Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alex with the Token Metrics daily polls from
Speaker 1: March thirteenth, twenty twenty six. Got a lot to cover today,
Speaker 1: and honestly, the headline kind of says it all. Bitcoin's
Speaker 1: up while stocks are down and the dollar is strengthening.
Speaker 1: That's not supposed to happen. So let's get into it.
Speaker 1: But first, a quick word from our sponsor. Okay, So
Speaker 1: here's what's happening. Okay, So the big one Bitcoin just
Speaker 1: crossed seventy two thousand dollars, up a few percent on
Speaker 1: the day, while US equity futures slipped and the dollar
Speaker 1: got stronger. And here's why that matters. For three years,
Speaker 1: the playbook has been dollar up, crypto down, risk off
Speaker 1: means everything sells together. Today that playbook got thrown out
Speaker 1: the window. Bitcoin climbed, stocks didn't. That's a decoupling, and
Speaker 1: those don't happen by accident. There are two ways to
Speaker 1: read this. Either institutional allocators are finally treating Bitcoin like
Speaker 1: digital gold, a macro hedge that hold hold when everything
Speaker 1: else wabbles. Or there's a short squeeze building under the surface,
Speaker 1: and this reverse is hard. The geopolitical backdrop is adding
Speaker 1: fuel two. Middle East tensions are lifting oil prices and
Speaker 1: Bitcoin is still climbing. Correlated assets don't do this. Something's shifting.
Speaker 1: So where does that leave the rest of the market.
Speaker 1: Pretty Much everything is green, which is either a great
Speaker 1: sign or a warning, depending on how you read it.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin's sitting around seventy three thousand, Ethereum's up a few
Speaker 1: percent two hovering just above twenty one hundred, so la
Speaker 1: Na's up a few percent. Total market cap is around
Speaker 1: two and a half trillion. Now here's the number I'm
Speaker 1: actually watching. Bitcoin dominance is at fifty seven percent. That's elevated.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting is alts are rallying alongside it, not
Speaker 1: because they're leading, but because they're along for the ride.
Speaker 1: When dominance stays high and alts pump anyway, it usually
Speaker 1: means leverage is building across the board. That's not always
Speaker 1: a bad thing, but it's something to keep an eye on.
Speaker 1: The narrative tracker is also flashing some wild numbers. Data
Speaker 1: availability tokens are up over thirty percent, AI tokens up
Speaker 1: over twenty seven, meme coins up over twenty two. Everything
Speaker 1: is green, and when everything moves together like this, it's
Speaker 1: worth asking whether it's fundamentals or just momentum chasing. All right,
Speaker 1: so what's actually driving all this? Let me walk you
Speaker 1: through the stories that matter today first, and this one's
Speaker 1: the thread running through everything. Bitcoin is passing a geopolitical
Speaker 1: stress test. Token twenty forty nine. Dubai just got postponed
Speaker 1: to twenty twenty seven because Iranian strikes disrupted travel and
Speaker 1: security in the UAE. That's not a minor scheduling conflict.
Speaker 1: That's a major cryptoconference fleeing a war risk, and yet
Speaker 1: Bitcoin is up. Analysts are pointing out that an Iran
Speaker 1: war oil shock it actually hit bitcoin miners through price,
Speaker 1: not energy costs, because roughly ninety percent of global hash
Speaker 1: rate runs on electricity markets that are insulated from oil.
Speaker 1: So the minor thesis is more resilient than the headline suggests.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. The broader risk off sentiment that
Speaker 1: geopolitical escalation triggers, that's less resilient. Bitcoin holding through this
Speaker 1: is either the gold narrative finally clicking, or the market
Speaker 1: hasn't fully priced the tail risk yet. One more layer,
Speaker 1: Chainalysis is reporting that Iranian crypto outflows spiked after air
Speaker 1: strikes sanctioned actors using crypto as a pressure valve that
Speaker 1: historically draws regulatory attention. So file that one away. Second
Speaker 1: story black Rocks staked Ethereum ETF ticker eth B pulled
Speaker 1: in fifteen million dollars on its first day of trading.
Speaker 1: Now fifteen million sounds modest, but think about what it
Speaker 1: actually represents the first time the major asset manager has
Speaker 1: wrapped staking yield inside a regulated product and put it
Speaker 1: in front of institutions. This isn't just an ETF launch,
Speaker 1: it's Wall Street putting ethereums yield on the menu next
Speaker 1: to t bills. GBTC did modest numbers early too, and
Speaker 1: we know how that story ended. The more important question
Speaker 1: is how is buying retail via brokerage accounts. Nice pension
Speaker 1: funds and endowments getting their first taste of staking yield
Speaker 1: and a familiar wrapper. That's a structural shift. Ethereum is
Speaker 1: still well below its all time high, which means the
Speaker 1: yield story is landing, while the price story hasn't fully
Speaker 1: played out yet. The first week of daily inflow data
Speaker 1: is going to tell us a lot third This one
Speaker 1: is wild. A crypto trader lost nearly fifty million dollars
Speaker 1: on a NAVE trade and got a six hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars fee refund as consolation. That's the DeFi equivalent of
Speaker 1: losing your house at the casino and getting a free
Speaker 1: buffet voucher. What happened. The trader executed a massive position
Speaker 1: and got destroyed by slippage, the kind of loss that
Speaker 1: happens when you're moving size that the protocol's liquidity simply
Speaker 1: can't absorb cleanly. Here's the second order read. Though AVE
Speaker 1: has over twenty five billion dollars in total value locked,
Speaker 1: it's the largest DeFi lending protocol on the planet. A
Speaker 1: single trader losing fifty million to slippage tells you two
Speaker 1: things simultaneously. One, defile liquidity, even at this scale, has
Speaker 1: hard limits. Two, someone was trading size that belongs on
Speaker 1: a prime brokerage desk, not a smart contract. The protocol
Speaker 1: worked exactly as designed. The human made a very expensive mistake.
