Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alex with the Token Metrics Daily Pulse for
Speaker 1: April ninth, twenty twenty six. Bitcoin's holding above seventy two thousand,
Speaker 1: but the institutions who were supposed to be buying, they're
Speaker 1: quietly walking out the back door. 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 here's the thing that caught my
Speaker 1: eye this morning. Bitcoin is sitting just under seventy two
Speaker 1: thousand dollars prices up. Looks fine on the surface, but
Speaker 1: CME futures activity just hit a fourteen month low. That's
Speaker 1: the lowest institutional derivatives volume we've seen since early twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five. And here's why that matters. There's a trade
Speaker 1: that big players run called the basis trade. Basically, they
Speaker 1: buy spot bitcoin and short the futures to lock in
Speaker 1: The price difference is yield. It's a carry trade, clean
Speaker 1: mechanical institutional. When that trade unwinds, they're selling the spot
Speaker 1: they were holding, which means a structural buyer just left
Speaker 1: the room. Price is up, smart money is out. Those
Speaker 1: two things can coexist for a while, but history says
Speaker 1: the price eventually catches up to where the real demand
Speaker 1: actually is. So where does that leave the rest of
Speaker 1: the market Pretty quiet? Honestly, Bitcoin at around seventy two thousand,
Speaker 1: basically flat on the day, Ethereum at about twenty two hundred,
Speaker 1: down less than one percent, which sounds fine until you
Speaker 1: see what everything else is doing. Bitcoin dominance is sitting
Speaker 1: at fifty seven percent total crypto market cap around two
Speaker 1: and a half trillion DeFi total value locked holding near
Speaker 1: ninety five billion. Now here's the interesting part. While Bitcoin
Speaker 1: and Ethereum are basically napping, the narrative plays are absolutely ripping.
Speaker 1: Deepen up twenty seven percent in seven days, meme coins
Speaker 1: up nearly twenty percent, Ai tokens up eighteen percent. Capital
Speaker 1: is rotating hard into the high beta stuff, but it's
Speaker 1: not going through Ethereum the way the old playbook assumed.
Speaker 1: Ethereum sitting on a negative week while everything around it runs.
Speaker 1: That's worth paying attention to. Okay, So here's the bigger
Speaker 1: picture on what's actually driving the headlines today. First up,
Speaker 1: the Iran story. Reports came out that Iran was demanding
Speaker 1: bitcoin payments for straight of Hormu's transit, one of the
Speaker 1: world's most critical oil shipping lanes told in bitcoin. The
Speaker 1: headline rights itself right, and it moved the market. Bitcoin
Speaker 1: briefly touched above seventy two thousand on the news before
Speaker 1: pulling back. But here's the thing. Multiple crypto intelligence analysts
Speaker 1: flag this as unverified. Iran has a history of floating
Speaker 1: crypto adjacent proposals that go nowhere. The ceasefire optimism that
Speaker 1: drove last week's spike is already fraying. So what you've
Speaker 1: got is a market that's pricing in geopolitical optionality, meaning
Speaker 1: traders are treating geopolitical headlines as a reason to buy.
Speaker 1: That's when the headlines are good. It's a problem when
Speaker 1: they reverse just as fast. When geopolitical noise is your
Speaker 1: primary price driver, you're basically trading the news cycle, not fundamentals. Next,
Speaker 1: the Treasury just announced it's going to loop crypto firms
Speaker 1: into the same hacker warning system that banks have had
Speaker 1: for years. This sounds like a minor policy update, it's not.
Speaker 1: For years, crypto companies got basically nothing in terms of
Speaker 1: thread intelligence while banks were receiving classified warnings about nation
Speaker 1: state attacks. The Drift hack two hundred and seventy million
Speaker 1: dollars attributed to North Korea. A six month inside job
Speaker 1: is almost certainly why this is happening now. The posture
Speaker 1: shift here is real regulators are moving from crypto is
Speaker 1: the problem to crypto needs protecting too. That's a different
Speaker 1: conversation entirely now. Securitize, here's the short version of why
Speaker 1: this matters. They're the company that runs the infrastructure black
Speaker 1: Rock uses for its biggest on chain treads Measury product,
Speaker 1: and they just hired a former sec division director as
Speaker 1: president right before going public. Think of it like this.
