GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that gives you the same joy as canceling plans you never wanted to attend.

Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

Arc is a new Layer-1 blockchain designed to support real-world economic activity and it’s now live in testnet. Dive into Arc and start experimenting.

NEW RESEARCH METRIC: FDV VS. OTV 🧑‍💻

If there’s one thing smart crypto investors tend to be wary of, it’s low float/high FDV (Fully Diluted Value) tokens.

Aka: tokens with a small amount of supply circulating in the market, but with a whooole bunch more ready to be unlocked over the years.

They’re wary because, in the beginning, when the token is scarce – that scarcity can push the price way up. 

… but as the unlocks start to hit, token-holders’ can see their value diluted away into nothing.

Meaning a token’s market cap can go up:

While the token price flat lines:

The thing is… when it comes to the market cap of a token’s circulating supply vs. its Fully Diluted Value – both figures are a little ‘extreme’. Neither allows for much nuance.

FDV overstates value by including long-term or inactive supply, while market cap understates value because it only counts circulating tokens…

There’s no ‘middle ground’ figure that filters out unreleased tokens that are:

But CoinGecko has recently cooked up a neat little solution to this problem (which it’s slowly adding to its platform), called Outstanding Token Value (OTV).

It mixes circulating supply, with ‘soon-to-enter’ supply – then ignores the rest. 

So you can get an idea of potential near-term dilution, without being scared off by unlocks that may never happen:

Instead, OTV finds that ‘middle ground’, giving you a clearer/more balanced picture compared to circulating supply and/or FDV.

Pretty neat!

COTD: BITCOIN ‘THE COMPOUND KING’ 📊

Remember how your uncle Terry picked a fight with you during the holiday break, over which is better: Bitcoin or Gold?

(Ending with him throwing a bowl of coleslaw at your head → missing → hitting his brother Kenny instead → and starting a whole other fight?)

No? Just me? Weird.

Well, just in case it happens to you at some point in the future, I want to equip you with the same data that caused Terry to rage-quit our argument and lob a bowl of coleslaw in my general direction…

The data comes from the chart below, which compares Bitcoin's compound annual growth rate (CAGR) against the yellow chunks of metal that Terry has buried all around his backyard. 

(Alongside a bunch of other traditional assets.) 👇

Yeah – I hear you. In the near term, this data isn’t going to win you any arguments…

But the further out you go along the timeline, the more bullish things get for Bitcoin, and the stronger your argument becomes the next time Terry asks: 

"How's your silly internet money going?"

In such a case, you can tell him: 

Over the past 15 years, Gold has underperformed basic index funds by 4-9 percentage points...

While at the same time, Bitcoin has more than doubled in price each year on average.

It depends on how stubborn your uncle is, but that alone should have you covered to win any future arguments. 👆

(And Terry, if you’re reading this – either buy better assets or learn how to throw.)

BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪

Arc is now live on testnet. If you’re looking to build on Circle’s layer 1, now’s your chance to test it out.*

ETH saw the year out with a bang: Ethereum had its daily transactions hit an all-time high of 1.87M on Dec 31.

New year’s resolutions: Brian Armstrong just dropped Coinbase’s top priorities for 2026.

The big dogs’ crystal ball: here’s what BlackRock, Coinbase and 11 other industry giants predict for crypto in 2026.

Wanna buy the dip? Milk Road Swap lets you trade across Ethereum and Solana tokens in one clean interface.

*this is sponsored content.

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