January 31, 2024

🥛The biggest airdrop in history? 🪂

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GM. This is Milk Road, your daily crypto relay – we pass you the baton of knowledge for an easy run.

Here’s what we got today:

  • Happy Airdrop Day! Here’s what to expect… 🪂

  • The power of DCA 🤑

  • Graph of the Day: $500M in weekly outflows 📉

  • Happy birthday, Vitalik! 🍪

Prices as of 8:00 AM ET. Click here for our Fear & Greed Index


HAPPY AIRDROP DAY! HERE’S WHAT TO EXPECT 🪂

There’s a lot going on today. It’s…

1/ National Eat Brussel Sprouts Day. It’ll be my 28th straight year NOT participating.

2/ Vitalik Buterin’s 30th Birthday. He’s the guy at the bottom of every email. Someone accidentally put him there in the first edition, now it’s tradition.

It’s also Jupiter Airdrop Day. Jupiter is a decentralized exchange (DEX) and liquidity aggregator on Solana.

Today, it’s launching its token ($JUP) and airdropping the first batch of tokens to users.

  • The initial circulating supply will be 1.35B JUP tokens.

  • 1B tokens will be airdropped to early users (i.e. people that used Jupiter before Nov. 2).

  • ~1M wallets are eligible for the airdrop.

If you’re one of the eligible ones… congrats! Treat yourself to a Chipotle burrito with EXTRA guac today.

If you aren’t eligible this time around… don’t sweat it. There will be other opportunities.

The key is… projects don’t tell you when there’s an airdrop ahead of time. So you have to use tools (like DefiLlama) to keep tabs on ones that could do one in the future.

Btw, previous airdrops have also led to good trading opportunities. Investors LOVE shiny new tokens with fresh charts.

The bad news: new tokens are more volatile than a 2-year-old who missed nap time.

The good news: JUP isn’t the first big airdrop in crypto. There’s been Optimism, Aptos, and Blur.

Each one had similar price movements…

Source: @theirish_man

Who knows if the Jupiter airdrop will follow the same playbook, but you know what they say…

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes”.

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All investments have the risk of loss. UpMarket is not associated with or endorsed by the above-listed companies. Only available to eligible accredited investors. View important disclosures at www.upmarket.co .

THE POWER OF DCA 🤑

Dollar-cost averaging (DCA) is a popular investment strategy.

It’s when you invest the same amount of money at regular intervals.

It could be every day, every month, or whenever you swear in the house (like a crypto swear jar).

Your total holdings increase, while (hopefully) your average entry price decreases.

It doesn’t require much brainpower, skills, or patience. You just buy and forget.

Simple, right? Well, I got a crazy stat for you… 

Source: @denverbitcoin

Pretty wild.

1 buy a month. 0 effort. Up +300% on the investment.

GRAPH OF THE DAY: $500M IN WEEKLY OUTFLOWS 📉

Every week, CoinShares drops a report on how much money institutional investors put into crypto products.

It’s a good way to gauge institutional interest in crypto.

Well, the latest results are in… outflows totaled $500M last week. 

It’s the biggest weekly sell-off over the last year – by far. Ouch.

Source: CoinShares

Here’s everything else you need to know from the report:

  • BTC saw the most outflows ($479M). Short-bitcoin products also saw minor inflows. A double whammy.

  • Blockchain equities saw $17M in total inflows. 

  • Most altcoins saw minor outflows. ETH, LINK, and DOT saw outflows, while SOL saw minor inflows ($3M).

CoinShare’s analysts believe the substantial outflows from ETF issuers (*cough Grayscale cough*) have “likely prompted further outflows” from others.

We’ll see if it can bounce back next week.

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

Semafor Editor Reed Albergotti sits down with Chris Dixon, founder and leader of a16z crypto. They discuss the promise of crypto and how the dream of a decentralized internet is very much still alive. Get to the interview by subscribing to Semafor Tech here.*

Vitalik Buterin dropped a new blog for his 30th birthday. He highlights some major shifts he’s witnessed in the cryptocurrency community since he first joined 11 years ago.

Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade was successfully deployed on the Sepolia test network. Next up? The Holesky testnet. It’s the final rehearsal before the upgrade goes live on the main network.

German authorities seized over 50,000 BTC (worth $2.1B) from a piracy operation. It’s one of the largest crypto seizures of all time.

Ripple’s cofounder was hacked for $112M worth of XRP tokens. $XRP is down 5% on the news.

Tether reported $2.9B in new profits last quarter. Tether also set an all-time high increase in excess reserves backing its tokens in circulation during the quarter, now totaling $5.4 billion.

*This is sponsored content

MILKY MEMES 🤣

Source: @alancaroII

Source: @MinisterOfNFTs

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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.