Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alex with the Token Metrics Daily Pulse for
Speaker 1: April twelfth, twenty twenty six got a lot to cover today.
Speaker 1: Traders losing their bank accounts, a DeFi project with a
Speaker 1: Senate problem, North Korea stealing in plain sight, and a
Speaker 1: crypto law that might actually change things. Let's get into it,
Speaker 1: but first a quick word from our sponsor. Okay, so
Speaker 1: here's what's happening. Commodity traders are losing their bank accounts,
Speaker 1: not because they did anything wrong, because their business partners
Speaker 1: have a RAND exposure. And when the bank shuts the door,
Speaker 1: you find another door. Right now. That door is stable coins.
Speaker 1: Stable coins, if you're newer to this, are digital dollars
Speaker 1: cryptotokens pegged to the US dollar that you can send
Speaker 1: anywhere in the world without a bank in the middle.
Speaker 1: This isn't the theoretical stable coin adoption story. This is
Speaker 1: survival adoption. A trader who can't process a payment through
Speaker 1: their bank doesn't sit around waiting for things to improve.
Speaker 1: They find a rail that works, which means they find
Speaker 1: a way to move money that doesn't require banks permission,
Speaker 1: and stable coins are working. Here's why this matters Beyond
Speaker 1: the headline, when stable coins become the go to settlement
Speaker 1: layer for trade flows that banks won't touch, not by choice,
Speaker 1: but by necessity, regulators are going to face a genuinely
Speaker 1: uncomfortable question. What does compliance mean when the compliant option
Speaker 1: isn't available. That's not a rhetorical question, that's the conversation
Speaker 1: that's coming. The adoption that sticks is never the adoption
Speaker 1: that was planned. It's the adoption that happened because there
Speaker 1: was no other option. This is that moment. So where
Speaker 1: does that leave the broader market? Pretty rad honestly, bitcoins
Speaker 1: sitting around seventy one thousand, down a couple percent. Ethereum's
Speaker 1: just above twenty two hundred, also down, Solana's around eighty
Speaker 1: two dollars. Same story. Total market cap, the combined value
Speaker 1: of all crypto is around two and a half trillion,
Speaker 1: off about two percent. And here's the thing. Nothing is
Speaker 1: holding up Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, everything read and lockstep. That's
Speaker 1: not money shifting from one area to another. That's a
Speaker 1: sentiment reset, a full risk off flush, which means traders
Speaker 1: are just stepping back from everything at once. Bitcoin dominance
Speaker 1: is holding steady at fifty seven percent. That's Bitcoin's share
Speaker 1: of the total crypto market, which tells you all coins
Speaker 1: aren't getting hit harder than Bitcoin right now. Small comfort,
Speaker 1: but it's there. Prediction markets are worth a quick look
Speaker 1: here too. Money is basically coin flipping on Bitcoin, hitting
Speaker 1: seventy five thousand by end of April about fifty five
Speaker 1: percent odds, with the month more than halfway done. Ethereum
Speaker 1: at four thousand this month under half a percent. The
Speaker 1: market has essentially written that one off. And despite all
Speaker 1: the noise about FED independence, traders are only putting two
Speaker 1: percent odds on Powell being removed by mid May. Headlines are allowed.
Speaker 1: The money is calm, all right, So what's actually driving
Speaker 1: all this? Let me walk you through the five stories
Speaker 1: that matter today. First one, WLFI World Liberty Financial, the
Speaker 1: Trump backed crypto project, has a seventy five million dollar
Speaker 1: borrow position on chain. A borrow position in plain terms,
Speaker 1: means they've taken out a large loan using crypto as collateral,
Speaker 1: and it's all visible on the blockchain for anyone to see.
Speaker 1: Justin Sun is publicly calling it predatory toward users, saying
Speaker 1: the project is treating its own community like an ATM.
Speaker 1: And look Justin Sun criticizing someone else's financial structure is
Speaker 1: a lot. This is a man whose own wallet address
Speaker 1: has been flagged by regulators and who reportedly took massive
Speaker 1: losses on related positions. That's a bit like a pyromaniac
Speaker 1: filing a fire safety complaint. But here's where it gets
Speaker 1: harder to dismiss us. Senators are now asking pointed questions
Speaker 1: about the Marlago Gala and how it connects to the
Speaker 1: project's loan mechanics. The takeaway is this, when lawmakers start
Speaker 1: linking a crypto loan to a presidential events guest list,
Speaker 1: it stops being a crypto story. It becomes a corruption
Speaker 1: optic story that happens to involve crypto. The project says
Speaker 1: the borrow position is standard. Maybe it is, but standard
Speaker 1: doesn't usually trigger a Senate inquiry. Second story, North Korea.
Speaker 1: This one's been building for years, but the channalysis reporting
Speaker 1: this week puts it plainly. The Lazarus Group, North Korea's
Speaker 1: state back tacking operation isn't hiding. Researchers can trace their
Speaker 1: wallets in near real time. They know, they just don't care.
Speaker 1: The playbook is move fast, use mixers, which are tools
Speaker 1: that scramble the trail of crypto transactions convert to stable
Speaker 1: coins cash out through exchanges with weak identity checks in
Speaker 1: countries that won't cooperate with US law enforcement. Why this
Speaker 1: matters is that the transparency that makesrypto traceable is also
Speaker 1: the thing that lets you watch the theft happen live
Speaker 1: and do almost nothing about it. The problem isn't the tracing,
Speaker 1: it's the exit points. Until the weakest link exchanges get
Speaker 1: shut down or forced into compliance, the pipeline stays open.
