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Here’s what we got for you today:

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COINBASE LAUNCHES THE BASE APP 🟦

What were you doing at 6pm yesterday?

If your answer wasn’t ‘watching Coinbase’s “A New Day One” presentation’, lemme fill you in…

Broad strokes? This happened:

All of that, along with a rebrand. 👇 

Base’s circular logo is now a square (fitting, given it’s a BLOCKchain) and Base is now “Base Chain” (making way for a “$BASE token”?? Here’s hoping…).

Which all sounds cool! But what's actually being offered here?

1/ Social 🗣️

A single feed where every post is a coin that can be bought/sold and you can see what your friends are aping into.

(Kinda like Instagram’s old ‘Following’ tab that showed you what posts your friends were liking/commenting on – but for crypto trades.)

Plus, if you build a following/content library on The Base App’s social platform, you can take everything with you to any other new social app built on the network – no starting from scratch!

2/ Messaging 💬

Imagine you took your group chat and injected the functionality of Venmo and Polymarket into it – that’s the Base messaging app. 

You can send money instantly for ~$0.01 to your friends anywhere in the world, straight from your DMs – which is cool…

But the real star feature here is chat-specific betting markets. 

E.g. Your idiot friend Todd thinks the Cowboys are destined for Super Bowl glory in 2026, while you know it’s going to be the Eagles (go Birds).

You can prompt an in-chat AI agent to set up a betting pool for you (!!!)

3/ Trading 📈

Access/trade any asset, on any platform built on Base Chain (‘cause what’s a crypto app without trading?) .

4/ Payments 💵

Pay anyone, anywhere, in any amount (with close to zero fees, in a near-instant) — without handing over your personal info to a third party, like you would in TradFi.

(This isn’t exactly new for crypto, but welcomed all the same.)

What IS new is Base Pay: you save your name, shipping address, and email to your Base Account (once), and can then check out with $USDC anywhere it’s supported online.

(Think: the crypto version of PayPal.) 👇

And (surprise, surprise) we’re excited about all of it! 

Not so much because of what it is, but because of who is doing it.

See, most of these features aren’t new…

But the problem being solved here isn’t a lack of new ideas – it’s that, in the past, versions of the same technology have struggled to build a reliable network of users.

(Small networks mean fewer people can see your social posts, accept your payments, or join your group chat.)

But Coinbase is the GOAT when it comes to distribution (just look at what their integrations have done to $USDC, Morpho Lending, and hell – Base Chain itself). 

If anyone can pull new users in, en masse – it’s Coinbase.

P.S. Want more insights on what Coinbase is building towards? 

We just sat down with David Duong, Head of Research at Coinbase, on today’s episode of The Milk Road Show!

Click below to watch it now (it’s a banger!) 👇

YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

STILL NOT BULLISH ON $ETH? READ THIS 📖

Before you go any further, answer this for us:

Are you bullish on Ethereum?

Got your answer? Good. We’re going to ask you again at the end. 

(For those of you who answered “no” – let’s see if this changes your mind...)

1/ The BlackRock Ethereum ETF bought $500M in $ETH yesterday

That’s more than 2x the inflows from all US $ETH ETFs the day previous (~192M).

2/ The remaining $ETH ETFs bought another $250M the same day

For context – in the first week of July, daily inflows for the $ETH ETFs breached the $100M mark just once (things are picking up!).

3/ SharpLink Gaming ($SBET) just bought another $100M worth of $ETH

They now hold 280,706 $ETH tokens. Their goal is 1,000,000+. 🔥

4/ BitMine ($BMNR) just posted an update – they now hold $1B worth of $ETH

And they plan to push that to $2B…for now. 

(We get a feeling that number will be moved up in the future.)

The throughline: it’s been a helluva 24hrs for $ETH. 

(We’re estimating that yesterday alone, it saw up to ~$1B worth of institutional buy-pressure.)

…if that kind of buying happened everyday for the next year, it would soak up ~90% of $ETH’s current market cap. 🤯

Right-o. Now…

PRO “WHERE ARE WE IN THE CYCLE?” INDICATORS 🤔 

$ETH (and altcoins in general) tend to thrive later in the crypto cycle, after $BTC has had its moment.

And right now, all major altcoins in the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap are outperforming $BTC over the last 7 days.

…so is this your last chance to allocate before lift off?

Go PRO and keep scrolling to find out!

Below are the 6 indicators we track, with a color-coded system to show how close they are to signalling the market peak:

🟢 Plenty of room to run 🏄

🟡 Getting closer to the top signal, but haven’t yet reached the mark ⚠️

🔴 We’ve hit the market top indicator 🚨

Every Thursday, we update these 6 indicators exclusively for PRO members.

Our advice? Don't wait for all of them to hit 🔴. It's better to take profits as they get closer to that point.

Let's dive in and see if we're anywhere near the top of this bull market. 👇

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

The 11th edition of the European Blockchain Convention returns to Barcelona. With the EU opening up to crypto, you don’t want to miss this conference. Use code “MiLkROADebc” for a 20% discount on tickets.*

Huuuge news for crypto regulation. All 3 bills (GENIUS, Clarity and Anti-CBDC) were passed in the House yesterday.

Is retail here yet? We’re seeing some signs of it as Coinbase climbed from 436 to 162 on the App Store yesterday.

We might be entering a real turn in the business cycle. With the ISM still below the all-holy figure of 50, we’re seeing signs of expansion.

Is spot trading a little too boring for you? dYdX lets you trade perpetuals onchain with zero gas fees.**

*this is sponsored content.
**this is partner content.

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