🥛 Is web3 actually like the birth of the internet?
GM. This is the Milk Road, and like Milk, this newsletter will do a body good.
In case you missed it, yesterday we announced we were dropping our first-ever YouTube video: The Milk Road Gone Wild…
And it’s officially live! Go check it out here.
In other news, let’s see what’s been going on in cryptoland:
🖼️ How crypto is the new internet
🍩 May Review: winners & losers
😂 Meme of the day
Estimated read time: 3 minutes & 47 seconds
HOW CRYPTO IS LIKE THE EARLY DAYS OF THE INTERNET
“The only time I’ve ever said “This is like the internet”’ is now" – Marc Andreessen.
Marc Andreessen is:
The creator of Netscape (the first web browser)
A billionaire tech investor
Surprisingly tall (he’s 6’5”)
And he was on Bankless’ most recent podcast: Reinventing the Internet, where he teamed up with his fellow A16Zer, Chris Dixon.
Let me save you an hour. Here’s what they said:
1/ The problems we see in crypto today are the same problems we saw in the early days of the Internet
People spend millions of dollars over the internet every day, but it wasn’t always like that.
Prior to 1993, it was illegal to do any business on the internet at all. Aka no e-commerce, no online payments, no online transfers, nada.
When Marc was building his first company, Netscape, he was essentially looking to encrypt data over the internet. At the time, Congress believed encryption would help the black market, terrorists and bad actors do illegal stuff. (Sound familiar?)
They said it was a security threat and compared the potential damage to a Tomahawk Missile.
Of course that all changed…but it took time.
2/ A list of problems is a list of opportunities
The early days of the Internet had endless problems – it was slow, couldn’t scale, and hard for the average person to use. (Sound familiar?)
Slow. Unscalable. Hard to use.
Each of these problems led to multi-billion dollar opportunities for companies to solve.
The same is happening in crypto today.
3/ NFTs have the potential to unlock a level of creativity we never imagined was possible
Marc views NFTs as a way to connect culture to the internet. If you think about it, art has never really been connected to the internet. It’s usually sitting on a wall inside someone's home or inside some fancy museum.
Web3 changes that. Now artists can digitize their art (and ownership of it), and connect to a global market. All within their fingertips.
We hear you, Marc. You also can’t smear cake on an NFT.
The Milk Road’s Take: I have an entire playlist of “OG Internet” videos where people just simply did NOT get that the internet was a big deal.
For example, when Bill Gates went on the David Letterman late-night show and basically got made fun of for the internet in 1995.
A MONTH IN REVIEW: MAY'S BIGGEST WINNERS & LOSERS
Well ladies and gents, that’s another month in the books for crypto.
We know… it’s only been a month. But so much happened this month, that we felt it deserved a little recap. So we’re coming at ya with the biggest winners & losers for May.
Biggest Winners
Web3 Builders – there were about 170 web3 companies/projects that got a total of $4.2B in funding last month.
On top of that, crypto VC funds raised an additional $6B to invest in more web3 projects over the next months. There's never been a better time for web3 founders.
NounsDAO – over the last month, NounsDAO has been able to buy an esports team, release a new Lil Nouns collection (with a new DAO), and momentum continues to move towards them. They had a sale of at least 67 ETH ($120k+) every single day last month.
We at the Milk Road have a very light crush on Nouns.
A16Z – you can’t not be considered a winner after successfully raising $4.5B.
A16Z continues to lead the VC pack on crypto investments and gets more ammo to further that lead. They’ll be looking to take as many shots as possible over the next few months.
We might just point back to this as a time when A16Z made some of their best investments ever. We’ll see.
But the biggest winner this month…. Web3 On-Ramps.
Users are like skateboarders. They need on-ramps to do cool stuff.
Here are some of the cool on-ramps that will bring millions of new tourists into web3.
Coinbase released two new products: 1/ a new crypto wallet and 2/ a new app that lets users easily interact with popular decentralized applications (dApps).
Robinhood released a new crypto wallet that lets users easily transfer their crypto assets.
Instagram is testing out NFTs.
Spotify is testing out NFTs for a limited number of creators.
MoneyGram is releasing a new platform that lets people easily convert different fiat currencies to stablecoins for international transfers.
Biggest Losers
Milk Road Wallet – overall we’re down 60% this month. Ouch. Our two biggest holdings (ETH & Luna) have been getting smacked like Rocky in Rocky III. But like Rocky, we will fight back and end this battle victorious and with some CTE.
Juno. The protocol that lost $37M, all because of a simple typo. They accidentally sent the money to the wrong address and it’s lost forever.
But the biggest loser of the month….
Do Kwon – he's the biggest loser of the month, the year, the decade, the 2000s.
He single-handedly caused the demise of the very thing he created. He also gave a lesson to the world on how to lose $40B in 10 days.
If you want to hear the full rant (Milk Road Gone Wild), it’s live now. Check it out here!
TODAY'S NEWSLETTER IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY FTX US
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Simply put, FTX gets it and makes crypto exposure accessible, easy, and secure.
Download the FTX app on your phone today, use code MILKROAD for free crypto on every trade over $10, and start building your portfolio in less than 3 minutes. It’s that easy.
MEME OF THE DAY
May sure felt like one loooong ass month. It was a rough one. But with a new month comes new opportunities, so let's get after it!
How about you start your June off on the right foot and move the Milk Road email to "inbox" so it stops going in the "promotions tab".
Shaan aka “Elon’s chocolate milk” & Ben "2% Milk" Levy
See ya tomorrow!
A Review from the Road…
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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.
