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GM. This is Milk Road – call us ‘Crypto Santa Claus,’ cause we're delivering the gift of positive crypto news!

Here’s what we got for you today:

Q4 = CRYPTO CHRISTMAS. HERE’S WHY 👇

You heard it here first: We’re rebranding Q4 to “Crypto Christmas.”

Why? Well, outside of the fact that: 

We also have this…

1/ $16B is about to be returned to FTX customers in cash

The ‘Distribution Mechanism’ is particularly important here.

Usually when creditors are repaid by failed crypto companies – they get paid out in crypto.

Which can lead to a whole bunch of people converting (selling) their recovered funds into cash and dampening prices.

But FTX is distributing its funds in cash. 🫰 

Sure, some folks may take the money and run – but that won’t affect crypto prices.

Meanwhile, others will likely take some of their recovered funds and put it back into the crypto market.

So worst case: It has a neutral effect on crypto.

Best case: It pushes crypto asset prices up.

Putting this all into perspective – if a modest 10% of those distributions go back into the crypto market, it would lead to $1.6B of (potentially) market-moving buy pressure.

…it’s wild to think that FTX – the company that helped to flip us into a grueling bear market back in 2022 – may well be about to help push us into a generational bull run, just two years later.

2/ Did we report MicroStrategy was buying $700M worth of $BTC? Sorry, we meant $1B…

Saylor just upped his buy order by $300M, announcing MicroStrategy’s latest revised $BTC purchase on X a few hours ago.

3/ Q4 is when the big dogs allocate, and ETF providers are in their ears

Matt Hougan, CIO of Bitwise (a $BTC & $ETH ETF provider) is out in them streets (private dining halls) orange pilling financial advisors.

Meanwhile, we’re getting wind of RIAs selling their tech stocks in order to move into $ETH!

That’s it – that’s all we’ve got so far...

Probably nothing, right?

*. Sound of sleigh bells intensifies *

EVERYTHING YOU MISSED SO FAR AT SOLANA BREAKPOINT 👀

Remember SBF? This is him now. 

(Feel old yet?)

Alright, now that we’ve all had a good chuckle – let’s dive straight into things.

We’re here at Solana Breakpoint and there’s already been a slew of bullish announcements that are worth your attention. 👇

First, here’s the TLDR from Raul, Milk Road's head of socials:

Ok, appetizers served. Time for the main course… 🧑‍🍳 

1/ Firedancer is live on testnet / Frakendancer (an earlier version of Firedancer) is live on mainnet 

If you’re not familiar with these terms, don’t worry – neither is Google…

Solana’s Freaky Dancer Firedancer validator is estimated to bring Solana’s maximum theoretical transactions per second (TPS) from 65k to 1M – this is a big step towards making that a reality.

As for Firedancer’s predecessor, Frankendancer? It’s already showing promise…

Translation: Frankendancer achieved 1M+ TPS in test conditions – the kicker being, it did so in a decentralized manner (across 100 ‘nodes’).

2/ Tap-to-pay from your self custody wallet, coming to Fuse

The easier a new technology is to use → the more people will use it.

3/ Phantom is launching embedded wallets

This is like Solana’s version of Smart Wallets – third party apps can allow users to generate Phantom wallets with nothing but an email address.

4/ PayPal endorsed Solana as their chosen chain for their $PYUSD stablecoin

5/ Jupiter is launching a mobile trading app w/ zero fees and web2 onboarding options

6/ Sky Ecosystem (formerly Maker) just made a proposal to launch on Solana

It’s just a proposal for now, but if it gets approved it could bring a whole bunch of fresh cash to the Solana DeFi ecosystem.

7/ HelioPay is enabling Shopify merchants to sell directly in X via Solana blinks

Think: One-click Solana-based checkouts, that can be embedded into Twitter posts – that integrate directly with your Shopify store for seamless fulfillment.

8/ Scaramucci (aka “The Mooch”) believes the future of RWAs is on Solana

Ok, that’s everything you’ve missed so far at Breakpoint…

…but what about Token 2049, the other crypto conference taking place in Singapore this week?

Zeneca joins us on today’s episode of The Milk Road Show to recap all the potentially market-juicing announcements and developments you missed at Token 2049 – get it here! 👇

YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

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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.