Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alex with the Token Metrics Daily Pulse for
Speaker 1: May thirteenth, twenty twenty six. Today, the biggest names and
Speaker 1: traditional finance just showed up to the crypto party, and
Speaker 1: the market's barely reacting. That tension is worth talking about.
Speaker 1: But first, a quick word from our sponsor. Okay, so
Speaker 1: here's what's happening. Charles Schwab flipped on Spot crypto trading
Speaker 1: for retail customers. Not an etf rapper, not a futures product,
Speaker 1: actual Spot crypto sitting right next to your Apple shares.
Speaker 1: Schwab manages around ten trillion dollars in client assets. That's
Speaker 1: the largest retail brokerage in America. And for years, if
Speaker 1: a Schwap customer wanted bigcoin, they had to leave the
Speaker 1: platform entirely. Now they don't. At the same time, JP
Speaker 1: Morgan just launched its second tokenized money market fund on Ethereum.
Speaker 1: The first one was a proof of concept, the second
Speaker 1: one is a product strategy. And here's what makes today strange.
Speaker 1: Fear and greed just dropped to forty two. That's fear territory.
Speaker 1: Trad FI is building infrastructure, while retail sentiment is quietly sliding.
Speaker 1: One of those signals is early, the other might be right.
Speaker 1: So where does that leave prices? Honestly pretty quiet. Bitcoin
Speaker 1: is sitting just above eighty thousand, down less than one
Speaker 1: percent on the day. Ethereum is basically flat. Salana dropped
Speaker 1: a few percent, nothing dramatic. Total market cap is around
Speaker 1: two point seven trillion, off a fraction. The number worth
Speaker 1: pausing on is fear and greed at forty two. It
Speaker 1: dropped seven points in a single day, while Bitcoin barely moved.
Speaker 1: When sentiment falls faster than price, it usually means the
Speaker 1: next move lower finds less support Underneath, retail is losing
Speaker 1: conviction Quietly, stable coin supply is holding steady near three
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty billion, though that's cash on the sidelines
Speaker 1: that hasn't left the ecosystem, and defis total value locked
Speaker 1: is around one hundred and sixty six billion. Essentially, flat
Speaker 1: markets are calm on the surface. Underneath, the mood is shifting.
Speaker 1: So what's actually driving the conversation today? Three narratives are dominating. First,
Speaker 1: trad FI infrastructure, SCHWAB, JP Morgan, Tokenized treasuries crossing fifteen billion.
Speaker 1: That's the theme of the week. Traditional finance isn't dipping
Speaker 1: a toe in anymore. Second, AI meets crypto Coinbase launch
Speaker 1: something called X four h two, a payment protocol letting
Speaker 1: AI agents settle transactions on chain without a human in
Speaker 1: the loop. That one's flying under the radar and probably
Speaker 1: shouldn't be. Third the rotation question. Jane Street cut its
Speaker 1: Bitcoin ETF holdings in Q one and added Ethereum Funds
Speaker 1: smart money quietly moving while everyone else is in fear mode.
Speaker 1: That's the setup, and there's one macro move worth putting
Speaker 1: on your radar before we get into the stories. Oil
Speaker 1: led the majors this week, up about six percent over
Speaker 1: seven days and trading near one hundred and forty three dollars.
Speaker 1: The structure is still leaning higher, but momentum is mixed,
Speaker 1: meaning this isn't a straight line continuation. You can just
Speaker 1: assume follow through matters here. If the broader macro is
Speaker 1: pricing in economic growth, Oil tends to confirm that read
Speaker 1: before crypto does worth watching as a leading signal for
Speaker 1: risk appetite. The full macro regime walkthrough and what it
Speaker 1: means for your crypto allocation is in the monthly playbook
Speaker 1: Alpha trial at tokenmetrics dot com. There is also a
Speaker 1: resolved signal call worth flagging back. On April twenty second,
Speaker 1: we called bitcoin down on a polymarket prediction market. The
Speaker 1: market resolved in our favor one hundred and sixty three
Speaker 1: percent gain on steak. The setup was a fade against consensus.
Speaker 1: Yes was priced at thirty eight cents, implying the crowd
Speaker 1: thought bitcoin was going up. We disagreed it went down
Speaker 1: a factor that would have flipped. That read a clean
Speaker 1: hold above key resistance heading into the resolution date, it
Speaker 1: didn't hold. If you want alerts like this with the
Speaker 1: set up, risk and exit plan delivered as they happen,
Speaker 1: start a seven day free trial of token metric Signal
Speaker 1: at tokenmetrics dot com. Now let's get into the stories
Speaker 1: driving all this. Start with Schwab ten trillion in client assets.
