Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alex with the Token Metrics Daily Pulse for
Speaker 1: April fifth, twenty twenty six. North Korea ran a six
Speaker 1: month con on a crypto protocol. Schwab is building a
Speaker 1: way for its ten trillion dollars in client assets to
Speaker 1: buy bitcoin directly, and Bitcoin is sitting at its most
Speaker 1: hated sentiment level of the year. Let's get into it,
Speaker 1: but first a quick word from our sponsor. Okay, so
Speaker 1: here's what's happening. So the big story today isn't a
Speaker 1: price move. It's a heist, and not the kind with
Speaker 1: a keyboard. Drift Protocol lost two hundred and seventy million
Speaker 1: dollars and it wasn't a bug in the code. It
Speaker 1: was a six month North Korean intelligence operation. Operatives posed
Speaker 1: as a legitimate trading firm. They met Drift team members
Speaker 1: in person across multiple countries. They deposited a million dollars
Speaker 1: of their own money just to look credible, and then
Speaker 1: after half a year of building trust, they drained it.
Speaker 1: That's actually, that's a completely different category of attack. The
Speaker 1: crypto industry has spent years making the code harder to break, audits,
Speaker 1: bug bounties, all of it. But this wasn't a vulnerability
Speaker 1: in the code, It was a vulnerability in people. And
Speaker 1: you can't audit your telegram DMS. Bitcoin is sitting around
Speaker 1: sixty seven thousand, basically flat on the day the market shrugged.
Speaker 1: The security story absolutely does not okay. So where does
Speaker 1: everything else sit? Right now? Markets are quiet but quietly bleeding.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin around sixty seven thousand, down less than half a percent,
Speaker 1: Ethereum just above two thousand, off about one percent, Solana
Speaker 1: down a bit more, trading around seventy nine dollars. Nothing dramatic,
Speaker 1: but the direction is consistent. Everything is drifting lower. Bitcoin
Speaker 1: is holding about fifty six percent of the total crypto market,
Speaker 1: which means it's losing less ground than the smaller coins.
Speaker 1: The overall crypto market is sitting around two point five
Speaker 1: four trillion dollars. And here's the narrative split that I
Speaker 1: think is actually interesting. Deep in Game five, AI, tokens
Speaker 1: and mean coins are all up big over the past week,
Speaker 1: like fifteen to twenty five percent gains across the board. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the bigger, more established categories defy broadly in the major
Speaker 1: smart contract platforms are down. So the speculative, higher risk
Speaker 1: end of the market is catching a bid while the
Speaker 1: blue chips bleed. Make of that what you will. Prediction
Speaker 1: markets are painting a bearish but not panicked picture. Polymarket
Speaker 1: has sixty seven and a half percent odds that bitcoin
Speaker 1: hits sixty thousand before it hits eighty thousand, nearly a
Speaker 1: million dollars in volume behind that bet. That's not a
Speaker 1: fringe view, that's the consensus right now. The crowd is
Speaker 1: positioned for more downside, all right, So what's actually driving
Speaker 1: the mood here? Let me walk through the big stories. First,
Speaker 1: back to Drift, because the details matter. This wasn't a
Speaker 1: rushed attack. North Korean operatives spent six months building relationships
Speaker 1: with the team, face to face meetings, real money, deposited
Speaker 1: a convincing cover story, and then when the moment came,
Speaker 1: they executed the dream two hundred and seventy million dollars gone.
Speaker 1: Here's what changes about this and why it matters for
Speaker 1: every crypto project out there. Every protocol that relies on
Speaker 1: contributors meeting outside partners in person just inherited a new
Speaker 1: category of risk. The takeaway is that insurance doesn't cover
Speaker 1: social engineering. Audits don't catch it. The watch signal here
Speaker 1: is whether Circle or Tether, the companies that issue the
Speaker 1: major dollar pegged digital currencies freeze any identified addresses in
Speaker 1: the next forty eight hours. That would be the first
Speaker 1: concrete government response, and if Drift publishes a full report
Speaker 1: naming the operatives, US Treasury sanctions could follow within thirty days.
Speaker 1: That's the pattern from past North Korean crypto attacks. Okay,
Speaker 1: second story, and this one is genuinely bullish if you
Speaker 1: zoom out. Charles Schwab just opened a weight list for
Speaker 1: direct Bitcoin and Ethereum spot Trading, targeting a limited launch
Speaker 1: this quarter. Schwab manages roughly ten trillion dollars in client assets,
Speaker 1: not crypto assets total assets, which means when affirm that
Speaker 1: size decides Spot crypto trading is worth building as a
Speaker 1: real product, not just wrapping it in a fund, the
Speaker 1: reach changes completely. Most retail investors don't hold their own
Speaker 1: crypto keys, They trust their brokerage. Schwab just told its
Speaker 1: entire client base you don't need a crypto native exchange anymore.
Speaker 1: And here's the timing that gets me. They're building this
Speaker 1: on ramp while bitcoin trades at its most pessimistic sentiment
Speaker 1: level of the year. Schwab is constructing the parking lot
Speaker 1: while the crowd is walking away from the building. Third story,
Speaker 1: and Group's blockchain arm just launched a platform called Envita
Speaker 1: that lets AI agents transact using stable coins in real time.
