Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alex with the Token Metrics Daily Pulse for
Speaker 1: April twenty second, twenty twenty six. Short sellers just had
Speaker 1: a very bad day. Let's get into it, but first
Speaker 1: a quick word from our sponsor. Okay, So here's what's happening.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin cleared seventy eight thousand dollars today for the first
Speaker 1: time in weeks, and the way it got there is
Speaker 1: the whole story. Four hundred and eighteen million dollars in
Speaker 1: liquidations in twenty four hours. That's not organic buying pressure.
Speaker 1: That's forced buying, shorts covering their positions and creating the
Speaker 1: very rally they were betting against. Ethereum and Solana both
Speaker 1: caught the wave, each up around four percent. The bears
Speaker 1: leaned in at the wrong moment, and the market made
Speaker 1: them pay for it. So where does that leave things?
Speaker 1: Bitcoin sitting around seventy eight thousand, Ethereum just above twenty
Speaker 1: four hundred, Solana holding near eighty nine dollars. Total market
Speaker 1: cap back up to about two point seven trillion. Bitcoin
Speaker 1: dominant is basically flat at fifty eight percent. D five
Speaker 1: total value locked is around eighty seven billion, also unchanged.
Speaker 1: The individual prices aren't the story. Today. The meme narrative
Speaker 1: is meme coins is a category, are up forty two
Speaker 1: percent over the past seven days with a fifty two
Speaker 1: billion dollar market cap. That's a momentum trade with a pulse.
Speaker 1: Roll ups up nineteen percent, Analytics tokens up fifteen, Game
Speaker 1: five up ten, broad risk on move memes leading by
Speaker 1: a mile one more thing worth flagging prediction markets are
Speaker 1: pricing bitcoin at essentially zero chance of hitting one hundred
Speaker 1: and ten thousand this month. The market is reading this
Speaker 1: seventy eight k move as a relief rally, not a
Speaker 1: new regime. Keep that in your back pocket. All right,
Speaker 1: Let's get into what actually happened today, Starting with the
Speaker 1: short squeeze. Bitcoins Ballinger bands had been compressing for weeks.
Speaker 1: That's a technical signal that historically precedes a sharp move
Speaker 1: in one direction. When it came from the low seventy
Speaker 1: four thousand range up to seventy eight k, it wasn't
Speaker 1: driven by fresh news. Trump announcing a ceasefire extension helps sentiment,
Speaker 1: but the real fuel was mechanical shorts covering forced buyers
Speaker 1: pushing price up. Bitcoin's bull score just hit a six
Speaker 1: month high on chain data. The question now is whether
Speaker 1: genuine demand follows or whether price fades once the forced
Speaker 1: buying runs out. Next, North Korea's Lazarus group Cerdikik flagged
Speaker 1: a new attack they're calling Macho Mann. It targets mac
Speaker 1: OS software, which means developers are now in the crosshairs,
Speaker 1: not just retail users clicking bad links. On top of that,
Speaker 1: Protos reports Lazarus is routing stolen funds through crosschain bridges,
Speaker 1: including layer zero to hide the money trail a nation
Speaker 1: state actor getting better at stealing and better at laundering.
Speaker 1: The bridge ecosystem was built for speed, not to stop
Speaker 1: a government backed operation. Every bridge without serious screening is
Speaker 1: potentially part of someone else's money trail. Now defied total
Speaker 1: value locked, AVE is losing ground. Capital is rotating to Spark,
Speaker 1: which is maker Dow's lending arm, and to lead DOE. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: USDC is becoming the default parking spot for DeFi money
Speaker 1: sitting on the sidelines. Traders are in DeFi but not deploying.
