Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alex with the Token Metrics Daily Pulse for
Speaker 1: April thirteenth, twenty twenty six. Big regulatory news today, the
Speaker 1: kind that actually changes what developers can build and ship.
Speaker 1: Institutional money is coming back in size, and the stable
Speaker 1: coin CEO just made a philosophical argument that's going to
Speaker 1: make Congress very uncomfortable. Let's get into it, but first
Speaker 1: a quick word from our sponsor. Okay, so here's what's happening.
Speaker 1: Three years. That's how long crypto developers have been building
Speaker 1: wallet apps and trading interfaces under a cloud of legal uncertainty,
Speaker 1: specifically the fear that the SEC might decide their software
Speaker 1: makes them a broker dealer. Now. Broker dealer registration is
Speaker 1: the kind of compliance burden that kills most startups before
Speaker 1: they ever launch. Think mountains of paperwork, legal fees, and
Speaker 1: ongoing reporting requirements designed for Wall Street firms, not open
Speaker 1: source software projects. Today, the the SEC published a staff
Speaker 1: bulletin saying if your software helps people make transactions but
Speaker 1: doesn't actually hold their money, you're not a broker full stop.
Speaker 1: Why this matters the people building wallet apps, decentralized exchange
Speaker 1: front ends, and self custody tools, which means tools that
Speaker 1: let you hold your own crypto without relying on a
Speaker 1: company like coinbase can now keep building without waiting for
Speaker 1: a lawsuit to find out where the legal line is.
Speaker 1: Coin Center and the broader crypto policy crowd have been
Speaker 1: pushing for exactly this outcome for years. They got it,
Speaker 1: and the timing is good. Bitcoins sitting around seventy two
Speaker 1: thousand dollars and crypto funds just posted their best week
Speaker 1: of inflows since January. The sec ruling lands into a
Speaker 1: market that was already feeling better about itself. So where
Speaker 1: does that leave the broader market? Honestly pretty calm. Bitcoins
Speaker 1: at about seventy two thousand, up a couple percent on
Speaker 1: the day. Ethereum and Solana moved to in the same direction,
Speaker 1: both up a bit, but nothing dramatic. The total market cap,
Speaker 1: which is just the combined value of all crypto is
Speaker 1: sitting around two and a half trillion dollars. The one
Speaker 1: name with real momentum today is hyper Liquid, up around
Speaker 1: five and a half percent. That's the standout in an
Speaker 1: otherwise quiet session. Bitcoin dominance, meaning bitcoin share of the
Speaker 1: total crypto market, is holding at fifty seven percent. Basically unchanged.
Speaker 1: The total value locked in decentralized finance apps is flat
Speaker 1: near ninety six billion. Now the narrative data is where
Speaker 1: it gets interesting. Meme tokens are up sixteen percent over
Speaker 1: the past week. Game five that's gaming projects with crypto
Speaker 1: built in is up thirteen Everything in the infrastructure category
Speaker 1: AI tokens roll ups depin is flat or slightly negative.
Speaker 1: The takeaway is pretty simple. When memes in gaming are
Speaker 1: running while the more serious infrastructure projects sit still, it's
Speaker 1: usually retail traders chasing momentum, not big money rotating into fundamentals.
Speaker 1: That's fine until it isn't. Prediction markets are adding a
Speaker 1: layer of calm on top of all this. Less than
Speaker 1: five percent of money is betting bitcoin hits eighty five
Speaker 1: thousand this month, and about the same amount is betting
Speaker 1: it crashes to fifty five thousand. Symmetrical bets on both
Speaker 1: extremes both priced near zero. The market has no strong
Speaker 1: conviction on direction for the rest of April, and after
Speaker 1: a weekend that included a geopolitical scare that briefly pushed
Speaker 1: bitcoin towards seventy one thousand, that steadiness is actually notable.
Speaker 1: All right, here's what's actually driving the narrative today. The
Speaker 1: fun flow story deserves more attention than it's getting. ETFs,
Speaker 1: which are basically stock market listed funds that track crypto prices,
Speaker 1: making it easy for traditional investors to get exposure, saw
Speaker 1: their strongest inflows since January this week. The last time
Speaker 1: money came in this fast was right after the big
Speaker 1: ETF approvals, which was kind of a honeymoon period for
Speaker 1: the whole industry. Since then, the market's been grinding through
Speaker 1: macro noise, trade war anxiety, and that weekend geopolitical headline.