Speaker 1: Think of it like giving AI software its own bank
Speaker 1: account that settles instantly on crypto rails, no waiting, no
Speaker 1: intermediary money moves the moment the transaction happens. Now, why
Speaker 1: does this matter? Beyond the headline? Ant Group processes more
Speaker 1: transactions annually than most countries' entire banking systems. If even
Speaker 1: a small fraction of their software agents start routing payments
Speaker 1: through crypto settlement, which means using digital dollars on a
Speaker 1: blockchain instead of traditional bank wires, the volume of stable
Speaker 1: coin transactions could grow faster than anyone is priced in.
Speaker 1: This isn't a startup with a white paper. This is
Speaker 1: one of the largest financial technology operations on the planet.
Speaker 1: Deciding that crypto settlement is ready for production. That's a
Speaker 1: different signal. Fourth Bitcoin sentiment glass nodes latest data frames
Speaker 1: current positioning as maximum pessimism, the kind of reading that
Speaker 1: historically either precedes a sharp relief rally or a final
Speaker 1: capitulation flow. Hush both are genuinely possible. What's interesting is
Speaker 1: that research from Mercado Bitcoin found that bitcoin tends to
Speaker 1: outperform gold and equities after global shocks. We've had geopolitical escalation,
Speaker 1: a two hundred and seventy million dollar hack, and macro uncertainty,
Speaker 1: all stacking in the same week. If the historical pattern holds,
Speaker 1: the setup is contrarian bullish. If it doesn't, those sixty
Speaker 1: seven percent odds on sixty thousand start to look prescient
Speaker 1: and quickly. Bitcoin's long term security model is getting some attention.
Speaker 1: This week, there's a deep dive on quantum computing and
Speaker 1: what it could eventually mean for wallet security. The honest
Speaker 1: answer is the timeline is genuinely contested. The addresses most
Speaker 1: at risk are old, dormant ones, including potentially sat toad
Speaker 1: cheese coins. If those ever moved under quantum duress, the
Speaker 1: psychological impact on markets would be enormous. This isn't a
Speaker 1: tomorrow problem, but it's not a never problem either. Few
Speaker 1: quick hits Mara Holdings, the largest publicly traded bitcoin minor,
Speaker 1: cut fifteen percent of its workforce and is selling bitcoin
Speaker 1: reserves when the most capital intensive participants in the ecosystem
Speaker 1: start liquidating to cover costs. That's real selling pressure that
Speaker 1: doesn't care about technicals. The IMF warned this week that
Speaker 1: if financial assets move on to blockchain rails without proper oversight,
Speaker 1: market crashes could spread faster than regulators can respond. Basically,
Speaker 1: the speed of crypto settlement could turn a routine stress
Speaker 1: event into a full blown crisis before anyone can hit
Speaker 1: the brakes. Their fix anchor it to central bank settlement,
Speaker 1: meaning traditional financial institutions stay in the loop and Franklin
Speaker 1: Templeton just formed a dedicated cryptodivision with a two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty million dollars acquisition building while retail sentiment sits
Speaker 1: near yearly lows. 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. So what should you actually
Speaker 1: be watching? Risk One sentiment is at yearly lows, while
Speaker 1: smart money is quietly building. Polymarket says sixty seven percent
Speaker 1: odds on sixty thousand. Meanwhile, Schwab is opening waitlists, Franklin
Speaker 1: Templeton is making acquisitions, and big institutions are constructing infrastructure. Historically,
Speaker 1: when the crowd is maximally pessimistic, and the big players
Speaker 1: are building. Someone ends up very wrong. It hasn't usually
Speaker 1: been the big players. Risk two. The Drift hack rewrites
Speaker 1: the threat model for DeFi, which means the danger is
Speaker 1: no longer just bad code. A two hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: million dollar loss through social engineering means the attack surface
Speaker 1: is now people. Every protocol with pseudonymous contributors just inherited
Speaker 1: a new category of operational risk that audits and insurance
Speaker 1: don't cover. Risk three minor capitulation Mara cutting staff and
Speaker 1: selling reserves at current prices is a signal if other
Speaker 1: large miners follow in the next thirty days. The sixty
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars support level gets tested from the supply side,
Speaker 1: not from sentiment, not from technicals, but from forced selling.
Speaker 1: Looking ahead, here's what's on my radar. The Drift post
Speaker 1: mortem is the most time sensitive. If they publish a
Speaker 1: full attribution report naming North Korean entities this week, watch
Speaker 1: for US Treasury sanctions within thirty days and potential stable
Speaker 1: coin freezes within forty eight hours. That sets a precedent
Speaker 1: for how regulators treat state sponsored attacks on crypto protocols
Speaker 1: going forward. Schwab's weightless numbers are the next data point
Speaker 1: on real demand. If they report meaningful sign ups in
Speaker 1: the next thirty days, Watch Fidelity and Merril to accelerate
Speaker 1: their own timelines, and ant groups and Vita platform. If
Speaker 1: it posts live transaction volume within sixty days, the thesis
Speaker 1: that AI agents will use crypto rails for payments gets
Speaker 1: its first real proof point. If it stays in demo
Speaker 1: mode past Q three, file it under Enterprise Blockchain announcement
Speaker 1: and move on. That's the daily Pulse for April fifth.
Speaker 1: If you want the full written breakdown with all the
Speaker 1: sources and watch signals, subscribe to our newsletter at tokenmetrics
Speaker 1: dot com. Link in the show notes, and if this
Speaker 1: was useful, share it with someone who's trying to make
Speaker 1: sense of the market right now. This is educational content,
Speaker 1: not investment advice. Always do your own research. I'm Alex,
Speaker 1: See you next time.