Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alex with the Token Metrics Daily Pulse for
Speaker 1: March twenty eighth, twenty twenty six. Got a lot to
Speaker 1: cover today. Bitcoin ETFs just snapped a four week win streak,
Speaker 1: Google handed bitcoin developers a quantum deadline, and Morgan Stanley
Speaker 1: walked into the ETF race swinging. Let's get into it,
Speaker 1: but first a quick word from our sponsor. Okay, So
Speaker 1: here's what's happening. Okay, So the headline today is this spot.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin ETFs just broke a four week inflow streak. Capital
Speaker 1: is sitting on the sidelines, Bitcoin's treading water around sixty
Speaker 1: six thousand, and Google just told bitcoin developers they have
Speaker 1: until twenty twenty nine to figure out quantum resistance. That's
Speaker 1: three separate stories, they're all connected, and together they paint
Speaker 1: a picture of a market that's waiting, not panicking, just waiting.
Speaker 1: So where does that leave the rest of the market, Well, honestly,
Speaker 1: pretty a Bitcoin's basically flat around sixty six thousand, ethereum
Speaker 1: is just barely holding two thousand dollars, Solana's around eighty
Speaker 1: two dollars. None of these moved more than a fraction
Speaker 1: of a percent. Total market cap is sitting around two
Speaker 1: point four trillion. Bitcoin dominance is at about fifty six percent,
Speaker 1: which means alts aren't getting any rotation love right now.
Speaker 1: But here's where the narrative data gets interesting. Meme tokens
Speaker 1: are up a lot, like the kind of number you
Speaker 1: double check. Meanwhile, DeFi and smart contract platforms are both
Speaker 1: down on the week. AI tokens are up over sixteen percent,
Speaker 1: Deepen is up nearly twenty four percent, So the serious
Speaker 1: infrastructure narratives are holding up. The blue chips are flat,
Speaker 1: and meme coins are doing meme coin things. That split
Speaker 1: tells you something about where appetite is actually living right now.
Speaker 1: Polymarket's got ninety six percent odds that bitcoin holds sixty
Speaker 1: four thousand through tomorrow, So the floor feels solid. The
Speaker 1: ceiling is the question, and the prediction market on a
Speaker 1: big FED rate cut in June less than one percent probability,
Speaker 1: which means the macro relief valve crypto balls are waiting
Speaker 1: for isn't coming anytime soon. All right, So what's actually
Speaker 1: driving all this? So let's start with the ETF story,
Speaker 1: because this one matters more than the headline suggests. Four
Speaker 1: weeks of consistent inflows into spot Bitcoin ETFs was the
Speaker 1: narrative everyone was leaning on. Institutions are buying trad fire
Speaker 1: is here. The story was clean. Now it has a
Speaker 1: crack in it. Analysts are describing the outflows as capital
Speaker 1: avoiding directional risk heading into quarter end, which is portfolio
Speaker 1: manager speak for we're not sure which way this goes
Speaker 1: and we don't want to be wrong in front of
Speaker 1: our investors. One week of outflows doesn't erase a trend,
Speaker 1: but the timing matters. Quarter End is when institutions rebalance,
Speaker 1: and right now they're leaning into bitcoin. Watch the first
Speaker 1: week of April. If flows flip positive again and bitcoin
Speaker 1: holds above sixty five thousand, this was mechanical. If outflows
Speaker 1: continue and bitcoin slips below sixty five thousand, the four
Speaker 1: week narrative reversal is real. Now here's where it gets
Speaker 1: interesting because two stories drop this week that are basically
Speaker 1: the same story, told from different angles. Morgan Stanley just
Speaker 1: entered the bitcoin ETF race with a market leading low fee,
Speaker 1: and bitcoin minors are pivoting to AI infrastructure and selling
Speaker 1: bitcoin to fund the transition, two sides of the same market.
Speaker 1: Morgan Stanley brings demand miners brings supply. The question is
Speaker 1: which one wins. The Morgan Stanley piece is straightforward, another
Speaker 1: major trad fied distribution network. Activating means more access points,
Speaker 1: lower friction, more potential buyers. That's good. But miners selling
Speaker 1: bitcoin to pay for AI data center buildouts, that's a
Speaker 1: historically bullish constituency becoming a consistent supply source. It's not
Speaker 1: panic selling, it's a business decision, but it's still selling.
Speaker 1: And then Senator Warren opened a probe into Bitmain, which
Speaker 1: is the company that makes the hardware that powers the
Speaker 1: majority of bitcoin's mining network. The framing is national security,
Speaker 1: which is the same framing that got Huawei banned from
Speaker 1: US telecom infrastructure. If bitmain hardware gets restricted, US miners
Speaker 1: face an equipment crunch at exactly the moment they're trying
Speaker 1: to pivot toward AI. The timing with the Minor story
Speaker 1: is not a coincidence. Watch whether this probe results in
Speaker 1: formal import controls within the next sixty days. If it does,
Speaker 1: the Minor to AI transition goes from opportunity to necessity. Okay,
Speaker 1: the quantum story, This one caught me off guard. Honestly,
Speaker 1: Google set a twenty twenty nine deadline to migrate all
Speaker 1: of its authentication services to quantum resistant cryptography. And the
Speaker 1: reason this matters for crypto is the asymmetry it reveals.