Speaker 1: The fact that institutional money meaning big funds and professional
Speaker 1: investors came back in size during a week that included
Speaker 1: a naval blockade headline. That's the interesting part. Either those
Speaker 1: allocators are buying the dip on macro fear, or they've
Speaker 1: decided crypto is now a hedge, something that holds value
Speaker 1: when other things go wrong, rather than just a risk asset.
Speaker 1: Those are two very different theses. One is tactical, buy
Speaker 1: the dip, sell the recovery. The other is structural. Crypto
Speaker 1: belongs in the portfolio permanently if inflows hold for a
Speaker 1: second consecutive week. While bitcoin dominance stays above fifty five percent,
Speaker 1: that's the structural thesis gaining ground if they reverse next week.
Speaker 1: Is macro headlines cool it was a dip buy. We'll
Speaker 1: know more around April eighteenth. Now. Circle CEO said something
Speaker 1: today that's going to follow him into every stable coin
Speaker 1: hearing for the next two years. He said he will
Speaker 1: not freeze USDC without a court order, even when hackers
Speaker 1: walk away with millions and stolen funds. Quick context, USDC
Speaker 1: is a stable coin, which means it's a digital dollar.
Speaker 1: One USDC is always supposed to equal one dollar. Circle
Speaker 1: is the company that issues it, and unlike a bank,
Speaker 1: Circle technically has the ability to freeze specific wallets if
Speaker 1: it wants to. The CEO is saying he won't use
Speaker 1: that power without a judge's order. The argument is principled.
Speaker 1: If Circle freezes funds based on unilateral requests from governments,
Speaker 1: from exchanges, from anyone, then USDC isn't a neutral payment
Speaker 1: rail anymore, which means it stops being a simple, open
Speaker 1: digital dollar and becomes something more like a bank account
Speaker 1: that can be locked. That's a fundamentally different product. The
Speaker 1: trade off is real and uncomfortable. Some hack victims won't
Speaker 1: recover their funds because Circle won't act without judicial process.
Speaker 1: But the alternative, a stable coin issuer that freezes on demand,
Speaker 1: creates a different kind of systemic risk. What makes this
Speaker 1: more than a philosophical debate is the timing Congress is
Speaker 1: actively writing the rules for stable coins right now. Here's
Speaker 1: the tension. If lawmakers decide that stable coin issuers must
Speaker 1: be able to freeze funds on demand, and there are
Speaker 1: people in Washington pushing for exactly that, Circle would have
Speaker 1: to choose between following the law and sticking to its
Speaker 1: stated principles. That's a genuinely hard position for a company
Speaker 1: that processes trillions in settlement volume, and it puts the
Speaker 1: entire value proposition of USDC as an open, neutral digital
Speaker 1: dollar up for debate. On the legislative side, White House
Speaker 1: crypto advisors said publicly that the list of unsolvable issues
Speaker 1: blocking a market structure bill, basically the rulebook for how
Speaker 1: crypto gets regulated, has shrunk significantly. Twelve months ago, crypto
Speaker 1: legislation was stuck on defied your reistiction, stable coin yield,
Speaker 1: and turf wars between the SEC and the CFTC over
Speaker 1: who gets to regulate what now the White House is
Speaker 1: saying the blockers are clearing the sec broker exemption today.
Speaker 1: Plus White House advisor's telegraphing momentum, that's a coordinated signal.
Speaker 1: The Treasury Secretary calling resistant crypto leaders nihilists last week
Speaker 1: adds color. The administration wants a win here, and they're
Speaker 1: willing to name names. But and this matters, Legislative optimism
Speaker 1: has a long history of dying in committee. The test
Speaker 1: is whether the Senate Banking Committee schedules a floor vote
Speaker 1: on the Clarity Act within the next thirty days. Scheduled
Speaker 1: vote means the momentum is real. No scheduled vote by
Speaker 1: June means treat the optimism as positioning, not progress. Quick
Speaker 1: hits before we get to risks mean tokens up sixteen
Speaker 1: percent in seven days, Game five close behind at thirteen
Speaker 1: risk appetite is back in the face fastest moving corners
Speaker 1: of the market. A polymarket trader turned five hundred dollars
Speaker 1: into two hundred and fifty two thousand on a UFC
Speaker 1: scoring error. A reminder that prediction markets aren't just for
Speaker 1: crypto and elections. Therefore, any event where official bodies make
Speaker 1: correctable mistakes Starkware fired staff after starknet revenue collapsed ninety
Speaker 1: eight percent. When your revenue falls that far that fast,
Speaker 1: the headcount mass stops working. And it's a reminder that
Speaker 1: not every scaling solution finds product market fit before the
Speaker 1: runway runs out. And someone minted a billion dollars in
Speaker 1: fake polka dot tokens on Ethereum and walked away with
Speaker 1: only two hundred and fifty thousand. The gap between what
Speaker 1: was minted and what was actually stolen tells the real story.
