Today’s edition is brought to you by Coinbase’s Onchain Summer - Base’s multi-week event that kicks off on August 9th to celebrate art, music, gaming, and more on the blockchain. Don’t miss out on the action.

GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that's as smooth as Michael Jordan's fadeaway jumper.

Here’s the good stuff for today:

A PEEK INTO MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR WALLETS 👀

We just came back from our favorite activity: whale watching.

Luckily no boat-attacking-Orcas in sight. We did get flipped off by a few whales though. (see image above)

We also found a few multi-million dollar crypto whales.

In total, we looked at 10 whale wallets that hold a combined $250M in crypto. They all eat tokens like krill.

Here are the 3 big trends that stood out:

1/ Staking

6 out of the 10 whales are staking ETH using Lido. And in most cases, this makes up their largest positions.

A few were using other protocols like Rocket Pool and Frax Finance, but Lido is by far the favorite.

The most surprising part? Although the whales are staking through Lido, only 2 of the whales actually hold LDO (Lido’s native token).

2/ Real-world assets (RWA)

3 out of the 10 whales are actively investing in RWA protocols like Maple and Maker.

RWA = digital tokens that represent physical items like stocks, commodities, or real estate.

So what? It’s estimated the RWA market could reach $16T by 2030.

And with all the recent U.S. regulations surrounding regular stablecoins, it might push people to look into other alternatives, like stablecoins backed by RWA.

This is definitely a trend all investors should be looking at.

3/ Convex

4 out of the 10 whales are actively using Convex Finance.

It’s a protocol that allows liquidity providers to earn more rewards by directing votes to pools, as well as a bribe market for these votes.

P.S. - And just in case you were wondering, the largest holding across wallets is…. *drumroll*…. ETH.

Milk Road Take: It’s always interesting to check out what protocols the whales of crypto are using and where they have their money invested.

Looks like we’ve got a few new things to test out with our new Milk Road Public Wallet…

**adds ‘do more research on RWA and Convex’ to the to-do list**

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$4.5M WORTH OF ETH GETS BURNED 🔥

Crypto reminds me a lot of that old TV show “1000 Ways To Die”. 

Both are full of crazy, unexpected, “gotta-see-it-to-believe-it” stories. And usually, someone ends up getting hurt.

On today’s episode, we’re gonna talk about The $4.5M Burn.

Here’s what happened:

No one knows who the whale is, or why they would burn millions of dollars worth of ETH.

Some think nd4.eth fat-fingered the address. Others think it could be a tax write-off.

A few have also pointed out that it isn’t the first time the whale has burned crypto assets (i.e. they also burned a Bored Ape this morning), so it could just be a party trick. Who knows.

Milky Fact of the Day: ~2,200 ETH has been burned from transaction fees every single day over the last week. That’s a burn rate of 1.52 ETH per minute.

Burned ETH = fewer tokens in circulation = ETH becomes ultrasound money.

**ETH investors erupt in cheers**

BITE-SIZED COOKIES 🍪

Circle is launching a new programmable wallet for developers. The goal? Simplify stuff like private key security, blockchain node operations, transaction management, and interoperability across blockchains.

Only ~30% of USDC adoption has come from the U.S. Surprisingly, most of the adoption has come from Asia, LATAM, and Africa.

Binance secured two crypto licenses in El Salvador. It’s the first crypto exchange to get a license in the country.

L1 Digital raised $150M for its second crypto fund. 70% of the funds will be invested directly into crypto startups and the other 30% into early-stage crypto-focused investment firms.

Binance is starting an initiative to buy back its own corporate bonds. The buyback initiative will see the U.S.-based exchange buy back up to $150 million of its $1 billion bonds set to mature in 2031.

THE MILK ROAD JURY’S VERDICT IS IN….

Yesterday we had Milk Road Crypto Court.

The TLDR: An NFT trader (Elizab.eth) set up a bot to “copy trade” another NFT trader (Hanwe).

Hanwe found out they were being copied by a bot, so they decided to trick it and ended up profiting $1.5M from Elizab.eth.

Is Hanwe guilty or innocent?

We asked. You answered. And the verdict is in….

90% voted innocent. Here are some of our favorite responses:

In conclusion - we, the Milk Road Crypto Court, pronounce Hanwe innocent.

**The court scene fades to black**

MILKY MEMES 🤣

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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.