April 11, 2023

🥛 4 numbers you need to know 👀

GM. This is Milk Road, the Amazon of crypto. We deliver the best crypto news directly to your doorstep. Even if you forgot what you ordered.

And we’ll start with the best news of the day: Bitcoin hit $30K+ for the first time in 10 months! Nothing better than waking up to the sweet, sweet smell of green crypto prices.

Here’s what else we’re serving up today:

  • Numbers of the Day 🔢

  • BTC Breaking Records in its Sleep 💤

  • Ordinals Pass 1 Million Inscriptions 🍪

Prices as of 9:30 AM ET

Today’s edition is brought to you by Arch, a secure way to borrow against alternative assets like cryptocurrencies.


NUMBERS OF THE DAY 🔢

~$750M – How much Ethereum users paid in fees over the last 6 months

That’s more than double what Ethereum’s closest competitor TRON generated ($282M.)

Source: Token Terminal

So what? Users pay these fees every time they complete a transaction of the blockchain. More fees = more people using the network. We like the m-word around here: mass adoption.

And this number’s a good way to measure which blockchains are actually being used, though Ethereum’s high cost per transaction could be a big part of why it’s so high.

It’s also not surprising. Ethereum’s blockchain is the hottest place to build dApps – always has been.

And although Bitcoin might be the dominant cryptocurrency, it generated just ~$80M in fees in the last 6 months.

$3.3M+ – The amount of funds stolen from SushiSwap (DEX)

A hacker stole the money thanks to a bug in a smart contract. It tricked people into approving a bad contract that allowed the attacker to stealthily snatch their funds.

The majority of funds were stolen from one user: Sifu. The infamous co-founder of QuadrigaCX had ~1,800 ETH (worth $3.3M) taken from him.

Anyone who swapped on SushiSwap within the past four days may be in danger. Users should remove their approval on all the chains that the bad contract was deployed on (you can check if your addresses are safe here.)

But there’s good news! SushiSwap’s gotten most of the money back thanks to white hats (hackers that steal funds legally to either recover them or warn about vulnerabilities.)

The heroes we need…

$10M – How much CryptoGPT raised

CryptoGPT is one of the 289,670,086 ChatGPT knock-offs that have sprung up like weeds. But this one’s all the buzz right now…

It wants to let people earn money by sharing their data with AI companies to train their models. It’ll use zero-knowledge (zk) tech to transfer that data – that means the sender & receiver of a person’s data know it’s legit without having to reveal more personal info about them.

The Milk Man’s translation: “We know ZKs, layer 2 solutions, AND AI are hot right now so here’s this thing with all three, give us cash.”

It’s got investor interest though, clearly. Its token, GPT, spiked 11% on the news and now has a market cap of $250M.

$1.4B – Total funds recovered by FTX so far

The bankrupt exchange and its debtors released its first report Sunday.

The biggest detail? The FTX team has so far recovered $1.4B of the ~8B in digital assets it owes creditors. They’re still trying to recover $1.7B more.

Baby steps.

Other highlights from the report include:

  • 35 FTX Group entities used Google Docs, Slack, Excel sheets, etc. to track its finances

  • FTX stored private keys to its crypto wallets on AWS and in unencrypted plain text 🤦

  • SBF joked at one point that “sometimes we find $50M of assets lying around that we lost track of; such is life”

  • FTX had no idea who all worked there when it filed for bankruptcy

There’s such a thing as too much chill, Sam…

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Unlock the potential of Arch and take charge of your crypto investments today!

GRAPH OF THE DAY: BTC SUPPLY DORMANT FOR 2+ YEARS💤

Another day, another record broken by Bitcoin…

The latest record? 53% of Bitcoin’s circulating supply has been dormant for 2+ years.

No movement. No selling. Nada. It’s been locked down like the Krabby Patty secret formula.

The craziest part? 29% of the supply hasn’t moved in the last 5 years. That’s over $150B of Bitcoin. And they say hibernating is only for bears…

What’s causing this? 2 things:

1/ It’s estimated that ~20% of the total BTC supply is either lost or held by a wallet that cannot be accessed. Pour one out for the guy with two guesses left to access his BTC holdings worth >$200M.

2/ Holders see potential from the recent developments on the Bitcoin network (i.e. Ordinals, etc.) and are looking ahead to the widely anticipated halving next year.

Bitcoin’s halving occurs every 4 years and cuts the rate of new supply in half. This has historically led to substantial price increases, with all 3 previous halvings bringing new ATHs a year later.

This is big because: Holders prevent selling pressure, and this shows people are holding tighter than ever.

It also shows that investors are becoming more comfortable with price fluctuations and increasingly see the long-term potential of Bitcoin.

Satoshi would be proud.

MILK & COOKIES 🍪

Shapella upgrade takes place tomorrow (4/12). The long-awaited activation of staking withdrawals is finally here, and the stakes are high. (pun intended)

Instagram and FB will remove NFTs from their platform today. R.I.P. FB NFTs.

“Stamps”, the newest Bitcoin NFTs, are on the rise. They offer additional features such as open-ended collections and cannot be changed → Another stamp of approval for the BTC network.

Ordinal NFTs reach 1M total inscriptions. Making Bitcoin miners almost $5M richer in the process.

Bitcoin hits $30K+ for the first time in 10 months. We eatin’ that wagyu tonight!

MILKY MEMES 🤣

That’s a wrap for today. Meet us on Twitter to talk all about it. It’s kinda like a family BBQ but better – no screaming kids, awkward photos, or drunk uncles telling weird stories (@MilkRoadDaily)

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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.