Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alex with the Token Metrics daily Pulse from
Speaker 1: March twenty fourth, twenty twenty six. Got a lot to
Speaker 1: cover today. Wall Street just made a move that's bigger
Speaker 1: than the headlines are giving it credit for. But first,
Speaker 1: a quick word from our sponsor. Okay, so here's what's happening.
Speaker 1: The New York Stock Exchange just tapped Securitize to build
Speaker 1: a twenty four to seven tokenized securities platform. And look,
Speaker 1: that sentence might sound dry, but sit with it for
Speaker 1: a second. The NYSE, the actual New York Stock Exchange,
Speaker 1: not a fintech startup, not a crypto native firm, the
Speaker 1: institution that has been the symbol of traditional finance for
Speaker 1: over two hundred years, just decided that blockchain native markets
Speaker 1: are the future. And here's the thing that really got me.
Speaker 1: This isn't the first move this week. Two of the
Speaker 1: world's biggest exchanges, same week, same direction. That's not a coincidence,
Speaker 1: that's a race. The parent company of the NICY inter
Speaker 1: Continental Exchange has been cautious about crypto for years. When
Speaker 1: the cautious ones start running, something has shifted underneath. And
Speaker 1: the twenty four to seven angle that's the part people
Speaker 1: are sleeping on traditional markets. Close crypto doesn't. The firm
Speaker 1: that cracks always on equities doesn't just win a product category,
Speaker 1: It rewrites how global capital allocates around the clock. So
Speaker 1: where does that leave prices right now? Honestly pretty quiet.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin is sitting just under seventy one thousand dollars, basically flat,
Speaker 1: up less than half a percent on the day. Ethereum
Speaker 1: is up less than one percent. Solana is the quiet
Speaker 1: out performer, up about one and a half percent. Nothing dramatic.
Speaker 1: Total market cap is around two and a half trillion.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin dominance is holding at about fifty seven percent. Now
Speaker 1: here's where it gets interesting, because while the majors are
Speaker 1: flat lined, the narrative tokens are doing something completely different.
Speaker 1: Deep pin tokens are up nearly thirty percent over the
Speaker 1: last seven days. AI tokens are up over twenty five percent.
Speaker 1: The broader market is barely breathing, and these categories just
Speaker 1: posted their best week and months. That divergence is telling
Speaker 1: you something. We'll get into what exactly in a minute.
Speaker 1: All right, so what's actually driving all this? Let's start
Speaker 1: with the AI and dpen surge because it's the most
Speaker 1: interesting price story of the week, Bittenser led the charge
Speaker 1: as a short squeeze amplified gains across AI alt coins
Speaker 1: dpen up nearly thirty percent and seven days, AI tokens
Speaker 1: up over twenty five percent and Bitcoin up less than
Speaker 1: half a percent. When all coins rip while the base
Speaker 1: asset flat lines, that's what a narrative rotation looks like
Speaker 1: before it becomes obvious. The Nvidia GtC conference last week
Speaker 1: gave AI tokens a fundamental hook. The short squeeze gave
Speaker 1: them the fuel. Those two things together are how twenty
Speaker 1: five percent weeks happen. The question is whether this is
Speaker 1: genuine rotation or a leverage flush that borrowed from next
Speaker 1: month's gains. If AI narrative market cap holds above twenty
Speaker 1: three billion and deep In stays above nine billion through
Speaker 1: the weekend without a sharp reversal, the rotation has legs.
Speaker 1: If both categories give back more than half their weekly
Speaker 1: gains by Friday, clothes it was a squeeze, not a trend.
Speaker 1: Watch that closely. Now, coinbase drops something that deserves more
Speaker 1: attention than it's getting. They're calling it the second wave
Speaker 1: of institutional crypto adoption, and this time it's not about price,
Speaker 1: it's about yield. The first wave was institutions buying bitcoin
Speaker 1: for treasury exposure, simple directional. The second wave is different.
Speaker 1: Institutions want yield, staking lending, structured products the full DeFi menu,
Speaker 1: but with compliance guardrails. This is exactly how traditional finance
Speaker 1: ate every other asset class. First they buy it, then
Speaker 1: they financeize it, then they own the infrastructure. Coinbase isn't
Speaker 1: just observing this shift, they're positioning to capture it. The
Speaker 1: firm that builds the institutional yield layer for crypto doesn't
Speaker 1: just win customers, it becomes the prime broker for the
Speaker 1: next decade. On the bitcoin side, two stories worth separating strategy.
Speaker 1: Sailor's firm just gained access to another forty four billion
Speaker 1: dollars to buy bitcoin. That's a committed buyer with a
Speaker 1: publicly stated mandate and access to capital markets. That's structural.
Speaker 1: Then there's Bernstein, the Wall Street broker calling the bottom
Speaker 1: and holding its previously published year end price target. Now
Speaker 1: Wall Street analysts do what Wall Street analysts do. They
Speaker 1: justify numbers they already published. But here's the second order read.
Speaker 1: When a firm with Bernstein's institutional client base holds its
Speaker 1: target through a drawdown, It signals those clients aren't being
Speaker 1: told to reduce exposure. That's the part that matters. Bitcoin
Speaker 1: is sitting just under seventy one thousand right now. The
Speaker 1: gap between here and Bernstein's published target is large enough
Speaker 1: that someone is going to look very wrong by December.
