Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alex with the Token Metrics daily Pulse from
Speaker 1: March thirtieth, twenty twenty six. Got a weird one today.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin's up, but the two biggest buyers in the market
Speaker 1: just went quiet same week. Let's get into it, but
Speaker 1: first a quick word from our sponsor. Okay, So here's
Speaker 1: what's happening. So Bitcoin is sitting at sixty seven eight
Speaker 1: hundred and seven dollars today, up about one and a
Speaker 1: half percent. Ethereum is actually leading up closer to three
Speaker 1: point six percent. Solana is up about two and a
Speaker 1: half percent. Two on the surface, green day fine, But
Speaker 1: here's what's bothering me strategy. Michael Sailor's company just paused
Speaker 1: its weekly bitcoin purchases for the first time in months.
Speaker 1: They're sitting on over seven hundred and sixty two thousand
Speaker 1: bitcoin worth roughly fifty two billion dollars. That's more than
Speaker 1: three point six percent of everything that will ever exist,
Speaker 1: which means they are the single largest corporate holder of
Speaker 1: bitcoin on the planet and they just stop buying. At
Speaker 1: the same time. US Bitcoin ETFs led two hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety six million dollars last week, first outflow week after
Speaker 1: a four week inflow streak. Now, if you're not familiar
Speaker 1: with ETFs, think of them as a rapper that lets
Speaker 1: big institutional investors get exposure to bitcoin without actually holding
Speaker 1: the coins themselves. When money flows out of those ETFs,
Speaker 1: that's institutions pulling back. So the two most reliable buyers
Speaker 1: in this market are both sitting on their hands right now,
Speaker 1: and the price is up, which is either reassuring or suspicious.
Speaker 1: I'm going with suspicious until proven otherwise. So where does
Speaker 1: that leave the rest of the market? Pretty okay? On
Speaker 1: the surface, total market cap is sitting around two point
Speaker 1: four to two trillion dollars. Bitcoin dominance is at fifty
Speaker 1: six point one five percent, which just means Bitcoin is
Speaker 1: still taking up more than half of the entire crypto
Speaker 1: market by value, and that share is holding steady. DeFi
Speaker 1: total value locked is around ninety four point two billion
Speaker 1: dollars DeFi. Decentralized finance is basically the universe of financial
Speaker 1: apps running on blockchains, things like lending and trading, but
Speaker 1: without a bank in the middle. Ninety four billion is
Speaker 1: basically flat. Nothing dramatic there. The more interesting signal today
Speaker 1: is in the narrative data, meaning which categories of crypto
Speaker 1: are actually moving. Meme coins are up twenty seven percent
Speaker 1: in seven days. DPEN that stands for decentralized physical infrastructure
Speaker 1: networks think community owned wireless or compute networks up about
Speaker 1: twenty five percent. AI tokens up nearly eighteen and a
Speaker 1: half percent. Here's what that tells me. Retail is back,
Speaker 1: not in ethereum, not in Bitcoin. In the speculative stuff,
Speaker 1: the blue chips are bouncing modestly, the meme coins are surging.
Speaker 1: That's a specific kind of market. It's risk on rotation
Speaker 1: at the edges, while the institutional bid quietly disappears from
Speaker 1: the core, which means the people buying right now are
Speaker 1: mostly retail traders chasing momentum, not the big institutions that
Speaker 1: have been holding this market up. Prediction markets are also
Speaker 1: worth a look. Here. Polymarket, which is basically a betting
Speaker 1: market where people put real money on outcomes, has an
Speaker 1: eighty six and a half percent chance the Fed holds
Speaker 1: rates at the June meeting, no cut higher for longer.
Speaker 1: The takeaway is simple, Crypto has historically struggled when rates
Speaker 1: stay high because cheap money is what tends to fuel
Speaker 1: speculative assets. Keep that in mind as we go through
Speaker 1: today's stories. Okay, let's talk about what's actually driving all this.
Speaker 1: First up, strategy pausing its bitcoin buys. I already hit
Speaker 1: the headline, but the deeper question is the one nobody's
Speaker 1: asking out loud. If strategy isn't buying, who is. These
Speaker 1: guys have been the most clockwork buyer in the entire market,
Speaker 1: every week more bitcoin until now. Combined with the ETF
Speaker 1: outflows two hundred and ninety six million dollars leaving in
Speaker 1: one week, you've got a market where the structural floor
Speaker 1: just got quieter, which means the price support that's been
Speaker 1: holding bitcoin above sixty five thousand dollars is less certain
Speaker 1: than it was a week ago. The price is holding
Speaker 1: up today on geopolitics, which I'll get to in a second.