Speaker 1: Third story, the Clarity Act. Coinbase is backing a push
Speaker 1: for legislation that would draw cleaner lines between which government agency,
Speaker 1: the SEC or the CFTC gets to oversee which crypto assets,
Speaker 1: which means, in playing terms, builders would finally know which
Speaker 1: rule book they're playing by. That's not a surprise. Coinbase
Speaker 1: has been fighting this in court for years. What's interesting
Speaker 1: is the timing Congress is back from recess this week,
Speaker 1: with stable coin rules already in active negotiation. Both of
Speaker 1: these moving at the same time is either a genuine
Speaker 1: push to get crypto regulated properly or a political photo
Speaker 1: op before midterms. The difference is enormous. Real legislation tells
Speaker 1: builders which regulator they're dealing with a stalled build just
Speaker 1: means more enforcement by ambiguity, which is exactly how we
Speaker 1: got here. Fourth AI agents and crypto, the conversation has shifted.
Speaker 1: It used to be about AI tokens going up. Now
Speaker 1: it's about AI agents actually doing things, writing smart contract code,
Speaker 1: running trading strategies, flagging risk in crypto positions before humans notice.
Speaker 1: Think of it like autopilot for parts of the crypto stack.
Speaker 1: The Ethereum Foundation and Cambran are both talking about agents
Speaker 1: as a development tool, not a marketing narrative. When the
Speaker 1: people building the infrastructures start using the tools themselves, the
Speaker 1: tools tend to get better fast. The risk is real, though.
Speaker 1: A wrong move by an AI agent, a misread market condition,
Speaker 1: or a bad transaction doesn't just cost compute time, it
Speaker 1: costs real money. The security question for AI powered crypto
Speaker 1: tooling is still almost entirely unanswered, and a few quick
Speaker 1: hits before we move on. Morgan Stanley is saying they're
Speaker 1: not going to stop at bitcoin. They're looking at tokenization
Speaker 1: and tax solutions in their crypto push. That's a big
Speaker 1: traditional finance firm expanding beyond just buying bitcoin on behalf
Speaker 1: of clients, and it's worth watching. Tether's us CEO is
Speaker 1: tied to a superpack that just made its first political
Speaker 1: ad buy with stable coin rules moving through Congress. The
Speaker 1: timing is not subtle, and there's a meme pool based
Speaker 1: space invader's clone that'll pay you real bitcoin for playing.
Speaker 1: It's a gimmick, but it's a gimmick that shows Bitcoin's
Speaker 1: underlying transaction layer can function as a programmable incentive system.
Speaker 1: More interesting than it sounds. All right, before we get
Speaker 1: into the risks, quick word from our sponsor. Okay, we're back.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what to watch for. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: what could go wrong from here. The broad risk off
Speaker 1: flush is the one to watch first. Every major asset
Speaker 1: is down in lockstep today, and when nothing is holding up,
Speaker 1: it's not a sector story, it's a sentiment story. The
Speaker 1: danger is that traders waiting for the dip to bottom
Speaker 1: out keep waiting as the dip extends. No divergence anywhere
Speaker 1: is a bad sign for anyone expecting a quick bounce.
Speaker 1: Second risk that WLFI borrow position, a large on chain
Speaker 1: loan tied to a politically connected project now under Senate
Speaker 1: scrutiny and publicly criticized by a sanctioned counterparty. That's a
Speaker 1: structural overhang, which means it's a weight hanging over the
Speaker 1: project that could force a sudden move if that position
Speaker 1: needs to get unwound, meaning the loan gets called in
Speaker 1: or closed out under political pressure. The on chain mechanics
Speaker 1: could move markets in ways the headlines won't predict. This
Speaker 1: one's worth watching closely. Third, stable coin legislation this week
Speaker 1: is described as critical for the bill negotiations. There's an
Speaker 1: active dispute over a rewards clause that's been stalling things.
Speaker 1: If lawmakers can't resolve it before the recess window closes,
Speaker 1: the entire push for regulatory clarity resets. An uncertainty is
Speaker 1: the market's least favorite condition. Looking ahead. Two things on
Speaker 1: my radar for the next week or so. The WLFI
Speaker 1: Senate inquiry response is the first senators have raised formal questions.
Speaker 1: Any official response or escalation moves this from political noise
Speaker 1: to a real regulatory event. Watch for that within the
Speaker 1: next seven days. And the polymarket Bitcoin seventy five thousand
Speaker 1: April resolution is the second, with Bitcoin at seventy one
Speaker 1: thousand and the month more than halfway done. The next
Speaker 1: two weeks of price action either validate or collapse. The
Speaker 1: most watched near term bet in prediction markets. Right now
Speaker 1: money's nearly fifty to fifty. That's a coin flip on
Speaker 1: a four thousand dollars move in two weeks. That's the
Speaker 1: pulse for April twelve. If you want the full written
Speaker 1: breakdown with all the sources, head over to the newsletter
Speaker 1: at tokenmetrics dot com. Everything we covered today is there
Speaker 1: in full, and if this was useful, share with someone
Speaker 1: who's trying to keep up with crypto without drowning in it.
Speaker 1: That's the best way to help the show grow. 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.