February 3, 2022

The $325M DeFi Heist ๐Ÿ’ฐ

GM, This is the Milk Road. We show you 1-2 cool things about crypto, in less than 5 minutes a day.

In Today's Email:

  • ๐Ÿงพ A Big Tax Win For Crypto Investors

  • ๐Ÿ’ฐ $325m Stolen in a DeFi Hack

  • ๐ŸŽฅ NFTs Just Outsold the Entire Movie Industry

  • ๐ŸŽธ Coachella Going Full NFT

Big Tax Win for Crypto Investors

A husband and wife in Nashville asked the IRS for a refund for crypto taxes, and they got it.

Letโ€™s be more specific.

The IRS rules that unsold tokens from staking and mining will not be taxed.

This is a nice win for the nice guys (us)

For example, I have a bunch of ETH staked right now for ETH2, and donโ€™t want to be on the hook for huge taxes for tokens Iโ€™m not selling and taking gains on.

Thanks IRS. Love ya.

The Second Largest DeFi Hack Ever

The 2nd biggest hack ever went down today. A hacker stole $325M from Wormhole protocol.

$325M.. Hot damn!

Hereโ€™s my updated โ€œstealing moneyโ€ rankings:

  1. Clooney & Brad Pitt in Oceans 11

  2. The hacker who just stole $325M from wormhole

  3. Comcast, charging $90 a month while providing the crappiest service on the planet

Check this out. The protocol offered the hacker $10M to give back the stolen $325M.

I know this is hard to believe, but he didnโ€™t take the deal yet.

Anyways – this is the 2nd biggest hack EVER

So – what do we need to know about this hack?

  • Wormhole lets users move tokens & NFTs between Solana and Ethereum

  • The hacker stole $325M due to a smart contract bug (ouch)

  • Wormhole is pledging to replace the stolen $$ โ€œwithin hoursโ€ (no clear answer on where they will get the $325M to replace it)

If you wanna go deeper, this twitter thread from Jon Wu explains how the hack went down:

Smart contract bugs are just one of many โ€œlose it allโ€ risks in crypto.

Thatโ€™s why Rule #67 on the Milk Road is: Donโ€™t Put All Your Eggs In One Protocol

NFTs Outsold the Entire Movie Industry in January

Wanna hear the craziest stat I heard all month?

Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club did more in sales on Opensea ($495m) than the globalย movie industry did at the box office ($482m)

Thatโ€™s just bored apes.

If you look at all NFTs on opensea, thatโ€™s ~$5B in NFT sales in january. And the craziest bit? These numbers donโ€™t even include the Milk Road NFTs that may or may not be coming soon.

*cue the dr evil laugh*

Coachella Going Full NFT

Iโ€™ve said it before (right above!) and Iโ€™ll say it again – NFTs are the boybands of crypto. You may think they look stupid, but they are going mainstream.

It might sound crazy but it ainโ€™t no lie..

Another day, another big celebrity launching an NFT.

This time itโ€™s Coachella.

A few interesting things:

1/ This is launching on Solana, not ETH. One of the first big brands weโ€™ve seen go that route

2/ Theyโ€™re pricing everything in USD (easier to understand)

3/ This is all done on FTX (why the f*ck isnโ€™t FTX sponsoring this newsletter by now? We are the fastest growing crypto newsletter on planet earth)

Will I buy the Coachella NFT?

No. Is it because I got kids and am too damn old to be going to festivals?

Yes.

– Shaan "Never Going to Coachella" Puri

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