Speaker 1: That's dry powder waiting for a reason to move. The
Speaker 1: AVE story is a proxy for something bigger. First mover
Speaker 1: protocols are now fighting for yield sensitive capital that will
Speaker 1: shift at the drop of a basis point, prediction markets
Speaker 1: had a wild regulatory day. New York's Attorney General sued
Speaker 1: coinbase and Gemini, classifying prediction markets as illegal gambling. On
Speaker 1: the same day, a federal court sided with Coinbase on
Speaker 1: a separate prediction markets case. Two courts, two completely opposite answers.
Speaker 1: One day, the NYAG says, if you let people bet
Speaker 1: on outcomes, you need a gambling license. The federal court
Speaker 1: suggests prediction markets might fit under commodity law. Polymarket and
Speaker 1: cals are already planning perpetual futures expansion. They're betting federal
Speaker 1: jurisdiction wins. But if other state attorneys general follow New
Speaker 1: York's lead, the legal geography gets messy fast, and finally,
Speaker 1: two layer two stories Base launched its a Zoo test
Speaker 1: and upgrade with multiproofs, multiple independent proof systems checking the
Speaker 1: same result. If one is wrong or compromised, the others
Speaker 1: catch it. That's real decentralization progress. Meanwhile, Arbitrum's Security Council
Speaker 1: frowze seventy million dollars in ethereum tied to the kelp
Speaker 1: Doo exploit. Layer two governance still has emergency override powers.
Speaker 1: That's a feature when it stops a hack and a
Speaker 1: question when you ask who controls those keys? Quick hits,
Speaker 1: Crack and filed fifty six million crypto tax forms for
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, and a third were for transactions under
Speaker 1: one dollar. Justin Son is issuing Trump backed World Liberty
Speaker 1: Financial over frozen tokens, and a top law firm admitted
Speaker 1: AI generated content with fabricated case citations made it into
Speaker 1: a bankruptcy court filing tied to an alleged crypto scam
Speaker 1: AI hallucinations in official court records. That's a new category
Speaker 1: of problem. 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. Three risks worth keeping in mind. First,
Speaker 1: the short squeeze fuel is probably running low four hundred
Speaker 1: and eighteen million in liquidations cleared the overleveraged shorts. That's
Speaker 1: what powered this move. Once forced buying exhaust itself, the
Speaker 1: next leg up needs genuine demand, and that's a harder
Speaker 1: case to make at seventy eight K than it was
Speaker 1: at seventy four K. Second, regulatory bifurcation is accelerating federal
Speaker 1: courts and state attorneys general are now reaching opposite conclusions
Speaker 1: on the same pts on the same day. For platforms
Speaker 1: operating in the US, compliance is becoming a geography problem,
Speaker 1: and those are expensive to solve. Third, the laz risk
Speaker 1: group threat is probably underpriced. Most security conversations focus on
Speaker 1: smart contract exploits. The attack surface has quietly expanded to
Speaker 1: the humans writing the code, developer machines, mac os environments.
Speaker 1: That's a different threat model than most people are prepared for.
Speaker 1: Looking ahead, Bitcoin's seventy eight K level is the one
Speaker 1: to watch. A clean close above it for a few
Speaker 1: consecutive days with open interest rebuilding changes the narrative from
Speaker 1: range bound to trending. A fade back below seventy six
Speaker 1: k in the next day or two says the mechanical
Speaker 1: flush is over and the range is back in control.
Speaker 1: The nyag's prediction market litigation could move fast. Any emergency
Speaker 1: injunction this week forces polymarket KLH and coinbase in to
Speaker 1: a public legal response, and the arbitrum governance decision on
Speaker 1: those frozen Kelpdale Funds sets a precedent for how Layer
Speaker 1: two security councils handle emergency powers going forward. That one
Speaker 1: matters well beyond just Arbitram. If you want the full
Speaker 1: written breakdown, sources, charts, and the watchnext scenarios for every story,
Speaker 1: the newsletter is at tokenmetrics dot com. It's all there.
Speaker 1: This is educational content, not investment advice. Always do your
Speaker 1: own research. I'm Alex c You next time.