July 21, 2022

🥛 Instant reactions to Elon selling tons of BTC 😲

GM. This is the Milk Road, the newsletter you lean on for crypto news.

You can lean on us like Michael Jackson in Smooth Criminal.

Here's what's cooking today:

  • Tesla sold 75% of their Bitcoin in Q2

  • Polygon launches zkEVM

  • Minecraft bans 3rd party NFTs

  • Meme of the day

TESLA SOLD 75% OF ITS BITCOIN HOLDINGS IN Q2

Tesla’s Q2 report came out of the oven yesterday. And it was hotter than the temperature in Europe right now.

Why? Tesla sold 75% of its Bitcoin in Q2. 

Look. It’s a free country. Sell, buy, do what you want. 

But Elon, baby, why did you lie to us?

So – why did Elon and Tesla sell? 

They didn't say much besides they were worried about lockdowns in China & were concerned with the environmental impact of Bitcoin.

Others suspect it’s because if they didn’t convert to cash then they would've had a negative cash flow quarter (bad for the stock price). 

Either that or they have less faith in Bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset. 

POLYGON INTRODUCES ZKEVM

Yesterday Polygon dropped a huge announcement – the release of zkEVM. And no, that’s not the name of a new spaceship in Star Trek. 

zkEVM stands for "Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine" (nerd speak for "eth grease").

And everyone's saying it's a big deal for ETH, but …what is it?  

Let's make it stupidly simple with a "Driver's License" analogy…

You need a driver's license. If you're American, that means you need to go to the DMV. 

If you don't know what a DMV is, just close your eyes. Imagine hell. Now, add paperwork. There, you've got it.

Ethereum is like the DMV. 

It's SLOW (~15 transactions per second) & EXPENSIVE ($10-$100 gas fees) 

Polygon's new thingy is gonna make it 2-3X faster and ~10X cheaper to use Ethereum. 

The key details: 

  • It's compatible with ANY solidity smart contract (devs don't need to change their code) 

  • It uses ETH as the gas token (no new token required) 

  • Code is open source, and available now— test net in a few weeks. Full launch early next year.

This is big because people have been excited about "zero knowledge" methods, but most people thought it was still ~1-3 years away. 

This announcement is like DoorDash showing up in 10 minutes instead of 40. Top 5 best feelings.

Polygon is excellent at biz dev. Great at marketing. Now they need to deliver on this promise!

ps. sorry Vitalik for comparing ETH to the DMV. 

<3 you. just needed an analogy

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MINECRAFT BANS NFTS

Minecraft dropped a bomb yesterday – they're banning 3rd party NFTs.

Here’s why:

  • NFTs give digital ownership based on scarcity & exclusion

  • Players earn rewards as they complete different missions, which makes it unfair for other players that don’t have the NFTs

  • Minecraft already has assets in its game and “strives to provide a marketplace where the values can be recognized”

Skeptical Translation: “We don’t make as much money now and aren’t in control” 

This is big because there were already some well-known NFT projects are building on top of the Minecraft servers. Like NFT Worlds. 

Now they’ve been sent to the Gulag. Ouch.

MEME OF THE DAY

CoinDesk reported that someone overheard Vitalik ordering a cup of hot water at the ETHCC conference in Europe… so we'll take their word for it.

P.S. – If you reply to this email with “Billy The Kid”, we will send Billy to a fancy coffee shop and have him order hot water in the most elaborate way possible and post the video tomorrow. 

P.P.S – Thanks to all of you for replying to our poll yesterday, we'll share the results tomorrow!

That's all for today folks. See ya tomorrow!

Shaan "Chocolate Milk" PuriBen "2% Milk" Levy &  Diego "El Lechero" Salinas

A Review from the Road…

Vitalik Pic of the Day…

Vitalik spitting bars at ETHCC!

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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.