Today’s edition is brought to you by Meanwhile - the life insurance that lets you access your Bitcoin wealth tax-efficiently while you're still alive.

FUNDING FRIDAY 💰

That’s right – Funding Friday is back baaaby!

(If you’re new here, this is kinda like the Milk Road version of the McRib returning.)

The segment works like this:

We gather a list of crypto companies that have recently received funding → lay out how much money they’ve just pocketed → tell you what they’re trying to build with it.

First, here’re the blockchains that saw the most ‘monetary love’ last week:

Source: Crypto Fundraising Info

And now for the main event…

1/ World (aka: Worldcoin) raised $135M from Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital Crypto, Selini Capital, Mirana Ventures, Arctic Digital.

In case you haven’t seen pictures of/doomsday posts about World’s big iris-scanning-orbs – they’re trying to create a ‘proof of humanity’ system where you:

Scan your iris → get added to the network & receive some tokens → can prove online that you’re a human and not an AI by signing in with a World wallet.

…unless you’re a rogue AI that has stolen a human’s World ID – but that’s a (dystopian horror) story for another day.

2/ Slash raised $41M from Goodwater Capital

Imagine if the tabs in your bank app read ‘checking, savings, crypto.’

That’s what Slash is trying to bring to the table – all of your fiat n’ crypto finances, under one roof, and tailored to business customers.

3/ Catena Labs raised $18M from Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures, Breyer Capital, Circle Ventures.

Q: If you’re a financial firm, how do you let AI Agents hold assets and trade on your behalf, without breaking regulatory guidelines?

A: No idea, but Catena Labs is trying to figure that out (and monetize it.)

In total, 19 crypto startups raised $246.4M last week – bringing the total funding raised in 2025 up to – wait for it…

$7.7B! That’s an 89% increase compared to this same period in 2024. 💅

NEW LIFE INSURANCE HACK JUST DROPPED

I know, I know. Life insurance = snooze fest.

But hear me out for a sec – this one’s different:

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Here’s how it works:

Say you pay into the policy today when Bitcoin is at $100K
Fast forward to 2035…and Bitcoin’s at $1M (nice!)
You borrow a Bitcoin from your policy and sell it right away for $1M cash
The best part? No capital gains tax on the $900K appreciation.

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IT’S OFFICIAL: AMERICANS LOVE $BTC MORE THAN GOLD ♥️

First three thoughts that come to mind after looking at this chart? 👇

Source: River

1/ Holy hell – more Americans hold $BTC than Gold??

2/ There’s no way this chart takes ownership of gold jewelry into account

3/ There’s room to grow! (49.6M people is roughly ~15% of the total US population)

Ok, now – on that last point, we have good news…

The ownership gap is most likely about to widen in Bitcoin’s favor, thanks to this:

Source: @Swan

This means that 401k providers will now encounter less red tape if/when they choose to allocate to Bitcoin.

…are they all going to rush in and start allocating? Hell no.

And the ones that do are probably going to do so in small percentages.

But here’s the thing…

There’s roughly $8.9 trillion locked up in 401k accounts right now.

So even if only a small percentage of a small portion of providers decide to allocate to $BTC – it still has the potential to be massive!

WHAT YOU MISSED IN MACRO THIS WEEK 👀

We just wrapped up the first week of Milk Road Macro…and thousands of you signed up to learn macro investing on ‘easy mode.’

We’re still catching our breath (and refreshing the sub count), but the early reviews are in:

We’re flattered. And slightly concerned that a university education is losing out to a free newsletter with memes.

Here’s what we covered:

💵 How the U.S. dollar (DXY) quietly influences the crypto cycle — and why a weaker dollar now might mean a stronger Bitcoin by summer

📈 Why rising yields could be good for your bags — because when the 10-year hits 4.5%, the government hits the liquidity button

It’s all delivered twice a week. Readable, fast, no econ degree required.

👉 Haven’t subscribed yet? Fix that:

Subscribe to Milk Road Macro

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

The connection between sports and Web3 is only getting stronger. We just dropped an article on how Chiliz’s fan tokens let you turn game day hype into potential profits.*

Remember the hack on Cetus? The Sui-based DEX has now fully reimbursed users. Pretty fkn impressive.

Crypto-friendly SEC, baaaby! They’ve now dropped the lawsuit against Binance after two-years of back and forth.

Everything is slowly going to get automated. Unstake lets you deploy no-code AI agents to manage communites on X and Telegram. Yep, we’re all getting replaced soon.

A new position just opened up. We’re lookin’ for a detail-obsessed operator to take the reins of Milk Road PRO.

Invest as you spend with the Gemini Credit Card®. Get approved by 6/30/25 to earn $200 in Bitcoin when you spend $3,000 in your first 90 days. Issued by WebBank. Terms apply.**

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