Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alex with the Token Metrics Daily Pulse for
Speaker 1: April eighteenth, twenty twenty six. Big Day. A close to
Speaker 1: three hundred million dollar hack just hit crypto bitcoins, pulling
Speaker 1: back after a promising run, and mean coins are somehow
Speaker 1: up thirty two percent this week. Let's get into it,
Speaker 1: but first a quick word from our sponsor. Okay, so
Speaker 1: here's what's happening. Kelp dow just lost two hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety two million dollars. That's the largest crypto hack of
Speaker 1: the year. And it happened through a bridge, which is
Speaker 1: the part that should make you uncomfortable. Here's what that
Speaker 1: means in plain English. Kelp dow is a platform where
Speaker 1: you deposit ethereum, it gets put to work earning extra yield,
Speaker 1: and you receive a token called rs eth in return.
Speaker 1: That rs eths can then move across different blockchains through
Speaker 1: a connector called a bridge, and that bridge is what
Speaker 1: got hit. The attacker didn't just drain one chain, They
Speaker 1: hit twenty different blockchains at once. Rs eth is now
Speaker 1: stranded across all of them. This isn't a one off bug.
Speaker 1: It's a failure across an entire stack of connected systems.
Speaker 1: And here's what stings most. This happened right as the
Speaker 1: restaking narrative was starting to feel credible. Turns out, mature
Speaker 1: and secure are still two very different things in crypto.
Speaker 1: So where does that leave the broader market. It's a
Speaker 1: sea of red, but nothing catastrophic Outside of Kelptow itself.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin is sitting around seventy six thousand dollars. It pushed
Speaker 1: towards seventy eight thousand earlier this week before sliding back.
Speaker 1: Ethereum and Solana are both down a few percent. Total
Speaker 1: market cap is around two point six trillion. Bitcoin dominance
Speaker 1: is holding near fifty seven percent, which means most of
Speaker 1: the money in crypto is sitting in Bitcoin right now,
Speaker 1: not spreading into smaller coins. And then there's this meme.
Speaker 1: Coins are up thirty two percent in seven days, the
Speaker 1: single strongest move in the entire market. Wild bitcoinen pulls
Speaker 1: back and a close to three hundred million dollar hack
Speaker 1: hits That tension is worth paying attention to. All right,
Speaker 1: let's talk about what's driving all of this Bitcoin First,
Speaker 1: the move from the low seventies up to nearly seventy
Speaker 1: eight thousand this week was real. Seven months of resistance cracked,
Speaker 1: at least temporarily. The weekly close on Sunday is going
Speaker 1: to tell us a lot. If Bitcoin closes above seventy
Speaker 1: seven thousand, that old ceiling potentially becomes a floor, and
Speaker 1: the next conversation is about eighty thousand. If it drops
Speaker 1: back below seventy four thousand, the move was a false start. Now.
Speaker 1: Solana Future's open interest jumped twenty percent in one week,
Speaker 1: which means traders are putting real money behind a bet
Speaker 1: that Solana goes higher. Solana briefly touched ninety dollars before
Speaker 1: pulling back to around eighty six. Here's why that matters.
Speaker 1: When a lot of traders bet on a price going
Speaker 1: up and then the price pulls back, those traders are
Speaker 1: sitting on losing positions. They either buy more to defend
Speaker 1: their bet, or they sell, which pushes the price down faster.
Speaker 1: If Solana can't reclaim eighty eight to ninety dollars quickly,
Speaker 1: that selling pressure could flush it toward eighty A couple
Speaker 1: of stories that are easy to overlook. Strategy formally, micro
Speaker 1: Strategy is changing the dividend schedule on one of its
Speaker 1: preferred stock products from monthly to BUI monthly Strategy's whole
Speaker 1: model is built around issuing financial products to raise money
Speaker 1: to buy more bitcoin, so any tweak to how those
Speaker 1: products work is worth watching. Prediction markets put only a
Speaker 1: three percent chance that Strategy sells any bitcoin by June thirtieth.
