Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alex with the Token Metrics daily pulls from
Speaker 1: May nineteenth, twenty twenty six. We've got a lot to
Speaker 1: unpack today, from a massive exploit on monad to some
Speaker 1: heavy selling in the bitcoin funds. It's a bit of
Speaker 1: a rough one, so let's get into it. But first
Speaker 1: a quick word from our sponsor. Okay, So here's what's happening.
Speaker 1: The big headline today is seventy six million dollars vanishing
Speaker 1: from Echo protocol. Someone found a way to trick the
Speaker 1: system into printing fake bitcoin out of thin air and
Speaker 1: then swapped it for the real thing. This matters because
Speaker 1: it brings the total loss to hacks this year to
Speaker 1: over three hundred million dollars. At the same time, the
Speaker 1: big bitcoin funds saw over six hundred million dollars walk
Speaker 1: out the door in a single day. People are feeling
Speaker 1: very nervous. The Fear and Greed Index is down to
Speaker 1: twenty five, which is deep into extreme fear territory. To
Speaker 1: top it off, a new law called the Clarity Act
Speaker 1: just got a last minute update that can make life
Speaker 1: very difficult for decentralized finance apps in the US. Looking
Speaker 1: at the numbers, bitcoin is holding steady around seventy seven thousand.
Speaker 1: It's not really moving much, but Ethereum and Salona are
Speaker 1: feeling more of the heat. Total market cap is sitting
Speaker 1: at two and a half trillion dollars. Bitcoin dominance is
Speaker 1: up at fifty eight percent, which means people are hiding
Speaker 1: in the big coin rather than taking risks on smaller ones.
Speaker 1: Total value locked in DeFi is around eighty three billion.
Speaker 1: One interesting thing is that stable coins supply has it changed.
Speaker 1: This tells us that even though people are scared, they
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily cashing out to the bank. They're just sitting
Speaker 1: on the sidelines waiting for a sign over. On the
Speaker 1: prediction markets, most people are betting that Ethereum stays above
Speaker 1: twenty one hundred for the day, but nobody is exactly
Speaker 1: betting on a big rally. Even with all this fear,
Speaker 1: some corners of the market are still moving. Analytics tokens
Speaker 1: jumped over one hundred percent this week, led by a
Speaker 1: project called super Fortune. Politify tokens are also up significantly.
Speaker 1: These are small categories, so a little bit of money
Speaker 1: makes a big splash. More importantly, the d pen sector,
Speaker 1: which is basically using crypto to build real world infrastructure
Speaker 1: is up twenty percent. AI tokens are also holding on
Speaker 1: to a sixteen percent gain. The takeaway here is that
Speaker 1: investors are getting much more picky. They're moving away from
Speaker 1: general hype and looking for specific themes that have a
Speaker 1: clear purpose. For today's Alpha spotlight, we're looking at gold.
Speaker 1: It's down about four percent this week. Usually when crypto
Speaker 1: investors get scared, they look at gold as a safe harbor,
Speaker 1: but right even gold is being sold off. This suggests
Speaker 1: we're in a risk off environment across the board, which
Speaker 1: means big investors are pulling back from everything, not just crypto.
Speaker 1: The full macro regime walk through and what it means
Speaker 1: for your crypto allocation is in the monthly playbook Alpha
Speaker 1: Trial at tokenmetrics dot com. Let's dive deeper into that
Speaker 1: Echo protocol hack. The attacker broke the mechanism that creates
Speaker 1: EBTC on the monod network. In plain English, they found
Speaker 1: a loophole to print money without putting up any collateral.
Speaker 1: This is a huge blow because it happened just as
Speaker 1: Congress is debating the Clarity Act. There's a new clause
Speaker 1: in that bill that could treat these protocols like traditional stockbrokers.
Speaker 1: If that sticks, many decentralized projects might have to block
Speaker 1: US users or shut down entirely because they aren't built
Speaker 1: to handle that kind of red tape. On the flip side,
Speaker 1: the SEC is actually softening its stance on tokenized stocks.
Speaker 1: This could eventually let you trade Apple or Tesla shares
Speaker 1: on a blockchain. Twenty four to seven bitgit wallet is
Speaker 1: already jumping on this for their ninety million users. Even
Speaker 1: Wall Street analysts are starting to change how they value
Speaker 1: crypto companies. TD Cowen recently raised their outlook for micro Strategy,
Speaker 1: not just because of bitcoin, but because they see the
Speaker 1: company as a new kind of financial platform. Finally, keep
Speaker 1: an eye on the Ethereum Foundation. Two more senior people
Speaker 1: just left, which is part of a larger wave of resignations.
Speaker 1: It's making people wonder if there's a shift happening in
Speaker 1: how Ethereum is managed behind the scenes. All right, before
Speaker 1: we get into the risks, quick word from our sponsor. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. Let's talk about what to watch for. We've
Speaker 1: got three main risks to watch. First. That fear and
Speaker 1: greed score of twenty five. When it stays this low
Speaker 1: for a while, it usually means buyers are too scared
Speaker 1: to step in, which can lead to a slow bleeding prices. Second,
Speaker 1: the Echo hack is the perfect excuse for regulators to
Speaker 1: get tough on DeFi. If we see more hacks, the
Speaker 1: chance of getting crypto friendly laws past this year drops fast. Third,
Speaker 1: there's a race happening with token ied stocks. If the
Speaker 1: US takes too long to set the rules, all that
Speaker 1: innovation and money will just move to offshore platforms. The
Speaker 1: big picture, we're waiting to see if the big bitcoin
Speaker 1: funds start buying again. If they do, and if that
Speaker 1: DeFi log gets fixed, the mood could flip very quickly.
Speaker 1: Looking ahead to the next week, keep your eyes peel
Speaker 1: for more details from the SEC on those token I
Speaker 1: stock rules. The specific fine print will decide which companies
Speaker 1: get to lead this new market. Also, watch for a
Speaker 1: post mortem report from the Echo protocol team. If they
Speaker 1: stay silent after losing seventy six million, it's a major
Speaker 1: red flag for the whole monad ecosystem. One quick update
Speaker 1: from our side, the hidden gems feature is now live
Speaker 1: on token Metrics. It's designed to help you find those
Speaker 1: low capped tokens that have strong data signals before they
Speaker 1: hit the mainstream. You can find that at tokenmetrics dot com.
Speaker 1: If you're not subscribed to the podcast yet, hit that
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Speaker 1: not investment advice. Always do your own research. I'm Alex,
Speaker 1: See you next time.