Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alex with the Token Metrics Daily Pulse for
Speaker 1: February twenty first, twenty twenty six. Okay, so today's one
Speaker 1: of those days where the headline numbers look fine, but
Speaker 1: the story underneath is kind of unsettling. We've got a
Speaker 1: massive tug of war between retail and institutions, some quiet
Speaker 1: SEC moves that could reshape stable coins, and a developer
Speaker 1: walkout that's putting billions of dollars at risk. We've got
Speaker 1: a lot to cover today, but first a quick message
Speaker 1: from our sponsor. Okay, so here's what's happening. Let's get
Speaker 1: into it. So here's the big picture. Bitcoin ETFs have
Speaker 1: now bled for five straight weeks, five totaling about three
Speaker 1: point eight billion dollars in net outflows. According to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot Com linkin show notes, roughly eight and a half
Speaker 1: billion has flowed out of US listed spot bitcoin ETFs
Speaker 1: since October. Blackrocks Ibit Fidelities Fund they're all seeing redemptions.
Speaker 1: But here's what's wild. Small wallets, your everyday retail holders.
Speaker 1: They've actually increased their bitcoin holdings by about two and
Speaker 1: a half percent since the all time high. Meanwhile, the whales,
Speaker 1: the big boys, they've been trimming, so retail is buying
Speaker 1: exactly what institutions are selling. And look, the last time
Speaker 1: we saw this kind of divergence was late twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: right before the bottom. That doesn't guarantee anything, but it's
Speaker 1: worth paying attention to. Now, where does that leave the
Speaker 1: actual numbers? Honestly, it's a green day, but barely. Bitcoin
Speaker 1: sitting around sixty eight thousand, Ethereum's just under two thousand
Speaker 1: and still can't seem to hold that level. Solana's at
Speaker 1: about eighty five bucks. Everything's up a couple percent, but
Speaker 1: don't mistake a small bounce for conviction. Bitcoin is still
Speaker 1: down over forty percent from its October peak of one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty six k. That's a bear mark by
Speaker 1: any traditional definition, and coindesk, dot com link and show
Speaker 1: notes pointed out something interesting. While Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs
Speaker 1: are bleeding, Solana ETFs actually saw inflows this week, small amounts,
Speaker 1: but it signals rotation within crypto, not a total exit.
Speaker 1: As for narratives, only memes are showing real strength y
Speaker 1: up about seven percent. Everything else, AI tokens down almost
Speaker 1: eighteen percent, deepin down nearly twenty percent. The pain is
Speaker 1: real out there, all right, So what's actually driving all this?
Speaker 1: Let me walk through the big stories first, and this
Speaker 1: one's important. Glass Note is saying Bitcoin has broken below
Speaker 1: what they call the true market mean, which sits around
Speaker 1: seventy nine K. Think of it as the average price
Speaker 1: where all active coins last changed hands. And when you're
Speaker 1: below at most recent buyers are underwater. The floor they're
Speaker 1: watching is the realized price at about fifty five K.
Speaker 1: So Bitcoin at sixty eight thousand is kind of treading
Speaker 1: water in the middle of this defensive zone. Not panic territory,
Speaker 1: but not comfortable either. And the whale behavior is concerning
Speaker 1: crypto quant confirms the largest holders keep sending coins to exchanges.
Speaker 1: That's the on chain equivalent of putting a four sales
Speaker 1: sign on your front lawn. App dot saniment, dot net
Speaker 1: naj soog link In show notes notes that the one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty k price calls are drying up, which
Speaker 1: they actually see as healthy. The moon boys have gone quiet,
Speaker 1: and historically that's when bottoms form. Okay, second story, but
Speaker 1: fog two and this one flew under the radar, but
Speaker 1: it might be the most important thing that happened this week.
Speaker 1: The SEC quietly issued guidance letting broker dealers apply a
Speaker 1: two percent haircut to proprietary stable coin positions. That basically
Speaker 1: means they're treating certain stable coins as near cash for
Speaker 1: capital requirements. Same day, pro Shares launched a stable coin
Speaker 1: ready money market ETF that did seventeen billion dollars in
Speaker 1: day one trading volume. Read those two headlines together. The
Speaker 1: SEC is telling brokers stable coins are basically cash, while
Speaker 1: pro Shares just built the bridge between traditional money markets
Speaker 1: and stable coin reserves. Seventeen billion in day one volume.
Speaker 1: That's not retail clicking buttons. That's institutions saying finally there's
Speaker 1: a compliant on ramp. The SEC is doing through guidance
Speaker 1: what Congress hasn't managed to do through legislation. Quiet effective
Speaker 1: and potentially more impactful than any stable coin bill sitting
Speaker 1: in committee right now. Third BNP Paraba, Europe's largest bank,
Speaker 1: launched a money market fund tokenization pilot on Ethereum main net.
Speaker 1: Not a private chain, not some enterprise blockchain. Nobody uses Ethereum.