Speaker 1: Ethereum has been building toward post quantum C cryptography for years.
Speaker 1: It has a roadmap, active research EIP processes in motion.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin doesn't. Bitcoin's culture is extremely conservative around protocol changes.
Speaker 1: There's no equivalent upgrade path in sight. Bitcoin's proof of
Speaker 1: work is fine, but wallets that reuse addresses pay to
Speaker 1: public key outputs. Those are the attack surface. And Google
Speaker 1: just turned a theoretical Sunday threat into a concrete corporate deadline.
Speaker 1: Twenty twenty nine is three years away. That's not a
Speaker 1: long time for a protocol that moves as carefully as
Speaker 1: Bitcoin does. Watch for a Bitcoin improvement proposal addressing post
Speaker 1: quantum key schemes in the next ninety days. If the
Speaker 1: developer community accelerates discussion, the threat is being taken seriously.
Speaker 1: If the forums stay quiet, the gap between Ethereum's preparedness
Speaker 1: and Bitcoin's widens. Now let's talk regulation, because there are
Speaker 1: two bills moving through Congress right now, and they're headed
Speaker 1: in very different directions. The Clarity Act is gaining momentum.
Speaker 1: Senator Lummis is championing it loudly, specifically highlighting defied developer protections.
Speaker 1: That matters because the last round of crypto legislation scared
Speaker 1: protocol developers more than anyone else. Meanwhile, the stable coin
Speaker 1: bill is described as a fight that has boiled over
Speaker 1: frustration everywhere stalled. That divergence is telling the market. Structure
Speaker 1: bill has momentum, the payments bill is stuck. For defied builders,
Speaker 1: Clarity moving forward is actually the better outcome for stable
Speaker 1: coin issuers like Circle, Every week of stalled legislation is
Speaker 1: a week of regulatory uncertainty baked into their valuation, and
Speaker 1: Circle stock dropping sharply last week makes a lot more
Speaker 1: sense once you understand that the bill they need most
Speaker 1: is the one going nowhere and a few quick hits
Speaker 1: worth knowing about. Ripple is using AI to stress test
Speaker 1: the XRP ledger ahead of institutional scaling, which means the
Speaker 1: next release is focused entirely on reliability. XRP wail accumulation
Speaker 1: is rising even as the price lags, which is the
Speaker 1: kind of divergence worth book marking. NYSC parent company Ice
Speaker 1: finalized a one point six billion dollar investment in Polymarket,
Speaker 1: which is trad five putting real skin in the prediction
Speaker 1: market game. And Anthropic's most powerful AI model, code named
Speaker 1: cappy Bara, leaked through an unsecured data cash this week.
Speaker 1: The draft described it as more capable than anything they've built,
Speaker 1: with unprecedented cybersecurity implications at the exact moment, AI and
Speaker 1: crypto infrastructure are converging. That's a story to watch, all right,
Speaker 1: before we 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 watching for? Three risks on
Speaker 1: my radar right now? First quarter and institutional rebalancing is
Speaker 1: masking real sentiment. The ETF outflows could be mechanical, they
Speaker 1: could be genuine risk off. The problem is you won't
Speaker 1: know which until April first, by which point you've already
Speaker 1: been positioned through the answer. Second minor selling meets ETF
Speaker 1: bid pause. Bitcoin minors are liquidating to fund AI pivots.
Speaker 1: That's a structural supply source if it coincides with ETF
Speaker 1: inflows stalling, there's no obvious demand absorber. Bitcoin dominance at
Speaker 1: fifty six percent tells you alts aren't getting rotation either.
Speaker 1: The whole market is in a holding pattern. Third, Google's
Speaker 1: twenty twenty nine quantum deadline is a real timeline, not
Speaker 1: a theoretical one. When the world's largest search company sets
Speaker 1: a corporate migration deadline, the threat model changes. Bitcoin's lack
Speaker 1: of a formal post quantum upgrade path just got a
Speaker 1: concrete expiration data attached to it. That's a tail risk
Speaker 1: that's been easy to dismiss. It's getting harder and looking
Speaker 1: at head. Here's what's on my radar for the next
Speaker 1: few days. April first and second are the first post
Speaker 1: quarter end ETF flow readings. That data will tell you
Speaker 1: whether this week was a blip or a shift. It's
Speaker 1: the most actionable near term signal for bitcoin direction. Morgan
Speaker 1: Stanley's ETF launch and early inflow numbers will show whether
Speaker 1: a major trade five distribution network actually translates to new
Speaker 1: buyers or whether the fee war is just noise. And
Speaker 1: any movement on the Clarity Act in the Senate this
Speaker 1: week would be the most significant US crypto regulatory development
Speaker 1: in months. Senator Lummies is pushing hard watch for committee
Speaker 1: votes or floor scheduling announcements. If you're finding this useful,
Speaker 1: The best thing you can do is subscribe to the
Speaker 1: podcast and share it with someone who's trying to make
Speaker 1: sense of all this. And if you want to go deeper,
Speaker 1: Token metrics Alpha gets you weekly Alpha reports, a monthly
Speaker 1: playbook with full technical analysis, plus everything in our signal plan.
Speaker 1: Check it out at tokenmetrics dot com. This is educational content,
Speaker 1: not investment advice. Always do your own research. I'm Alex.
Speaker 1: See you next time.