Speaker 1: Liquidity constraints and slippage protection, which basically means the market
Speaker 1: didn't have enough buyers to absorb that much fake supply
Speaker 1: meant a massive looking exploit netted the attacker a fraction
Speaker 1: of the headline number, which is either reassuring or terrifying,
Speaker 1: depending on how you look at it. One more krack
Speaker 1: and disclose they were targeted in an extortion attempt. An
Speaker 1: attacker claimed to have client data and demanded payment. Kracken's response,
Speaker 1: we won't pay criminals is the right call, and they
Speaker 1: deserve credit for going public rather than quietly hoping it disappears.
Speaker 1: But the key question is still unanswered. What data did
Speaker 1: the attacker actually have unverified claims of a breach are noise.
Speaker 1: Verified partial data is a different story entirely. Security incidents
Speaker 1: at major exchanges tend to come in waves worth watching
Speaker 1: whether other exchanges report similar contact in the next seven days.
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. Three things I'm watching closely right now. First,
Speaker 1: MEME tokens up sixteen percent, while infrastructure narratives are flat
Speaker 1: or negative. The takeaway is that this looks like retail
Speaker 1: traders chasing momentum, not serious capital moving into fundamentals. Meme
Speaker 1: rallies tend to end faster than they start, and when
Speaker 1: they turn they take the broader all coin market down
Speaker 1: with them. If you're positioned in MEME adjacent assets right now,
Speaker 1: the question is in whether it's working. It clearly is.
Speaker 1: The question is whether you have a plan for when
Speaker 1: it stops. Second, the market may already be pricing a
Speaker 1: regulatory outcome that hasn't happened yet. The sec broker exemption
Speaker 1: is real. The White House momentum signals are real, but
Speaker 1: there's no bill, there's no floor votes. Scheduled markets have
Speaker 1: a tendency to price the headline, not the outcome, And
Speaker 1: if the Clarity Act stalls or gets amended into something
Speaker 1: the industry doesn't want, the sentiment reversal could be sharp.
Speaker 1: Third circles freeze policy. I set it in the item section,
Speaker 1: and I'll say it again here because it's the risk
Speaker 1: that's easiest to underestimate. Has publicly said it won't freeze
Speaker 1: USDC without a court order. Congress is actively writing stable
Speaker 1: coin rules right now. If those rules end up requiring
Speaker 1: issuers to freeze funds on demand, and that's a real possibility,
Speaker 1: Circle would have to choose between complying with the law
Speaker 1: and standing by its principles. That's not a small problem
Speaker 1: for a company whose whole pitch is that USDC is
Speaker 1: a neutral, open digital dollar. A stable coin with a
Speaker 1: contested freeze policy is a stable coin with a regulatory
Speaker 1: target on its back. Two things on my radar for
Speaker 1: the week ahead. Around April eighteenth, we get the next
Speaker 1: round of crypto funflow data. If it's a second consecutive
Speaker 1: week of strong inflows, the narrative shifts from institutions buying
Speaker 1: the dip to structural accumulation, which means big money isn't
Speaker 1: just reacting to a price drop, it's building a long
Speaker 1: term position. That's a meaningful difference for how you think
Speaker 1: about where this market is going. And within the next
Speaker 1: seven days, Kracken needs to publish a detailed incident report
Speaker 1: on the extortion attempt right now, no breach is their statement,
Speaker 1: but it's not a full accounting of what the attacker
Speaker 1: actually had. A detailed report either closes the story cleanly
Speaker 1: or escalates it into something the whole industry has to
Speaker 1: pay attention to. That's the pulse for April thirteenth. If
Speaker 1: you want the full written breakdown with sources, charts, and
Speaker 1: the complete risk map, head over to the newsletter at
Speaker 1: tokenmetrics dot com link in the show notes, and if
Speaker 1: you're finding this useful, subscribing to the podcast or sharing
Speaker 1: it with someone who's trying to keep up with crypto
Speaker 1: is genuinely the best way to help us keep making it.
Speaker 1: This is educational content, not investment advice. Always do your
Speaker 1: own research before making any financial decisions. I'm Alex, See
Speaker 1: you next time.