Speaker 1: They're building the plumbing that lets traditional financial assets like
Speaker 1: treasuries and bonds live on a blockchain, and they're staffing
Speaker 1: up with people who know exactly how regulators think. This
Speaker 1: is not subtle. They're telling regulators and institutional investors, we
Speaker 1: know how this game is played. If this listing happens,
Speaker 1: Securitize becomes the first pure play tokenized securities firm trading
Speaker 1: on a major exchange. The whole tokenized real world asset
Speaker 1: space gets a publicly traded benchmark to price against. That's
Speaker 1: a big deal for the narrative. And then there's the
Speaker 1: rotation story, which I touched on in the snapshot, but
Speaker 1: want to go deeper on Deepin up twenty seven percent,
Speaker 1: memes up nineteen percent, AI tokens up eighteen percent, Ethereum
Speaker 1: down on the week, Bitcoin dominance at fifty seven percent.
Speaker 1: This is not the normal all season playbook where everything
Speaker 1: comes together as bitcoin dominance falls. This is selective. Traders
Speaker 1: are chasing specific narratives, Deepen AI memes and skipping the
Speaker 1: blue chips. The meme coin market cap is forty eight
Speaker 1: billion dollars, AI tokens are twenty three billion. Memes are
Speaker 1: bigger than the AI narrative. Right now, make of that
Speaker 1: what you will. Quick hits before we move on. A
Speaker 1: solo bitcoin minor scored a two hundred and twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars block reward overnight. The odds of that happening
Speaker 1: are genuinely absurd. It's a nice reminder that bitcoin's proof
Speaker 1: of work is still the most egalitarian lottery in finance.
Speaker 1: Treasury Secretary Bessent called crypto industry participants nihilists this week
Speaker 1: as the Clarity Act stalls in Congress. Not exactly a
Speaker 1: warm regulatory embrace when the Treasury Secretary is using that language.
Speaker 1: The path to market structure of legislation just got longer,
Speaker 1: and Polygon Labs is reportedly raising one hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: for a payment's focused business. That's the layer two space,
Speaker 1: moving beyond DeFi speculation toward actual transaction rails. The question
Speaker 1: is whether they can compete with Salana pay and Base
Speaker 1: on merchant adoption. 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 worried about right now? Three things on my radar. First,
Speaker 1: the basis trade unwind CME futures at a fourteen month low.
Speaker 1: While spot price holds looks fine until you think about
Speaker 1: what that trade was doing. It was a structural buyer.
Speaker 1: When it exits, you don't get a crash, you get
Speaker 1: a slow drain of institutional bid that only shows up
Speaker 1: when price needs support and finds none. That's the quiet risk. Second,
Speaker 1: geopolitical headline dependency is a two way door. Bitcoins move
Speaker 1: above seventy two thousand this week was driven by ceasefire
Speaker 1: optimism and a raw noise not on chain fundamentals. Markets
Speaker 1: that price in geopolitical relief can reprice just as fast
Speaker 1: when the headline reverses, the ceasefire was already fraying within
Speaker 1: forty eight hours. That's a fragile foundation. Third, and this
Speaker 1: one's hiding in plain sight. Polymarket is pricing about a
Speaker 1: twenty four and a half percent chance of just one
Speaker 1: FED rate cut all year. Higher for Longer isn't a crisis.
Speaker 1: It's a slow grind that keeps institutional capital in T
Speaker 1: bills instead of bitcoin ETFs. The crypto bowl case assumes
Speaker 1: some macro relief. If that relief doesn't come, the ceiling
Speaker 1: on this rally is lower than most people are modeling
Speaker 1: and looking ahead. Three things to watch in the next
Speaker 1: few days. Tomorrow is us CPI, with polymarket pricing almost
Speaker 1: no FED cuts this year. A hot inflation print validates
Speaker 1: the higher for longer thesis and could pressure risk assets,
Speaker 1: including bitcoin. A cool print reopens the rate cut narrative.
Speaker 1: This one actually moves markets. Saturday, there's a polymarket contract
Speaker 1: expiring on whether bitcoin hits seventy eight thousand dollars by
Speaker 1: April eleventh. Right now, that's priced at one point three
Speaker 1: percent probability if Bitcoin somehow got there. The short squeeze
Speaker 1: across derivatives would be significant. Probably doesn't happen, but worth
Speaker 1: knowing the level and keep watching securitize if they file
Speaker 1: an S one or equivalent in the next few weeks.
Speaker 1: While tokenized real world asset total value locked keeps growing,
Speaker 1: that space gets a publicly traded benchmark for the first time.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of thing that changes how institutional investors
Speaker 1: think about the whole category. If you want the full
Speaker 1: written breakdown all the data, the sources, the watchnext flags,
Speaker 1: check out our newsletter at tokenmetrics dot com. And if
Speaker 1: you're finding this useful, subscribing to the podcast is the
Speaker 1: best way to make sure you don't miss an episode.
Speaker 1: This is educational content, not investment advice. Always do your
Speaker 1: own research. I'm Alex, See you next time.