Speaker 1: But if strategy stays quiet through next week and ETF
Speaker 1: flows don't turn positive, the bounce we're seeing today is
Speaker 1: borrowed time. Second story, ave V four launched on a
Speaker 1: theoryum main net today two years in development, and this
Speaker 1: isn't just a routine upgrade. The architecture actually changed. They
Speaker 1: moved to what's called a hub and spoke model. Here's
Speaker 1: what that means, in plain English, instead of one big
Speaker 1: pool of money doing everything, there's now a central liquidity
Speaker 1: hub that can pipe funds out to specialized lending markets
Speaker 1: like a central bank that can direct credit wherever it's needed.
Speaker 1: The real bet here is on tokenized real world assets,
Speaker 1: which means AVE wants to be the lending layer for
Speaker 1: things like tokenized bonds and credit instrument, not just cryptocollateral.
Speaker 1: Why does that matter because the tokenized asset market is
Speaker 1: potentially enormous. We're talking about bringing traditional finance instruments like
Speaker 1: bonds and loans onto the blockchain so they can be
Speaker 1: traded and used as collateral twenty four to seven without
Speaker 1: a middleman. AVEV three already has twenty three point seven
Speaker 1: billion dollars in total value locked. That's the second largest
Speaker 1: D five protocol on the planet. If V four captures
Speaker 1: even a fraction of the tokenized credit market, the scale
Speaker 1: shift is meaningful. The honest caveat two years of development
Speaker 1: usually means it's either very thorough or very complicated, probably both.
Speaker 1: Watch how fast capital migrates over the next thirty days.
Speaker 1: That'll tell us if the market actually wants on chain
Speaker 1: real world credit or just thinks it's a good idea
Speaker 1: in theory. Third, the macro setup. Rate hike bets are
Speaker 1: building not just for the FED, but now for the
Speaker 1: Bank of Japan too, And this is the one everyone's
Speaker 1: glossing over. Here's the thing about the Bank of Japan
Speaker 1: raising rates. It unwinds what's called the carry trade. The
Speaker 1: way the carry trade works, investors borrow money cheaply in
Speaker 1: Japanese yen, then deploy that money into higher yielding assets,
Speaker 1: including crypto. When Japan hikes rates, borrowing in yen gets
Speaker 1: more expensive, So those positions unwind fast. The takeaway money
Speaker 1: that was parked in crypto because it was cheap to
Speaker 1: borrow suddenly needs to come home. Last time this happened
Speaker 1: in August twenty twenty four, crypto got hit hard alongside equities.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a crypto story. It was a global liquidity
Speaker 1: story wearing a crypto costume. And now the same setup
Speaker 1: is quietly reassembling. The Fed isn't cutting, Japan might be
Speaker 1: hiking the dollars staying strong. Every one of those conditions
Speaker 1: is a headwind for assets that need cheap money to breathe. Fourth,
Speaker 1: Bitcoin jumped today on Trump's Iran comments He said the
Speaker 1: US is in talks with Iran's new regime and threatened
Speaker 1: to obliterate oil infrastructure if a deal falls through. Both
Speaker 1: in the same statement. The market read that as geopolitical risk,
Speaker 1: which historically pushes people toward hard assets like bitcoin. The
Speaker 1: logic being Middle East instability leads to oil price risk,
Speaker 1: which leads to inflation risk, which makes hard assets more attractive.
Speaker 1: That chain of reasoning is real, but it's not a
Speaker 1: thesis you want to build a position around. Trump's statements
Speaker 1: on Iran are volatile by design. The more interesting question
Speaker 1: is actually the reverse. What happens to bitcoin if an
Speaker 1: Iran deal does get done and that geopolitical premium deflates,
Speaker 1: which means if the tension goes away, so might part
Speaker 1: of today's price. Bop Fifth Bernstein is calling a potential
Speaker 1: bottom for cryptoequities coinbase robin Hood figure. They're saying these
Speaker 1: stocks are trading at steep discounts heading into Q one earnings,
Speaker 1: and maybe they're right. But here's the counterpoint. Upbits parent
Speaker 1: company Dunamu just reported a ten percent revenue drop to
Speaker 1: about one billion dollars in twenty twenty five as trading
Speaker 1: volumes cooled. Why does that matter for coinbase and robinhood
Speaker 1: because Dunamu runs one of the biggest crypto exchanges in
Speaker 1: the world. If their revenue dropped as trading cooled, that's
Speaker 1: a preview of what coinbase and robinhood might report. Crypto
Speaker 1: equities pricing in worse fundamentals than the asset itself is
Speaker 1: either a buying opportunity or a leading indicator. Bernstein says
Speaker 1: the former. The Denamu data says the latter deserves more
Speaker 1: weight and a few quick hits worth knowing. Midas raised
Speaker 1: fifty million dollars to solve the liquidity problem for tokenized assets.
