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GM. This is Milk Road, the newsletter that takes the most talked about stories in crypto, and relays them to you like you’re having a beer with a buddy.

Here’s what we got for you today:

$MSTR HAS A NEW COMPETITOR (BACKED BY TETHER & SOFTBANK) 🥊

EVERYONE seems to be talking about 21 Capital…

So why the HYPE and what do they ACTUALLY DO?

In short, 21 Capital looks like it's trying to become Strategy 2.0 ($MSTR). 👇

I.e. They’ll hold a bunch of $BTC in their treasury ($4B to start with) → they’ll try to grow that treasury by increasing revenues and taking on debt.

The appeal to investors = in theory, the amount of $BTC that each share represents will grow over time.

(Compared to traditional ETFs where the $BTC per share stays fixed.)

From what we can tell, the key DIFFERENCE between 21 Capital and Strategy is that: 

21 Capital plans to generate revenue SOLELY from Bitcoin related products and services (compared to $MSTR’s web2-era software services business).

The overarching idea being: 21 Capital will be a Bitcoin PURE PLAY which is available to trade on TradFi rails, and will grow shareholders’ “Bitcoin owned per share” over time.

Good news for $BTC investors: if all goes to plan, this will create greater demand for Bitcoin and shrink the available supply over time.

Bad news for $BTC investors: this is a left curve take – we don’t have a deep enough understanding of how these corporate debt structures work (collectively) – but… 

It certainly feels like the more companies that take the “We’re going to take out loans to buy as much $BTC as possible” approach – the greater risk we have of seeing a black swan event.

$BTC crashes → forcing these companies to sell $BTC & repay their debt → crashing $BTC even further → forcing these companies to sell more $BTC → and so on…

(This is the part where you tell us we’re crazy and that could never happen.)

…guys? GUYS??

Your silence is starting to freak us out.

$TRUMP RIPPED +77% YESTERDAY…BUT WHY? 🤨

Quick question: HUH? 

And while we have you: HOW?

The $TRUMP memecoin ripped +77% in the span of 2hrs yesterday afternoon. 👇

To answer our own questions posed at the top of this article…

Yesterday afternoon the Trump team announced that:

→ The top 220 $TRUMP token holders will get an invite to a Gala Dinner with Trump at the Trump National Golf Club, in Washington D.C.

→ Plus, the top 25 holders will also get access to a VIP reception with the president, alongside a tour of the White House.

And these invites will be awarded based on your time-weighted $TRUMP balance from April 23 to May 12.

Translation: a whole bunch of Trump fan boys just got the opportunity to buy their way to a selfie with the President.

All they need to do is load up on $TRUMP tokens between now and May 12 (hence the price pump).

The cost to get on the invite list as of this writing (note: this will change over time)?

→ A purchase of ~$150k worth of $TRUMP tokens will land you an invite to the Gala Dinner.

→ A purchase of ~$400k worth of $TRUMP tokens will get you on the VIP White House tour.

(Hey, to each their own.)

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

The bulls will have you believing we’re 100% back!

The bears will have you believing this is a dead cat bounce as we make our way to recessionville (population: crypto).

…but what are the cycle indicators telling us to believe??

‘Cause knowing where we are in the crypto cycle is crucial for capturing the best opportunities.

The goal is to spot the bull market peak before the inevitable bear market hits your bags hard.

Since timing the top perfectly is almost impossible, we use various indicators to give us a better shot at taking profits before it's too late.

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 🍪

We just went deeeep into Ledn. Instead of just holding your Bitcoin, you can borrow against it with Ledn.*

Big news for XRP. CME group will launch XRP futures trading May 19 onwards. One step closer to the XRP spot ETF.

Uniswap just keeps killing it. They’ve now processed almost $3T in swap volume since their inception. Big kudos to the Uniswap team.

Time for some crypto equity news. Coinbase and PayPal have teamed up to boost $PYUSD adoption. If you hold either $COIN or $PYPL, it might be worth checking your portfolio.

We’re hosting meetups, baaaby! In case you’re heading to Consensus Toronto or Permissionless in New York, come grab a beer with the Milk Road crew. We’ll see you there!

What do stock trading, sports betting, and crypto baskets have in common? They’re all available on Crypto.com.**

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

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ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY (FROM THE LATEST MOVIE)

The Vitalik film is now live! You can now watch “Vitalik: An Ethereum Story” across multiple digital platforms worldwide.