Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alex with the Token Metrics Daily Pulse for
Speaker 1: April eleventh, twenty twenty six. Got a lot to cover today.
Speaker 1: A sovereign nation quietly dumped bitcoin for eighteen months. The
Speaker 1: market has no idea who's actually in charge right now,
Speaker 1: and there's a live liquidation risk in decentralized finance with
Speaker 1: some very uncomfortable political connections. Let's get into it, but
Speaker 1: first a quick word from our sponsor. Okay, so here's
Speaker 1: what's happening. Bhutan sold seventy percent of its bitcoin quietly
Speaker 1: over eighteen months. Nobody was talking about it. And here's
Speaker 1: the thing. This was supposed to be one of the
Speaker 1: great nation state bitcoin stories, a small Himalayan kingdom mining
Speaker 1: bitcoin with hydropower holding it as a strategic reserve. That
Speaker 1: narrative was genuinely compelling, and now it's taken a very
Speaker 1: different turn. The story has a completely different ending than
Speaker 1: anyone expected. The sell down happened while bitcoin was grinding higher.
Speaker 1: So either Bhan need did the cash badly enough to
Speaker 1: sell into strength, or someone in tim Poh looked at
Speaker 1: the chart and decided the top was close enough. Either way,
Speaker 1: the sovereigns are holding forever thesis just took a real hit,
Speaker 1: and Bitcoin is sitting around seventy three thousand dollars anyway,
Speaker 1: So who absorbed all that selling retail long term holders.
Speaker 1: Someone was on the other side of every one of
Speaker 1: those trades, and they're still holding the uncomfortable question this
Speaker 1: raises if Bhutan was quietly reducing exposure while the headlines
Speaker 1: were screaming about nation state adoption, who else is doing
Speaker 1: the same thing right now? So where does that leave
Speaker 1: the broader market? Honestly, pretty calm considering everything. Bitcoin is
Speaker 1: around seventy three thousand, Ethereum is just above twenty two hundred,
Speaker 1: Solana is sitting near eighty four dollars, all basically flat.
Speaker 1: We're talking moves under two percent across the board, so
Speaker 1: nothing dramatic in price action today. Total market cap is
Speaker 1: just above two and a half trillion. Bitcoin dominance is
Speaker 1: holding at fifty seven percent, which tells you all coins
Speaker 1: aren't running away with anything right now. Now. The narrative
Speaker 1: tracker is where things get interesting. Mean tokens are up
Speaker 1: eighteen percent this week eighteen. That's the kind of move
Speaker 1: that happens when risk appetite is high and people stop
Speaker 1: caring about fundamentals, money chasing heat deep in that's decentralized
Speaker 1: physical infrastructure think real world networks built on crypto rails
Speaker 1: is up eight percent, which is actually the more structurally
Speaker 1: interesting move. Real world infrastructure narratives attracting capital is different
Speaker 1: from me momentum AI tokens up around four percent, DeFi
Speaker 1: up four percent, Real world assets basically flat, and prediction
Speaker 1: markets are telling a pretty clear story. Nobody's betting on
Speaker 1: a crash, but nobody's betting on fireworks either. The odds
Speaker 1: of Bitcoin hitting forty five thousand this month are under
Speaker 1: two percent, the odds of Solana hitting one hundred and
Speaker 1: ten this month about seven percent, Ethereum tripling to seventy
Speaker 1: five hundred by year end six percent contained optimism, slow grind.
Speaker 1: That's the consensus. All right, So what's actually driving the
Speaker 1: narrative today? Let me walk you through the stories that
Speaker 1: matter first, and this connects directly to the Bhutan story.
Speaker 1: GLASSNDE published data this week showing Bitcoin's market is splitting
Speaker 1: into two distinct groups. Long term holders are accumulating, short
Speaker 1: term traders are selling into strength. This is the classic
Speaker 1: late cycle handoff. Conviction money is absorbing momentum money. The
Speaker 1: people who bought in the last few months are taking profits.
Speaker 1: The people who've held for years are treating every dip
Speaker 1: as a gift. When these two forces are roughly in balance,
Speaker 1: price grinds sideways. When one overwhelms the other, you get
Speaker 1: a real move. Right now, the grind is winning and
Speaker 1: that's not boring. That's a coiled spring. Watch this one closely.