Speaker 1: You can tokenize a bond, but actually trading it is
Speaker 1: still clunky, and that's the problem they're going after. The
Speaker 1: takeaway is this is a direct infrastructure bet on the
Speaker 1: idea that tokenized assets are going mainstream. Game Stop is
Speaker 1: apparently exploring a bitcoin covered call strategy to generate us
Speaker 1: on its bitcoin holdings, which is either sophisticated treasury management
Speaker 1: or a sign that holding bitcoin without a yield feels uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: And Navor delayed its share swap with upbit operator Dinamu
Speaker 1: as regulatory review drags on, which adds uncertainty to both
Speaker 1: companies' strategic timelines. All right, before we get into the risks,
Speaker 1: quick word from our sponsor. Okay, we're back. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about what to watch for. So what should you actually
Speaker 1: be watching out for right now? Three things. One the
Speaker 1: structural bit evaporating strategy paused ETFs went negative. These two
Speaker 1: buyers have been the floor under bitcoin since January, which
Speaker 1: means a bounce without them is a bounce on fumes.
Speaker 1: There's no tested support underneath the current price if both
Speaker 1: stay quiet. Two, the Bank of Japan carry trade risk
Speaker 1: rate hike bets are building in Tokyo. The last time
Speaker 1: this played out, DOO correlated down hard with global equities,
Speaker 1: and it happened fast. The tricky part is this isn't
Speaker 1: a cryptospecific risk. It's a global liquidity risk, which makes
Speaker 1: it harder to hedge and easier to ignore until it's
Speaker 1: too late. Three. Geopolitical noise masking weak fundamentals. Today's bitcoin
Speaker 1: pop is a ran driven Trump's statements are inherently unstable.
Speaker 1: Great progress and obliterate in the same breath is not
Speaker 1: a stable signal. The takeaway if the geopolitical bid fades
Speaker 1: and the structural bid has it returned. The price has
Speaker 1: no floor that's been tested. That combination deserves respect. Looking ahead,
Speaker 1: three things on my radar for the next few days
Speaker 1: Tomorrow March thirty. First, we get us PCE inflation data.
Speaker 1: That's the Fed's preferred way of measuring inflation. Think of
Speaker 1: it as the report card the Fed looks at before
Speaker 1: deciding whether to raise or cut rates. If it comes
Speaker 1: in hotter than ex affected, rate cut hopes evaporate further,
Speaker 1: which means risk assets including crypto, face renewed selling pressure.
Speaker 1: That's a real near term catalyst. Over the next week,
Speaker 1: watch ave V four's total value locked. That's just the
Speaker 1: total amount of money deposited into the protocol. If capital
Speaker 1: migrates fast, the real world asset credit thesis is real.
Speaker 1: If it sits below five hundred million by April sixth,
Speaker 1: the architecture is sound, but the market isn't ready yet,
Speaker 1: and the Iran negotiations trump signaled urgency, so something could
Speaker 1: move within days. A deal removes the geopolitical premium from bitcoin.
Speaker 1: A breakdown escalates oil risk. Either outcome moves markets. That's
Speaker 1: your daily polls for March thirtieth, The headline is green candles.
Speaker 1: The story underneath is two of bitcoin's biggest buyers going
Speaker 1: quiet at the same time. Keep watching which one turns
Speaker 1: out to matter more. If you want the full rich
Speaker 1: and break down with all the source links, head over
Speaker 1: to the newsletter at tokenmetrics dot com. Everything we covered
Speaker 1: today is right there, and if this was useful, subscribe
Speaker 1: to the podcast so you don't miss tomorrow's edition. This
Speaker 1: is educational content, not investment advice. Always do your own
Speaker 1: research before making any financial decisions. I'm Alex, See you
Speaker 1: next time.