into the world of digital collectibles.

Peter Schiff is dropping a Bitcoin Ordinals art collection. After calling NFTs “worthless” and “easy to replicate” two years ago.

Curve Finance CEO purchases 2 mansions worth ~$40M. Brushing aside the bear market and acquiring over 60,000 sq. ft of land in Australia. Crikey.

*This is sponsored ad content

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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.