Speaker 1: That number matters because it reframes the access problem entirely.
Speaker 1: The timing is interesting too. Sentiment is soft, and Schwab
Speaker 1: chose now to launch that's either brave or very well
Speaker 1: timed for onboarding retail at a discount. And Schwab isn't alone.
Speaker 1: Black Rock, Franklin, Templeton, and JP Morgan are all building
Speaker 1: on chain products. Speaking of new ways to move money.
Speaker 1: Coinbase launched something called X four O two that's a
Speaker 1: big platform play. While AI agents are getting payment rails,
Speaker 1: the big funds are shifting their own portfolios. Jane Street
Speaker 1: cut its Bitcoin ETF holdings in Q one and added
Speaker 1: Ethereum Funds. It could be a directional bet on Ethereum's
Speaker 1: relative value. It could be a hedging adjustment with no
Speaker 1: directional view at all. Honestly, we don't have enough information
Speaker 1: to say for certain which it is. Finally, there's a
Speaker 1: macro signal worth knowing about. That's not a prediction, and
Speaker 1: macro signals don't guarantee anything. The catch Right now Bitcoin
Speaker 1: is sitting below eighty one thousand with sentiment and fear territory.
Speaker 1: The macro signal is quietly bullish, but the on chain
Speaker 1: mood is not. One of them will be right, all right?
Speaker 1: Before we get into the risks, quick word from our sponsor. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're beck Let's talk about what to watch for now
Speaker 1: for the risks worth watching. First, Sentiment is slipping faster
Speaker 1: than price. Fear and greed drops seven points in one day,
Speaker 1: while Bitcoin barely moved. That gap you usually closes one way.
Speaker 1: Price catches down to sentiment, not the other way around.
Speaker 1: If that happens, the two hundred day moving average becomes
Speaker 1: resistance instead of support, and seventy nine thousand comes back
Speaker 1: into play. Second, liquidity is spreading thin across smaller blockchain networks.
Speaker 1: In plain English. Capital isn't leaving Crypto, it's just scattering
Speaker 1: across dozens of smaller platforms without clear winners. Mega f
Speaker 1: is down thirty seven percent this week, unichain AEVO, and
Speaker 1: Derive are each down over eleven percent. Arbitrum and Base
Speaker 1: are holding, but the long tail is bleeding. Third, the
Speaker 1: Anthropic situation. People are selling unauthorized fake shares of the
Speaker 1: AI company on chain, and Anthropic publicly warned investors this week.
Speaker 1: The risk here isn't just that retail buyers get burned.
Speaker 1: It's that a messy story like this tends to trigger
Speaker 1: broad regulatory responses not targeted once, and that kind of
Speaker 1: response could land on the legitimate on chain fund products
Speaker 1: like jpm Morgan's money market funds at exactly the moment
Speaker 1: they're gaining traction. That's the second order risk nobody's pricing
Speaker 1: yet and looking ahead. Three things to watch this week. First,
Speaker 1: Schwab's early trading data the first week tells you whether
Speaker 1: demand was supply constrained or simply absent. High volumes would
Speaker 1: be a strong signal that retail was always ready, they
Speaker 1: just needed access. Second, Bitcoin and the two hundred day
Speaker 1: moving average. A clean reclaim flips the technical picture bullish.
Speaker 1: A rejection keeps the range bound grind intact and puts
Speaker 1: seventy nine thousand back in play. Third, the Clarity Act.
Speaker 1: Here's why it matters in plain English. Institutions that want
Speaker 1: to build tokenized products, think on chain funds or digital securities,
Speaker 1: don't have a clear legal rulebook to follow. This bill
Speaker 1: would create that rule book. Bitwise flagged it as the
Speaker 1: next big unlocked for that whole category. Any committee vote
Speaker 1: or amendment news this week could move markets. That's the
Speaker 1: pulse for May thirteenth. Trad Fi arrived sentiments shaky. The
Speaker 1: macro signal is quietly bullish. A lot to watch. If
Speaker 1: you got something out of this, send it to a
Speaker 1: friend who's into crypto. That's the best way to support us.
Speaker 1: This is educational content, not investment advice. Always do your
Speaker 1: own research. I'm Alex, see you next time.