Speaker 1: If short term selling slows down while long term accumulation continues,
Speaker 1: the supply squeeze is real and there's room to run.
Speaker 1: If short term selling accelerates into a flat price, the
Speaker 1: spring unwinds the wrong way. Okay, next story, and this one. Honestly,
Speaker 1: this one is getting messier by the day. WLFI, the
Speaker 1: Trump linked DeFi project meaning decentralized finance lending and borrowing
Speaker 1: that happens automatically on the blockchain with no bank in
Speaker 1: the middle, reached its lowest token price today. The reason
Speaker 1: it's struggling is a borrow position that's starting to look
Speaker 1: very exposed. There's a wallet tied to Justin Sun, a
Speaker 1: wallet that's been blacklisted by tether, sitting on roughly seventy
Speaker 1: million dollars in losses connected to this project seventy million.
Speaker 1: The project's response has been to call it a strategic position,
Speaker 1: which is the kind of thing you say when you
Speaker 1: can't call it anything else. Here's why this matters beyond
Speaker 1: the drama. DeFi liquidation are automatic. They don't care about
Speaker 1: press releases or political connections. If the collateral ratio on
Speaker 1: that loan drops to a dangerous level and nobody tops
Speaker 1: it up, you get forced selling, and that can cascade
Speaker 1: into related positions fast. This is a live risk, not
Speaker 1: a hypothetical. Keep an eye on any on chain collateral
Speaker 1: movements over the next week. Moving on, there's actually some
Speaker 1: genuinely good news on the regulatory front, and it's coming
Speaker 1: from an unexpected place. A federal judge blocked Arizona from
Speaker 1: bringing criminal charges against Calshee, the prediction market platform. Arizona
Speaker 1: tried to classify Calshe's markets as illegal gambling. The judge said,
Speaker 1: no federal CFTC regulation, meaning the main US derivatives regulator
Speaker 1: takes precedence over state gambling enforcement. That's a meaningful legal precedent.
Speaker 1: Prediction markets have been in a gray zone for years,
Speaker 1: tolerated at the federal level, harassed at the state level.
Speaker 1: If this gets cited in future cases, it's a structural
Speaker 1: win not just for Calshi, but for Calshi, but for
Speaker 1: the whole on chain prediction market space, polymarket drift, others.
Speaker 1: They're all watching this very closely. And then there's the
Speaker 1: Bitwise hyper liquid ETF story. An ETF exchange traded fund
Speaker 1: is basically a way for traditional investors to buy exposure
Speaker 1: to a crypto asset through their regular brokerage account without
Speaker 1: holding the crypto directly. Bit Wise just filed a second
Speaker 1: amended application for a hyper liquid ETF. Second amendments mean
Speaker 1: the SEC is actually engaging, asking questions, getting answers. It
Speaker 1: doesn't guarantee approval, but it means the conversation is real.
Speaker 1: Here's the second order thing nobody's talking about yet. If
Speaker 1: a hyper liquid ETF gets approved, it would be the
Speaker 1: first ETF product built around a protocol token that generates
Speaker 1: actual revenue from trading fees. That's a different animal from
Speaker 1: bitcoin or ethereum spot ETFs. It's essentially a yield bearing
Speaker 1: asset wrapped in a traditional finance product. The SEC hasn't
Speaker 1: blessed that category yet. Whether they will is the real question.
