Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alex with the Token Metrics daily Pulse for
Speaker 1: March twentieth, twenty twenty six. Wall Street is watching a
Speaker 1: D five perpse exchange. That's actually the sentence that starts today.
Speaker 1: But first a quick word from our sponsor. Okay, so
Speaker 1: here's what's happening. So JP Morgan, the bank that once
Speaker 1: called Bitcoin of fraud publicly on the record, just put
Speaker 1: hyper Liquid in a client research memo, not as a curiosity,
Speaker 1: as a serious venue where oil traders are going to
Speaker 1: get round the clock exposure during the Iran conflict. Because
Speaker 1: when missiles fly at two in the morning, traditional commodity
Speaker 1: exchanges are closed. Hyper Liquid isn't. Bitcoin's back near seventy thousand,
Speaker 1: and Morgan Stanley just filed an amended Bitcoin ETFs one.
Speaker 1: The institutions aren't coming, They're already here. So where does
Speaker 1: that leave the broader market? Pretty calm, honestly, Bitcoins sitting
Speaker 1: just under seventy thousand, up a couple percent on the day.
Speaker 1: Nothing explosive. Ethereum's basically flat, Solana's up a touch. Total
Speaker 1: market cap is around two and a half trillion. Nothing
Speaker 1: here is screaming. But here's the thing worth noticing Bitcoin
Speaker 1: dominance is sitting at about fifty six percent. That's high.
Speaker 1: Alts aren't leading. Bitcoin is in the narrative sectors that
Speaker 1: are moving, data availability, AI tokens, and deepen all up
Speaker 1: more than twenty percent over the past seven days. The
Speaker 1: rotation is away from speculation and toward infrastructure. That's a
Speaker 1: different kind of market than what we had six months ago.
Speaker 1: Prediction markets are telling a similar story, cautious but not panicked.
Speaker 1: The odds of a fed rate cup by June are
Speaker 1: priced at just thirteen and a half percent. That macrociling
Speaker 1: isn't going anywhere soon, and smart money knows it. Okay,
Speaker 1: So let's get into what's actually driving all this. The
Speaker 1: hyper liquid story is the one I can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 1: JP Morgan, says Iran war volatility is sending oil traders
Speaker 1: to a DeFi perpetuals exchange for exposure they literally cannot
Speaker 1: get anywhere else. Overnight, hyper Liquid's total value locked is
Speaker 1: sitting at one point seven to seven billion dollars, and
Speaker 1: that was before JP Morgan put it in a client memo.
Speaker 1: Think about what that memo does. It's not a crypto newsletter,
Speaker 1: it's a note going at institutional desks and major banks.
Speaker 1: The framing matters. This isn't DeFi winning on ideology or
Speaker 1: decentralization talking points, it's winning on uptime. That's a completely
Speaker 1: different argument, and it's one that Trapfi actually understands. Now
Speaker 1: here's the second order question. Nobody's really asking if geopolitical
Speaker 1: volatility is the catalyst that proves defis utility to Wall Street?
Speaker 1: What happens when the Iran situation cools? Does the volume
Speaker 1: stick or does it evaporate with the ceasefire? Watch open
Speaker 1: interest on hyper Liquid's oil purpse over the next week.
Speaker 1: That number will tell you whether this is a structural
Speaker 1: shift or a temporary trade. Next up, Coinbase just launched
Speaker 1: twenty four to seven stock perpetual futures for non US
Speaker 1: traders cash settled in USDC, up to ten times leverage
Speaker 1: on single stocks, twenty times on ETF products. We're talking Apple, Tesla, Nvidia,
Speaker 1: the magnificent seven names available at midnight on a Saturday.
Speaker 1: On a crypto exchange settled in stable coins. The everything
Speaker 1: exchange thesis is no longer a pitch deck, It's a product.
Speaker 1: But here's the real question. Does this pull volume away
Speaker 1: from crypto native assets or does it pull tradfi users
Speaker 1: into the ecosystem who then discover actual crypto. Second order
Speaker 1: thinking says the on ramp matters more than the product itself.
Speaker 1: Then there's the ripple survey, and look, surveys are easy
Speaker 1: to dismiss. But seventy two percent of finance leaders now
Speaker 1: saying digital assets are essential to their business. That's not
Speaker 1: a fringe number, that's a super majority. And the priorities
Speaker 1: are telling stable coins first, custody second, not speculation, not
Speaker 1: yield infrastructure. The question has shifted from should we touch
Speaker 1: crypto to how do we hold it safely and move
Speaker 1: value with it? That shift from should we to how
Speaker 1: do we is where institutional adoption actually lives. And then
Speaker 1: there's the one that's personal. Google researchers flagged an exploit
Speaker 1: chain called dark Sword targeting crypto apps on unpatched iOS
Speaker 1: eighteen devices. It's not going after your seed phrase through
Speaker 1: some elaborate smart contract trick. It's going after the apps
Speaker 1: sitting on your phone right now, the ones you use
Speaker 1: to check balances and send funds. If you haven't updated
Speaker 1: your iPhone, you are the vulnerability. The timing is not accidental.
Speaker 1: Security incidents spike during bull markets because more people are
Speaker 1: moving more money. Update your phone today. All right, we
Speaker 1: get into the risks. Quick word from our sponsor. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. Let's talk about what to watch for. So
Speaker 1: what should you actually be worried about heading into the weekend.
Speaker 1: Three things on my radar. First, derivatives are turning defensive
Speaker 1: even as spot prices hold near seventy K. That combination
Speaker 1: price holding but conviction not building historically means the price
Speaker 1: bounce is borrowed. If longs aren't stepping in with size here,
Speaker 1: the next leg down finds less support than people expect. Second,
Speaker 1: the Iran conflict is a double edged catalyst. It's bullish
Speaker 1: for DeFi adoption, we just talked about that, but it's
Speaker 1: bearish for macro risk appetite broadly. If the situation escalates,
Speaker 1: crypto gets sold alongside equities as a risk off move,
Speaker 1: regardless of the structural narrative. Geopolitics doesn't care about your thesis. Third,
Speaker 1: that dark sword exploit is live right now. The high
Speaker 1: profile hack of a recognizable wallet or exchange app during
Speaker 1: a period of rising retail engagement could spook sentiment fast.
Speaker 1: The security risk isn't hypothetical. It's sitting on unpatched iPhones
Speaker 1: across the world today. Looking ahead. Two things I'm watching closely. First,
Speaker 1: the early adoption data on Coinbas's stock perpse volume and
Speaker 1: open interest in the first two weeks will tell us
Speaker 1: whether the Everything exchange model actually attracts trad FI users
Speaker 1: or lands flat. If USDC settlement volume on stock perps
Speaker 1: exceeds cryptoperpse volume within thirty days, that's a validated model
Speaker 1: and competitors will move fast. If adoption is thin, it
Speaker 1: was a product ahead of its market. Second, Apple's response
Speaker 1: to the dark Sword disclosure. If they push an emergency
Speaker 1: patch within forty eight hours, the risk window is contained.
Speaker 1: If it takes longer than a week, expect copycat exploit kits.
Speaker 1: Watch that one carefully. That's the pulse from March twentieth.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you want the full written breakdown
Speaker 1: with all the sources and charts, check out our newsletter
Speaker 1: at tokenmetrics dot com. It's all there. This is educational content,
Speaker 1: not investment advice. Always do your own research. I'm Alex,
Speaker 1: See you next time.