Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alex with the Token Metrics Daily Pulse for
Speaker 1: April second, twenty twenty six. Trump said two words today
Speaker 1: and crypto drops six percent. We've got a lot to
Speaker 1: get through, but first a quick word from our sponsor. Okay,
Speaker 1: so here's what's happening. So here's what happened. Trump came
Speaker 1: out and said he'd hit iran quote extremely hard. That's it.
Speaker 1: Two words, and Bitcoin dropped to around sixty six thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Solana fell about six percent. Everything risk related sold off
Speaker 1: at the same time, same speed, same direction, stocks, crypto, gold,
Speaker 1: all of it. You know that whole idea that bitcoin
Speaker 1: is an uncorrelated asset, meaning it moves on its own
Speaker 1: and doesn't care about world news. Yeah, that theory only
Speaker 1: works until it doesn't. The second geopolitical fear hits crypto
Speaker 1: trades like a leveraged tech stock, meaning it swings harder
Speaker 1: and faster than almost anything else. And that's exactly what
Speaker 1: happened today. So where does that leave the market. Right now?
Speaker 1: Bitcoin is sitting at about sixty six thousand dollars. Ethereum,
Speaker 1: the second biggest cryptocurrency, dropped nearly five percent, landing just
Speaker 1: above two thousand dollars. Solana got hit the hardest of
Speaker 1: the big names, down over six percent to around seventy
Speaker 1: eight dollars. The total crypto market lost about three and
Speaker 1: a half percent overall. But here's the number that tells
Speaker 1: the real story. Bitcoin's dominance ticked up to fifty six percent.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin dominance just means how big bitcoin slice of the
Speaker 1: total crypto pie is. When that number goes up during
Speaker 1: a sellof it tells you money isn't leaving crypto entirely.
Speaker 1: It's just running to the corner it feels safest in Bitcoin.
Speaker 1: The smaller coins, the alt coins, basically everything that isn't Bitcoin,
Speaker 1: they're getting hit harder because they're seen as riskier bets.
Speaker 1: Stellar down nearly seven percent, hyper Liquid down over six
Speaker 1: The further from Bitcoin U go, the more painful today was.
Speaker 1: And on the DeFi side, DeFi stands for decentralized finance,
Speaker 1: which is basically financial services like lending and trading built
Speaker 1: directly on blockchain instead of through a bank. The total
Speaker 1: value sitting in those platforms is about ninety two billion dollars.
Speaker 1: That number is already under pressure before we even get
Speaker 1: to the big story. Okay, so here's the bigger picture
Speaker 1: on everything moving today. First up, Drift protocol. This one, okay,
Speaker 1: this one is bad. Drift is one of the biggest
Speaker 1: trading platforms built on Salana, and it got exploited today
Speaker 1: for a reported two hundred and eighty five million dollars.
Speaker 1: That's not a rounding error. They told users to stop
Speaker 1: depositing immediately. And here's the part that stings. The breach
Speaker 1: wasn't a flaw in the code. It was the admin keys.
Speaker 1: Think of admin keys like the master password to the
Speaker 1: whole system. Whoever holds them has total control. Someone got
Speaker 1: access to the person holding that password, and the rest followed.
Speaker 1: A security expert put it plainly after the incident, audit
Speaker 1: your admin keys, not just your code, which sounds obvious
Speaker 1: until you realize this is the third major exploit in
Speaker 1: the Solana ecosystem in eighteen months. At some point the
Speaker 1: pattern is the story Solana's DeFi ecosystem. All those financial
Speaker 1: platforms built on Solana holds about five and a half
Speaker 1: billion dollars in total. A chunk of that is now
Speaker 1: in question. Next, there's actually some good news buried in today,
Speaker 1: and it's about stable coins. A stable coin is just
Speaker 1: a digital dollar, a cryptotoken designed to always be worth
Speaker 1: one dollar, so it doesn't swing up and down like
Speaker 1: bitcoin does. It can move around the world instantly. Coinbase's
Speaker 1: top lawyer went on record today saying a deal is
Speaker 1: very close on whether stable coins can pay you interest,
Speaker 1: kind of like a savings account. That's part of a
Speaker 1: bill called the Clarity Act. The Clarity Act is a
Speaker 1: piece of legislation working through Congress right now. Its job
Speaker 1: is to set the round rules for how stable coins
Speaker 1: work in the US. Banks aren't happy about it because
Speaker 1: they're worried people will move money out of bank accounts
Speaker 1: and into stable coins instead. But here's the thing. Banks
Speaker 1: already lost that fight to money market funds, basically low
Speaker 1: risk investment accounts decades ago, and nobody called it a crisis.
Speaker 1: Coinbases lawyer saying very close isn't casual. That's someone who
Speaker 1: knows where the votes are. If this passes, every major
Speaker 1: stable coin issuer has to redesign their product overnight. Now.
Speaker 1: Metaplanet this is a Japanese company listed on the Tokyo
Speaker 1: Stock Exchange, and they just added over five thousand bitcoin
Speaker 1: in the first quarter alone. They now hold about forty
Speaker 1: thousand bitcoin total, making them the third largest publicly traded
Speaker 1: company by bitcoin holdings. The company that was in third
Speaker 1: place before them, Mara Holdings, actually sold fifteen thousand bitcoin recently,
Speaker 1: which opened up the spot. One company's exit is another
Speaker 1: company's leaderboard clip. What this tells you is that the
Speaker 1: strategy of using bitcoin as a corporate treasury asset, think
Speaker 1: of it like a company putting its savings into bitcoin
Speaker 1: instead of cash, is going global. But it's not uniform.
