Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alex with the Token Metrics Daily Pulse for
Speaker 1: May twenty at twenty twenty six. Tether just tightened its
Speaker 1: grip on twenty one. Hyper Liquid is the only Layer
Speaker 1: two actually growing right now, and Congress is coming for
Speaker 1: prediction markets. We've got a lot to unpact today, so
Speaker 1: let's dive in. But first, a quick word from our sponsor. Okay,
Speaker 1: So here's what's happening. Hyper Liquid's token is up about
Speaker 1: seven percent today, making it the second best performer in
Speaker 1: the top twenty etf Inflows into the token have grown
Speaker 1: eight times since launch. That's not a typo eight times. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Tether just bought out SoftBank Steak in twenty one, the
Speaker 1: Bitcoin treasury company, after the stock fell eighty four percent,
Speaker 1: and the Senate is grilling prediction market firms. As we speak,
Speaker 1: Fear and greed sits at twenty seven. That's fear territory.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the market is recovering, but it's doing it quiet.
Speaker 1: So where does that leave the broader market? Honestly, pretty subdued.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin is grinding near about seventy seven thousand, up a
Speaker 1: fraction of a percent. Ethereum is hovering around two thy
Speaker 1: one hundred, also barely moving. Solana is at around eighty seven,
Speaker 1: up a few percent. Total market cap is sitting around
Speaker 1: two point six trillion. Nothing dramatic there, but here's the
Speaker 1: number that actually matters. Bitcoin dominance is at fifty eight
Speaker 1: percent and still climbing. That means, even as prices tick up,
Speaker 1: alt coins are losing ground on a relative basis, money
Speaker 1: is consolidating into Bitcoin, not spreading out in stable coin
Speaker 1: supply flat zero change on the week. That tells you
Speaker 1: fresh capital isn't really entering the market right now. The
Speaker 1: Fear and Greed Index moved up two points to twenty seven.
Speaker 1: Still fear. The bounce we're seeing is build built on sentiment,
Speaker 1: not new money coming in. That's a fragile setup. Okay,
Speaker 1: So here's the bigger picture on where capital is moving.
Speaker 1: The analytics narrative is up one hundred and twelve percent
Speaker 1: on the week. That's the biggest move across all track narratives.
Speaker 1: Politify is up sixty nine percent, and that's not a coincidence.
Speaker 1: The Senate hearing on prediction markets is happening today, and
Speaker 1: political attention is pushing speculative money into politically adjacent tokens.
Speaker 1: Squd is the top gainer in analytics, up about eleven
Speaker 1: percent on the week. In the AI narrative, up eighteen percent,
Speaker 1: Open Serve is the standout, up nearly one hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety five percent in seven days. That's a massive move
Speaker 1: for a single token. Dpen is up twenty three percent,
Speaker 1: with Chia as the top gainer there at over fifty
Speaker 1: five percent, and memes are up eleven percent, led by
Speaker 1: per at seventy four percent. So even in a fear market,
Speaker 1: capital is finding pockets to rotate into. It's just not
Speaker 1: spreading evenly. And there's one macro move worth putting on
Speaker 1: your radar before we get into the news. Oil led
Speaker 1: the majors this week, up about three percent on the
Speaker 1: USO tracker. That might sound like a stock market story,
Speaker 1: but it's not not entirely. Oil is a macro inflation signal.
Speaker 1: When it moves like this, it usually reflects tighter growth
Speaker 1: expectations or supply pressure, and both of those things feed
Speaker 1: directly into how the Fed thinks about rates, how the
Speaker 1: dollar moves, and ultimately how much risk appetite flows into crypto.
Speaker 1: A rising oil price in a fear market is worth watching.
Speaker 1: It can squeeze liquidity in ways that hit crypto harder
Speaker 1: than equities. This is the tip of the iceberg. The
Speaker 1: full macro regime read is in the Monthly playbook fourteen
Speaker 1: days free at tokenmetrics dot com. Now let's get into
Speaker 1: the stories driving all this. First up, hyper Liquid, this
Speaker 1: isn't just price story. Every other major layer to his
Speaker 1: bleeding arbitrum is down on the week, base is down,
Speaker 1: the optimism ecosystem is down nearly five percent. Hyper Liquid
Speaker 1: is the only top five layer to actually growing right now.