Speaker 1: The market believes in the commitment. And then there's this
Speaker 1: one I genuinely love. Alcoa is close to selling a
Speaker 1: dormant New York aluminum smelter to ny DIG. That's ny Dig,
Speaker 1: a bitcoin mining company. Smelters need enormous amounts of reliable power,
Speaker 1: and so do bitcoin miners. The infrastructure is already there.
Speaker 1: What Alcoa can use profitably, New York Dig can. This
Speaker 1: is the quiet trend behind bitcoin mining right now. It's
Speaker 1: about stranded industrial assets that nobody else wants. Quick hits.
Speaker 1: Charles Schwab just launched spot Bitcoin and Ethereum Trading, not
Speaker 1: a fund wrapper, actual direct trading. Iran is apparently using
Speaker 1: bitcoin and tether to collect oil transit tolls through the
Speaker 1: strait of Hormuz World. Liberty Financial is proposing to burn
Speaker 1: four point five billion insider tokens, which would reduce future
Speaker 1: selling pressure if approved, and a token called rave pumped
Speaker 1: four thousand, five hundred percent. Finance and bitget have opened
Speaker 1: investigations into suspected insider activity. The team denies involvement. The
Speaker 1: number speaks for itself. All right, before we get into
Speaker 1: the risks, quick word from our sponsor. Okay, we're back.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what to watch for. Three risks on
Speaker 1: my radar. First, meme coins are up thirty two percent
Speaker 1: while Bitcoin slides and a major hack hits. When the
Speaker 1: most speculative assets outperform during bad news, it usually ends
Speaker 1: one of two ways. The bad news gets ignored and
Speaker 1: memes keep running, or the bad news catches up and
Speaker 1: memes fall Hardest history says the second happens more often. Second,
Speaker 1: the kelp Dow hack drained two hundred and ninety two
Speaker 1: million through a bridge. Total crypto locked in DeFi sits
Speaker 1: around ninety four billion dollars. A meaningful chunk of that
Speaker 1: relies on bridge infrastructure that has now failed repeatedly at scale.
Speaker 1: The risk isn't just Kelp Dow. It's that every cross
Speaker 1: chain protocol carries some version of this vulnerability. Third, prediction
Speaker 1: markets are putting only seven and a half percent probability
Speaker 1: on three FED rate cuts in twenty twenty six. In
Speaker 1: plain English, the market thinks the FED is keeping rates high.
Speaker 1: That's a headwind for crypto because when money is expensive,
Speaker 1: people take less risk. Crypto has to justify its price
Speaker 1: on its own merits, and that's a harder argument at
Speaker 1: seventy six thousand bitcoin than it was at thirty thousand.
Speaker 1: Looking ahead, Three things I'm watching kelp Doow's recovery plan.
Speaker 1: The next seventy two hours matter a lot. If they
Speaker 1: publish a credible path forward and rs ETH stabilizes, the
Speaker 1: damage probably stays contained if it doesn't. Watch whether the
Speaker 1: broader restaking category starts losing users. Bitcoin's weekly close on
Speaker 1: Sunday above seventy seven thousand keeps the breakout thesis alive
Speaker 1: below seventy four thousand, and we're calling it a false start.
Speaker 1: And the Binance and bitcoit investigation into the Rave token pump.
Speaker 1: If either exchange confirms insider manipulation, it sets a real
Speaker 1: precedent for how centralized exchanges handle suspected coordinated rallies going forward.
Speaker 1: That's the pulse for April eighteenth. If you got something
Speaker 1: out of this, share it with a friend who follows crypto.
Speaker 1: That's genuinely the best way to support what we're doing here.
Speaker 1: You can also will subscribe to the newsletter at tokenmetrics
Speaker 1: dot com to get all of this in written form.
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.