August 19, 2022

🥛 Latin Americas Amazon just dropped a token 👀

GM. This is the Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that has the perfect balance of everything you need – daily news, entertainment, breakdowns, and memes.

If we had to describe it in one pic – here it is.

Here's what we got for ya today:

  • An e-commerce giant drops a new token

  • Funding Friday

  • Meme of the day

AN E-COMMERCE GIANT DROPS A NEW TOKEN

Fine, fine. I’ll admit it.

My house is the one house on the block that gets an Amazon package every other day… 

Don’t lie. I know some of you are like this too.

Now imagine if someone like Amazon dropped a crypto token that you could use to buy items and earn cashback rewards when you do…. would be pretty cool, right?

Well, that’s sorta what’s happening in Latin America with Mercado Libre. They just dropped a new token – MercadoCoin.

Mercado Libre is the Amazon of Latin America. Which I know is confusing since there’s already an Amazon there. Except it’s a rainforest… Damn you, Bezos!

They’ve been leading the way for crypto adoption in LatAm. Check it out:

  • Tested their new crypto wallet (MercadoPago) in Brazil and got 1m users within 2 months. Now they’re expanding to other countries

  • Became the first publicly traded company in LatAm to add crypto to its treasury. Bought ~$7.8m worth of BTC earlier this year

And now they plan to open up their new cryptocurrency to the 80m users they have in Brazil before expanding to other countries. There are 2 goals:

1/ Drive more users to their crypto wallet, Mercado Pago

2/ Boost their loyalty program by introducing a token that dishes out rewards the more people use it to buy stuff online

Smart move.

Mercado Libre has already helped onboard 1m+ users into crypto. That’s peanuts compared to how many more they plan to onboard with their new cryptocurrency.

A token and cashback rewards don’t sound half bad ya know..anyone got Jeff Bezos’ #?

TODAY'S EDITION IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY DECENTRAL GAMES 

We just took our first Road Trip to the metaverse. That's right, we finally found it.

It’s called Decentral Games (DG), a metaverse poker game. Some cool things about it:

  • 8k daily active users

  • Players get 3000 free poker chips every day. (~7 free games)

  • $36M+ in revenue. It’s the highest-grossing NFT project on Polygon this year

Decentral Games lets you play poker and earn crypto. And the better you do, the better the rewards. It's that easy. 

Plus we’re teaming up with the Decentral Games team to make the first Milkman NFT. It gets you:

  • free access to their new Tournament Mode (normally costs $$)

  • a skin that makes your avatar look like the Milkman

The best part? It’s free!

To claim one, just reply to this email with your ETH address. And we’ll airdrop it to you in 3 weeks when the new game drops.

FUNDING FRIDAY

Each Friday, we give you a rundown of Web3 companies that got funded.

This week we saw ~$630M get invested into crypto companies. Here’s who got the money:

Fractional got $20m to build a marketplace for fractionalized NFTs. They also rebranded to Tessera. Which honestly triggers my PTSD from Terra.

EtherMail got $3m to create an email solution for encrypted wallet-to-wallet communication. 10/10 company name.

GitPOAP got $4.2M to distribute NFTs to people that contribute to their open source projects. Help-and-earn. It’s that easy.

.bit got $13M to develop unified usernames for different dApps. It gives users ownership of their data across different dApps.

CoinFund got $300m to invest in “picks & shovels” of web3. Aka the infrastructure & blockchain software. Boring but the picks & shovels get the gold right?

If you wanna check out the full database of companies that have raised money in 2022, we got 'em for you right here.

MEME OF THE DAY

Me this weekend 😂

That's a wrap for today. Stay thirsty and see ya next week!

If you want more, be sure to follow our Twitter (@MilkRoadDaily)

A ROADER'S REVIEW

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

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.