Speaker 1: Some companies are buying hard, others are trimming. That split
Speaker 1: matters more than any single headline, and then they're so far.
Speaker 1: The banking company just launched what they're calling a twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven banking hub, where businesses can hold regular dollars,
Speaker 1: convert them to stable coins, and move money instantly, all
Speaker 1: inside one regulated bank account, no crypto exchange required. The
Speaker 1: target customer here isn't a retail trader chasing gains. It's
Speaker 1: a CFO, the person in charge of a company's money,
Speaker 1: who just wants to pay international suppliers instantly without waiting
Speaker 1: three days for a wire to clear. That's a completely
Speaker 1: different use case, and honestly a more durable one. It's boring,
Speaker 1: it's practical, and that's exactly why it matters. Quick hits
Speaker 1: before we move on. France just took an air space
Speaker 1: company public directly on a blockchain. That's Europe's first blockchain IPO,
Speaker 1: meaning the shares exist as digital tokens instead of on
Speaker 1: a traditional stock exchange. The DOJ ran a sting operation
Speaker 1: and caught people doing wash trading in crypto at scale.
Speaker 1: Wash trading is basically faking buy and sell activity to
Speaker 1: make a token look more popular than it is. It's
Speaker 1: market manipulation and it's illegal. Volatility shares launched leveraged ETFs
Speaker 1: exchange traded funds you can buy like a stock for
Speaker 1: three all coins beyond Bitcoin and ethereum, giving everyday investors
Speaker 1: amplified exposure to smaller coins and a startup. Let researchers
Speaker 1: mind blockchain tasks on an actual quantum computer for the
Speaker 1: first time, using hardware from d Wave. Still experimental, but
Speaker 1: a genuine first. 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 out for right now? Three things on my radar. First,
Speaker 1: it's a holiday weekend easter markets get thin, meaning fewer
Speaker 1: people are actively trading, which means prices can move more
Speaker 1: violently in either direction. There are also a lot of
Speaker 1: traders right now who are betting bitcoin goes down. That's
Speaker 1: called a short position. You borrow bitcoin, sell it, and
Speaker 1: hope to buy it back cheaper later. When you have
Speaker 1: a lot of people making that same bet and fewer
Speaker 1: buyers around, you get two possible outcomes. Either a short
Speaker 1: squeeze where the price suddenly pops and forces all those
Speaker 1: downside bets to close at a loss, or if real
Speaker 1: bad news hits, there just aren't enough buyers to cushion
Speaker 1: the fall, same crowded trade, two very different outcomes, depending
Speaker 1: on what the headlines say. Second, the drift exploit is
Speaker 1: not just a drift problem. It's a story about Solana's reputation.
Speaker 1: Solana's DeFi ecosystem, all the financial apps built on it,
Speaker 1: is already a fraction of ethereum size about five and
Speaker 1: a half billion dollars versus fifty two billion. Another high
Speaker 1: profile breach that traces back to human error rather than code.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of thing that makes big institutional investors
Speaker 1: think hedge funds and asset managers rethink their risk models,
Speaker 1: not just everyday retail traders institutions. Third, Trump's Iran comments
Speaker 1: today's sell off was the first reaction. If this escalates
Speaker 1: actual military action new sanctions, crypto keeps trading like a
Speaker 1: risk asset, meaning it sells off alongside stocks, not a
Speaker 1: safe haven. The connection to stock market moves that everyone
Speaker 1: in crypto hates gets switched on at exactly the worst time.
Speaker 1: And looking ahead, Three things to watch in the next week. First,
Speaker 1: the Senate Banking Committee that's the group of senators responsible
Speaker 1: for financial legislation, could schedule a markup vote on the
Speaker 1: Clarity Act. A markup vote is basically the formal meeting
Speaker 1: where lawmakers go line by line through a bill and
Speaker 1: decide what stays and what changes. The specific part everyone's
Speaker 1: watching is whether stable coins, those digital dollars we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier, can legally pay you interest. If that vote
Speaker 1: gets scheduled, it's real momentum, not just optimistic lawyer talk. Second,
Speaker 1: Drift protocol needs to publish a full post mortem, basically
Speaker 1: a detailed breakdown of exactly what went wrong and what
Speaker 1: they're doing about it within seven days. How they respond,
Speaker 1: whether funds get frozen or recovered will determine whether Solana's
Speaker 1: DeFi ecosystem stabilizes or sees money rotate out to ethereum
Speaker 1: based alternatives. And third, the FED wraps up ats April meeting.
Speaker 1: Prediction markets platforms where people bet real money on outcomes
Speaker 1: are pricing in a ninety eight percent chance of no
Speaker 1: rate change, which is basically a certainty. But the language
Speaker 1: the FED uses around inflation and geopolitical risk will set
Speaker 1: the tone for crypto all the way through May. If
Speaker 1: you found today's breakdown useful, share it with someone who's
Speaker 1: trying to make sense of what's happening in crypto right now.
Speaker 1: And if you want daily market signals and weekly question
Speaker 1: and answer breakdowns, head over to tokenmetrics dot com to
Speaker 1: learn more about what we offer. Just a reminder, everything
Speaker 1: here is educational content, not investment advice. Crypto is high
Speaker 1: risk and you should always do your own research before
Speaker 1: making any financial decisions. I'm Alex, See you next time.