Speaker 1: They're using a permissioned access layer on top of the
Speaker 1: public chain, which is exactly how institutional adoption was always
Speaker 1: going to work by public rails private gates. And here's
Speaker 1: the beautiful irony. Vitallic just announced that FOCIL, which stands
Speaker 1: for forced Inclusion Lists, has been officially scheduled for the
Speaker 1: next Ethereum upgrade. That's the the censorship resistance feature that
Speaker 1: makes Ethereum credible for exactly these kinds of institutional use cases.
Speaker 1: Banks need censorship resistance to trust the chain, and Ethereum
Speaker 1: is building it while banks are already showing up. The
Speaker 1: RWA narrative is down about nine percent on token prices
Speaker 1: this week, but the actual infrastructure buildout is accelerating. Price
Speaker 1: and fundamentals are telling completely different stories. And then there's
Speaker 1: this this one. Okay, this one caught me off. Guard
Speaker 1: ave's lead code contributor, BDG Labs rage quit. The DOW
Speaker 1: just walked out citing centralization concerns. All contributions stop April first,
Speaker 1: and AVEV three currently holds about twenty six billion dollars
Speaker 1: in total value locked. That makes it the largest lending
Speaker 1: protocol in all of DeFi. This is like your hospital's
Speaker 1: head surgeon walking out midshift because he doesn't like the
Speaker 1: board of directors. BDG Labs didn't leave over a technical disagreement.
Speaker 1: They left because they think the DOO is centralized, which
Speaker 1: is the original sin of organizations that pretend to be decentralized.
Speaker 1: While a handful of tokenholders call every shot, April first
Speaker 1: gives ave about five weeks to find a replacement or
Speaker 1: convince BDG to come back. The code doesn't stop working
Speaker 1: when the developers leave, But who is the next vulnerability?
Speaker 1: Who builds the next version for a protocol managing twenty
Speaker 1: six billion dollars? That's not a lot of runway quick hits.
Speaker 1: Before we move on, the Supreme Court struck down Trump's tariffs.
Speaker 1: A bitcoin bounced a bit on the news, but the
Speaker 1: bigger impact might be political, not immediately market moving. For
Speaker 1: crypto Mara, the bitcoin minor paid one hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: eight million for a majority stake in a French AI
Speaker 1: data center, continuing the trend of miners pivoting to AI
Speaker 1: compute and optimism is having a rough year. Base leaving
Speaker 1: the superchain ecosystem throws their entire value 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 how
Speaker 1: you proposition into question. So what should you actually be
Speaker 1: worried about right now? Three things on my radar. First, yes,
Speaker 1: Fourth sewings this retail versus institutione utional divergence. Small wallets
Speaker 1: are loading up while whales, trim and ETFs bleed almost
Speaker 1: four billion over five weeks. Retail conviction without institutional backing
Speaker 1: is how bear market rallies get built and then destroyed.
Speaker 1: The crowd feels brave right now, that's usually when the
Speaker 1: rug gets pulled. Blog dot Amber Data dot Yo link
Speaker 1: in show notes flagged that Blackrock saw only zero point
Speaker 1: two percent redemptions in ibit during the crash, So the
Speaker 1: institutional money that's still in is sticky, but the new
Speaker 1: money isn't coming. Second, Bitcoin is stuck in this defensive
Speaker 1: range between fifty five K and seventy nine K below
Speaker 1: the true market mean. Most recent buyers are underwater. There's
Speaker 1: no obvious catalyst to push back above seventy nine K,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of air between here and the
Speaker 1: realized price floor. Third far, and this is the wild card.
Speaker 1: All welcome Ave's developer exit twenty six billion in total value,
Speaker 1: locked with no lead development team after April first it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter until it does. If confidence cracks, the total
Speaker 1: value locked unwind could ripple across all of D five.
Speaker 1: Here's what's on my radar for the next few days.
Speaker 1: Monday's equity open is going to be huge worriams. The
Speaker 1: Supreme Court tariff ruling dropped Thursday, and we need to
Speaker 1: see if this is a sustained risk on catalyst or
Speaker 1: just a one day pop. Crypto tends to follow equities
Speaker 1: with a lag on macro driven moves. Also watching ETF
Speaker 1: flows closely. Next week five weeks of outflows totaling three
Speaker 1: point eight billion. A single day of meaningful inflows would
Speaker 1: break the streak and could trigger a positioning reset. And
Speaker 1: keep an eye out for brokerage announcements following that sec
Speaker 1: stable coin guidance. If major brokerages start announcing stable coin
Speaker 1: custody or trading, that guidance was the starting gun for
Speaker 1: something much bigger. That's the pulse for today. If you
Speaker 1: got something out of this, send it to a friend
Speaker 1: who's into crypto. That's the best way to support what
Speaker 1: we're doing here. This is educational content, not investment advice.
Speaker 1: Always do your own research. I'm Alex, see you next time,