GM, this is the Milk Road. Its Friday, so let's boogie.
Markets are down slightly in the past 24 hours.Ā
By the way, have you ever heard of the Fear vs. Greed Index? Itās one of my favorite things to look at to understand the market.Ā
It looks like this:
Hereās how it works:Ā
The Fear / Greed Index is pretty well correlated with price.Ā Check this out:
^You can see we go into greedy greens near the tops, and fear redsĀ at bottoms.Ā
We are currently in FEAR with a 28 score.
Alright, what else is in today's email?
The Bored Ape Yacht Club is launching something newā¦but thereās a catch..Ā
If you read this email. You probably already know what Bored Ape Yacht Club is.Ā
Today, they dropped a new site, somethingisbrewing.xyz/, with no other details.
Buuuutā¦ā¦they asked for you to KYC to be eligible.
KYC stands for āKnow Your Customerā and is a banking compliance requirement to help combat money laundering, terrorism financing, and buying Nickleback albums.Ā
Crypto culture has a big privacy angle. People donāt want to give up their identity, social security number etc.. for their NFTs.Ā
So Twitter was pissed that they were asking for all your info, but a few people pointed out this is a necessary evil to NFTs becoming more mainstream.
Just because you're in the metaverse, doesn't mean you can get away from the rules everyone else plays by.
Stripe is the darling of Silicon Valley.Ā
Two brothers took on the payments industry, and won BIG.Ā Ā
How big? Letās just sayā¦I told my daughter she has two options to get rich in life:Ā
The company is worth over $100B+, but hasnāt gone public yet.Ā
Anyways. Back to the story. Stripe announced today they are adding crypto to their payment tools. Theyāve already partnered with FTX and Nifty Gateway to power their payments & I'm sure there are many more to come.
This means two things:
1/ Adding crypto to your app just got WAY easier (since so many companies already use Stripe)
2/ A bunch of startups just died. Turns out āStripe for cryptoā is just going to be Stripe.Ā
P.S. fun factā¦I had a chance to join Stripe when it had less than 30 employees, but screwed up the āsell me this penā question during the Stripe job interview.Ā
That entry level job would have made me $10M+. Now Iām 33 years old and I write a free newsletter. BRB while I go bang my shin against the nearest table.Ā
The crypto community is a juicy one to get to come live in your country and politicans have realized this.Ā
Senators like Ted Cruz joined team Bitcoin to win over voters.Ā
Zug in Switzerland is home to like 8 of the biggest crypto protocols by having crypto friendly laws.
Portugal is offering a 0% tax rate on crypto gains.Ā
El Salvadorās president is pumping Bitcoin all day on Twitter.
And now⦠The new President of South Korea is promising to:Ā
The race to attract the crypto rich is on like Donkey Kong!
Remember Facebookās āLibraā Project?Ā
Cryptocurrencies were hot, and Facebook wanted to dance too. The head of Messenger moved over to lead it (David Marcus, former CEO of Paypal). They built a big team, poured in millions of dollars, and created a giant committee of brands like Uber, Shopify, and Mastercard/Visa to shape itĀ (they actually all quit before it started).Ā
So what happened?Ā
Pretty much nothing happened. It never got off the ground, and then Facebook sold āDiemā to a bank for ~$180M a few weeks ago.
We never knew what caused the breakup, just like we can never really be sure what really happens in the Bachelor fantasy suites (though we can guessĀ š).
Fortunately for us, the Financial Times did some great reporting and got us the answer.
The answer is simpler than you might think: Politicians didnāt trust Facebook.
You see, Facebook wanted regulatory approval, from the same regulators that they were constantly battling.Ā Ā
The full story has a bunch of details about how the political power game played out: check it out here.
Check this out.Ā Thereās 20,000 volunteers who spend their time arresting people in VR.
Imagine how big it would be if it was play-to-earn š¤£
Itās that time again for a Milk Road "Dunk and Dip" aka a deep dive.
Our first one was about the Bull and Bear Case of LUNA (since we wrote it and explained why weāre betting on Luna, itās up ~2x, you're welcome).
Weāve got a couple ideas for the next one, but itās up to you to pick:
P.S. Comment with your ideas and we'll take the best ones and use 'em next time around
Over $750m poured into crypto startups and $1.5b went into funds this week.Ā Letās see who got it:
Companies:
Espresso - Got $32M to help with scaling and privacy for Web3 applications
WalletConnect - Got $11M to continue scaling their crypto wallet
Immutable - Got $200M to build a Layer 2 for NFTs on Ethereum
Upstream - Got $12.5M to easily launch DAOās with their new no-code platform. āDAO-in-a-boxā.
Funds:
Bessemer - Raised $250M in a new fund to invest in consumer crypto, DeFi infrastructure and crypto infrastructure.
Bain Crypto - Raised $500m for their crypto fund and got absolutely roasted on Twitter
Tired of watching Web3 from the sidelines?Ā
Searching for a new job yourself is like opening a traditional brokerage account.Ā
You can do it, but let's be real: itās painful, outdated, and you aren't getting the return you deserve.
When you're writing your own resume, scouring the web for open roles, or blindly negotiating an offer ā you're not maximizing your outcome in the market. All of this takes time, energy, and expertise.Ā
What if you had an agent run your search for you?
Athletes like LeBron and entertainers like Zendaya have teams and agents that manage the "business side of their careers". They get to focus on their craft, while their teams take care of the back end.Ā
Thatās what Free Agency does for startup and tech talent. Hollywood-style career management, negotiation, and more for engineers, PMs, designers, marketers, salespeople, etc.
If youāre ready to make a move and want an expert team behind you: click here. (U.S. only for now.)
And, if you're liking this do us a solid and send it to a friend, or your grandma, or an ex with your link right below this
See ya bright and (kinda) early on Monday!
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