Speaker 1: One more story that's flying under the radar. Parafi Capital
Speaker 1: just raised one hundred and twenty five million dollars for
Speaker 1: a new fund during a crypto downturn. That brings their
Speaker 1: total assets under management to roughly two billion. And look,
Speaker 1: the fund size isn't the signal. The timing is the
Speaker 1: signal when sophisticated limited partners can make capital during drawdowns.
Speaker 1: They're not trading sentiment, They're expressing a multi year view.
Speaker 1: Parafy isn't hedging its bets here. This is a firm
Speaker 1: leaning in at exactly the moment most allocators are pulling back.
Speaker 1: Watch where they deploy this capital over the next thirty days.
Speaker 1: If early positions are in DeFi infrastructure or real world
Speaker 1: asset protocols, it confirms the institutional yield thesis. Coinbase was
Speaker 1: talking about quick hits before we get to risks. Bitcoin
Speaker 1: saw a rare two block reorganization as foundry overtook antpool
Speaker 1: in the mining race. It's unusual but reflects normal network
Speaker 1: behavior nodes adopt the chain with the most cumulative proof
Speaker 1: of work. It's a reminder that mining poll concentration risks
Speaker 1: worth keeping an eye on. The Financial Stability Board flagged
Speaker 1: dollar denominated stable coins as an outsized risk for emerging markets,
Speaker 1: warning they could accelerate dollarization in economies that really can't
Speaker 1: afford it. That's a regulatory collision setting up between stable
Speaker 1: coin growth and sovereign monetary policy. Bitgo and Susquehanna launched
Speaker 1: institutional over the counter access to prediction markets, quietly legitimizing
Speaker 1: the asset class. If large allocators can get clean execution,
Speaker 1: volume and liquidity in these markets will look very different.
Speaker 1: In six months, moonpay launched an open source wallet standard
Speaker 1: for AI agents, meaning an AI agent that can hold
Speaker 1: and spend crypto autonomously. That's a different kind of user
Speaker 1: than a human. If this standard gets adopted, it creates
Speaker 1: an entirely new demand surface for on chain transactions. And finally,
Speaker 1: Zama and t rex Network launched a privacy layer for
Speaker 1: tokenized assets targeting institutional adoption. Bank grade privacy on public
Speaker 1: blockchains is the missing piece most institutions site when passing
Speaker 1: on DeFi. If this works at scale, it removes one
Speaker 1: of the last structural objections to on chain institutional participation.
Speaker 1: All right, before we get into the risks, quick word
Speaker 1: from our sponsor. Okay, we're back. Let's talk about what
Speaker 1: to watch for. So what should you actually be worried about?
Speaker 1: Three things on my radar. First, that deep in and
Speaker 1: ai surge up twenty nine to twenty five percent in
Speaker 1: a week sounds great until you check what Bitcoin is doing.
Speaker 1: Barely moving when all coins rip while the base asset flatlines,
Speaker 1: it often means leverage is rotating, not new money entering
Speaker 1: short squeezes borrow from future gains. If if this week's
Speaker 1: move reverses hard into the weekend, it confirms the rally
Speaker 1: was positioning, not conviction. Second, the NYSESE and Nasdaq both
Speaker 1: moving on tokenized equities in the same week is structurally significant,
Speaker 1: but it also means regulators are about to have opinions,
Speaker 1: two competing platforms, two potential regulatory frameworks, and a market
Speaker 1: that hasn't priced in the possibility that one of them
Speaker 1: gets blocked or delayed. Third Bitcoin cleared seventy one thousand
Speaker 1: yesterday on an Iran news pause. Today it's sitting just
Speaker 1: below that level. The geopolitical bid that pushed it higher
Speaker 1: hasn't been replaced by fundamental buying. If Iran headlines flip
Speaker 1: negative again, the asset that went up on the newswire
Speaker 1: goes back down on the newswire. That's not a crypto thesis.
Speaker 1: That's a macro risk wearing a crypto costume. Looking ahead
Speaker 1: to the next few days. Three things worth watching. March
Speaker 1: PCEE inflation data is due this week. Inflation data is
Speaker 1: the single variable most likely to move Bitcoin in either
Speaker 1: direction right now. A hot print kills rate cut hopes
Speaker 1: and pressures risk assets, while a cool print gives the
Speaker 1: bowl case real room to breathe, and those two outcomes
Speaker 1: lead to very different weeks. Strategy could file a bitcoin
Speaker 1: purchase disclosure any day this week. With forty four billion
Speaker 1: in newly accessible capital. Any purchase filing near current price
Speaker 1: levels signals the corporate treasury bid is actively absorbing supply.
Speaker 1: Around seventy thousand. Silence at these prices is its own signal,
Speaker 1: and keep an eye on the NYSC Securitized Partnership for
Speaker 1: any development update, a live pilot announcement, a named equity issuer,
Speaker 1: or a regulatory filing would give the real world asset
Speaker 1: tokenization narrative its most credible institutional anchor to date. That's
Speaker 1: the Daily Pulse for March twenty fourth. If you want
Speaker 1: the full written breakdown with all the source links and charts,
Speaker 1: head over to the newsletter at tokenmetrics dot com. And
Speaker 1: if this was useful, share it with someone who's trying
Speaker 1: to keep up with what's actually moving in crypto. It
Speaker 1: really does help us grow. This is educational content, non
Speaker 1: investment advice. Always do your own research. I'm Alex. See
Speaker 1: you next time.