Speaker 1: Quick hits Before we move on, the founders of okx
Speaker 1: and binance are in a very public fight. Starshoe pronounced
Speaker 1: Shoe called cz a liar. Cz responded there's apparently a
Speaker 1: billion dollar bet involved. It's messy, and public feuds between
Speaker 1: the biggest names in this industry rarely end without some
Speaker 1: collateral damage to market confidence. World Coin is cutting its
Speaker 1: token unlock rate by over forty percent starting in July,
Speaker 1: a direct attempt to ease selling pressure on a token
Speaker 1: that's been struggling under its own supply schedule. And Chanalysis
Speaker 1: published research showing crypto being used to pay Iranian linked
Speaker 1: shipping operators. Compliance teams at exchanges are on alert. This
Speaker 1: one's worth watching if you're thinking about regulatory risk over
Speaker 1: the next few months. Finally, the stable coin bill negotiation
Speaker 1: are entering what lawmakers are calling a critical week. The
Speaker 1: sticking point is whether stable coins can offer yield, basically,
Speaker 1: whether they can pay interest like a savings account. That
Speaker 1: sounds technical, but the outcome could reshape how DeFi competes
Speaker 1: with traditional money market funds. We'll talk more about that
Speaker 1: in the risk section. All right, Before we get into
Speaker 1: the risks, quick word from our sponsor Okay we're back.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what to watch for. The sovereign seller
Speaker 1: problem is bigger than just Bhutan. That's the first thing
Speaker 1: I want to flag. Bhutan sold quietly. Glassnode data shows
Speaker 1: short term holders distributing into strength if long term holder
Speaker 1: absorption weakens even slightly, if the conviction money starts to hesitate,
Speaker 1: there's no obvious buyer of last resort at current levels.
Speaker 1: The price is holding, but it's holding because someone keeps
Speaker 1: absorbing the selling. That someone is not infinite. Second risk WLFI.
Speaker 1: I already cut the mechanics, but I want to be
Speaker 1: direct about the severity. Here a Trump linked DeFi protocol,
Speaker 1: a blacklisted counterparty, seventy million in losses, a token at
Speaker 1: new lows, and a large borrow position still outstanding. That's
Speaker 1: a lot of things going wrong at once. DeFi doesn't negotiate.
Speaker 1: If the collateral ratio breaks, the liquidation happens, and it
Speaker 1: happens fast. This is a live risk with a short fuse. Third,
Speaker 1: and this is the one market's on't pricing yet. The
Speaker 1: stable coin bill. The debate this week is specifically about
Speaker 1: whether stable coins can offer yield if the bill passes
Speaker 1: with a yield ban it structurally disadvantages on chain DeFi
Speaker 1: versus traditional finance money market funds. That's not a price
Speaker 1: action risk today, it's a six month structural risk that's
Speaker 1: flying completely under the radar. The market is not thinking
Speaker 1: about this. It probably should be looking ahead. Three things
Speaker 1: on my radar for the next week. The stable coin
Speaker 1: bill negotiations are the biggest one. Lawmakers are back, and
Speaker 1: this is supposedly the week they try to resolve the
Speaker 1: yield dispute. Resolution either way moves markets. Passage with yield
Speaker 1: restrictions hits DeFi passage without them is a tailwind. The
Speaker 1: bit wise hyper liquid ETF SEC response window after a
Speaker 1: second amended filing, any comment from the SEC or silence
Speaker 1: is a signal. Historically, a quiet SEC after an amendment
Speaker 1: means the path is clearing. Watch for any communication from
Speaker 1: the agency over the next thirty days and wlfi's collateral health.
Speaker 1: This is the one with the shortest fuse. Any on
Speaker 1: chain movement of collateral tied to that borrow position will
Speaker 1: be the tell on whether a forced liquidation is coming.
Speaker 1: If you want to track this in real time, the
Speaker 1: data is on chain, it's public. That's your daily palls
Speaker 1: for April eleventh. Here's what we cover today in plain terms.
Speaker 1: A sovereign nation was quietly selling bitcoin for a year
Speaker 1: and a half while everyone assumed the opposite and the
Speaker 1: price held anyway, which raises real questions about who's actually
Speaker 1: absorbing the selling. Bitcoin's market structure is coiled right now,
Speaker 1: with long term believers buying in, short term traders cashing out.
Speaker 1: There's a real fourced selling risk brewing in a politically
Speaker 1: connected DeFi project, and a regulatory vote this week could
Speaker 1: quietly reshape how decentralized finance competes with traditional banking. Busy day.
Speaker 1: If you want the full ritten breakdown with all the
Speaker 1: sources and watch next scenarios. The newsletter is at tokenmetrics
Speaker 1: dot com. Everything I covered today is there in more detail,
Speaker 1: and if this was useful, share it with someone who's
Speaker 1: trying to keep up with crypto without drowning and noise.
Speaker 1: This is educational content, not investment advice. Always do your
Speaker 1: own research. I'm Alex, See you next time.