Speaker 1: That distinction matters for how you think about DeFi risk.
Speaker 1: Fourth story, and this one's quietly huge. HSBC and Standard
Speaker 1: Chartered are reportedly first in line for Hong Kong's stable
Speaker 1: coin licenses. These are not cryptonative companies. HSBC is one
Speaker 1: of the largest banks in the world by assets. Standard
Speaker 1: chartered is the connective tissue of trade finance across Asia, Africa,
Speaker 1: and the Middle East. If either of these institutions issues
Speaker 1: a regulated stable coin, it doesn't compete with Tether or
Speaker 1: USDC on crypto rails. It competes with correspondent banking on
Speaker 1: traditional rails. That's a completely different game. Hong Kong is
Speaker 1: quietly becoming the jurisdiction where traditional finance and crypto actually merge,
Speaker 1: not just coexist. The US is still debating stable coin legislation,
Speaker 1: Hong Kong is handing out licenses to HSBC. Let that
Speaker 1: sink in and a few quick hits before we move on.
Speaker 1: The CFTC issued new guidance for prediction market operators, and
Speaker 1: the signal here is that they want to shape the space,
Speaker 1: not shut it down. That's a meaningful shift from enforcement
Speaker 1: first posture. Vtah Lick Boo tear In publicly questioned the
Speaker 1: future of Life Institute after they liquidated his shiba Eno donation,
Speaker 1: a rare public rebuke from crypto's most prominent don't The
Speaker 1: US Treasury sanctioned more North Korea crypto facilitation networks continuing
Speaker 1: the pattern of using blockchain traceability to freeze state sponsored laundering,
Speaker 1: and a new DeFi protocol called AMLGAM launched on main net,
Speaker 1: combining lending, borrowing, and trading into a single liquidity system.
Speaker 1: Worth watching if you're tracking DeFi infrastructure. 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. So
Speaker 1: what should you actually be worried about? Three things on
Speaker 1: my radar right now. First, geopolitical tail risk is being
Speaker 1: ignored by price action token twenty forty nine. Dubai got
Speaker 1: postponed over Iranian strike risk. Bitcoin is up anyway, markets
Speaker 1: are either correctly pricing crypto as a safe haven or
Speaker 1: incorrectly dismissing escalation risk. If Middle East tensions spike further,
Speaker 1: the correlation to risk off assets could snap back fast,
Speaker 1: and the traders who bought the digital gold narrative will
Speaker 1: be the ones selling. Second. Bitcoin dominance at fifty seven
Speaker 1: percent with alts rallying is a fragile setup. When dominance
Speaker 1: stays elevated and alts pump alongside it, it usually means
Speaker 1: leverage is building across the board, not genuine rotation. If
Speaker 1: Bitcoin stalls, the alts that ran hardest on leverage will
Speaker 1: give it back fastest. Third, and this one's a near
Speaker 1: term volatility flag. There's a three billion dollar options cluster
Speaker 1: sitting just above current bitcoin price levels. That's not a
Speaker 1: directional signal, it's a volatility signal. Options xperies of this
Speaker 1: size create gamma exposure for market makers who have to
Speaker 1: hedge dynamically. The move, when it comes could be faster
Speaker 1: and larger than the underlying news warrants in either direction.
Speaker 1: And looking ahead, here's what's on my radar for the
Speaker 1: next few days. That three billion dollar options expiry trigger
Speaker 1: is the most immediate one. It could force a big
Speaker 1: move as early as tomorrow. Watch the Blackrock EFB inflow
Speaker 1: data closely this week. Sustain daily inflows would confirm real
Speaker 1: institutional demand for yield bearing crypto products, and a rapid
Speaker 1: tapering would tell you the launch was a news event
Speaker 1: without follow through. And on the regulatory front, Hong Kong's
Speaker 1: stable coin licensed decisions for HSBC and Standard Chartered are
Speaker 1: expected within thirty days. If those go through, watch for
Speaker 1: Singapore to follow within sixty days. Asia tends to move
Speaker 1: in clusters on financial regulation. By the way, if you
Speaker 1: want the full written breakdown with all the sources and charts,
Speaker 1: check out our newsletter at tokenmetrics dot com. It's all there.
Speaker 1: This is educational content, not investment advice. Always do your
Speaker 1: own research. I'm Alex, See you next time.