Speaker 1: If it holds, the etf story has real legs if
Speaker 1: it gives back gains while Bitcoin holds. This was just
Speaker 1: leverage refilling on a narrative. Next twenty one, SoftBank just
Speaker 1: exited at an eighty four percent loss. Tether bought them out.
Speaker 1: Let that sit for a second. Tether now has a
Speaker 1: tighter grip on the whole operation. That's not necessarily bad.
Speaker 1: Tether has the balance sheet, but the diversified institutional backing
Speaker 1: story just got a lot smaller. Watch for new bitcoin
Speaker 1: purchase announcements from twenty one in the next seven days. Third,
Speaker 1: the Ethereum Foundation eight senior departures in twenty twenty six research,
Speaker 1: protocol development, communications across the board. Ethereum is up marginally
Speaker 1: today but has been underperforming Bitcoin for months. The real
Speaker 1: risk here is coordination. And then there's the quantum story.
Speaker 1: We're not there yet. Current quantum hardware is nowhere near
Speaker 1: the threshold. But this is the kind of story that
Speaker 1: gets dismissed until it isn't. The real risk isn't the
Speaker 1: technology today, it's the narrative. On the regulatory front. The
Speaker 1: Senate Commerce Committee called in prediction market firms today. Polymarket
Speaker 1: just launched private company prediction markets powered by NASDAK data.
Speaker 1: The regulatory window is closing fast. The question isn't whether
Speaker 1: prediction markets work, it's whether regulators will let them operate
Speaker 1: in the US at all. Crypto custody firm Copper is
Speaker 1: exploring a five hundred million dollars sale Variational raised fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars in a Series A to bring traditional finance
Speaker 1: liquidity on chain via arbitrum. All right, before we get
Speaker 1: into the risks, quick word from our spaw. Okay, we're back.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what to watch for. The market recovered
Speaker 1: from extreme fear to fear in one day, but stable
Speaker 1: coin supply hasn't moved in a week. That means sentiment
Speaker 1: improved on price action alone, not fresh capital entering. Bounce
Speaker 1: is built on sentiment without new money, tend to fade.
Speaker 1: If Bitcoin stalls near seventy eight to eighty thousand, the
Speaker 1: next step could reset sentiment faster than this recovery happened.
Speaker 1: Second risk, the Ethereum foundation drain eight eight senior departures
Speaker 1: in one year isn't a personnel story. It's a coordination risk.
Speaker 1: If key people leave before the next major protocol upgrade,
Speaker 1: timeline slip and the Ethereum to Bitcoin ratio comes under
Speaker 1: more pressure. Third, the quantum exposure narrative last nodes ten
Speaker 1: percent figure is not an immediate technical threat, but it's
Speaker 1: exactly the kind of story that can drive fear based selling.
Speaker 1: If a quantum computing headline lands at the wrong moment.
Speaker 1: The risk isn't the technology, it's the narrative catching fire
Speaker 1: before the nuance does. Bottom Line, the market is recovering
Speaker 1: on vibes, not inflows. Bitcoin dominance is climbing, fear and
Speaker 1: greed barely moved off the floor. That only changes if
Speaker 1: stable coin supply adds meaningfully in the next few days
Speaker 1: and hyper Liquid's ETF momentum spreads to other old coin
Speaker 1: categories and looking ahead. Tomorrow Thursday, May twenty first, the
Speaker 1: UNISWAP Fee expansion governance vote closes. It's running at one
Speaker 1: hundred percent approval on the temp check. If it advances
Speaker 1: to a binding vote, the buyback economics for uniswaps token
Speaker 1: change materially worth watching if you hold any decks governance tokens.
Speaker 1: Then on Saturday May twenty fourth, the Parallel PIP sixty
Speaker 1: nine governance vote closes. That one changes how parallel stable
Speaker 1: coin can be deployed across chains, a structural shift to
Speaker 1: the protocols liquidity architecture. Quick note from Token Metrics Hidden
Speaker 1: Gems is now live for low cap token discovery. If
Speaker 1: you've been looking for a way to find smaller tokens
Speaker 1: before they get crowded, that's the tool to check out
Speaker 1: link in show notes. By the way, if you want
Speaker 1: the full written breakdown, check out our newsletter at tokenmetrics
Speaker 1: dot com. This is educational content, not investment advice. Always
Speaker 1: do your own research. I'm Alex, See you next time.