Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alex with the Token Metrics Daily Pulse for
Speaker 1: April tenth, twenty twenty six. Trump's DeFi project that's decentralized
Speaker 1: finance basically crypto lending and borrowing, borrowed seventy five million
Speaker 1: dollars against its own token on a protocol its own
Speaker 1: advisor helped build. Justin Sun is sitting on eighty million
Speaker 1: in losses, and a big inflation report drops today that
Speaker 1: could shake the whole market. Let's get into it, but
Speaker 1: first a quick word from our sponsor. Okay, so here's
Speaker 1: what's happening. So Bitcoin is sitting just above seventy three thousand,
Speaker 1: up a couple percent on the day. Quiet, almost boring,
Speaker 1: And that's fine because the real story today isn't Bitcoin.
Speaker 1: It's World Liberty Financial, the Trump backed crypto project which
Speaker 1: just borrowed seventy five million dollars using its own token
Speaker 1: as collateral, which means they basically use their own digital
Speaker 1: currency as a deposit to take out a loan on
Speaker 1: a lie lending platform where one of their own advisors
Speaker 1: helped found the company. That's not just a conflict of interest,
Speaker 1: that's a conflict of interest. Wearing a tuxedo and asking
Speaker 1: you to admire its cuff links, and justin Sun's frozen
Speaker 1: position in that same token already down more than eighty
Speaker 1: million according to on chain data from bubble Maps, which
Speaker 1: is essentially a tool that maps out who owns what
Speaker 1: on the blockchain. The team is publicly brushing off liquidation fears,
Speaker 1: which is exactly what you say right before liquidation becomes
Speaker 1: a real conversation. So where does that leave the rest
Speaker 1: of the market. Well, the broader market is holding up
Speaker 1: fine on the surface, Bitcoin at seventy three thousand, Ethereum
Speaker 1: just under twenty three hundred, Solana around eighty five dollars,
Speaker 1: total market cap sitting at about two and a half trillion,
Speaker 1: all up a couple percent, nothing dramatic. But here's what's
Speaker 1: actually worth paying attention to Bitcoin dominance, which is just
Speaker 1: a share of the total crypto market that Bitcoin represents,
Speaker 1: is locked at fifty seven percent, hasn't moved, and yet
Speaker 1: Solana and Ethereum are both outpacing Bitcoin on the day.
Speaker 1: The takeaway is that money is quietly rotating into other assets,
Speaker 1: even if it's not a full blown al coin season.
Speaker 1: Yet the other number that caught my eye defied total
Speaker 1: value locked, which means the total amount of money sitting
Speaker 1: in crypto lending and trading protocols is basically flat at
Speaker 1: ninety six billion. Given the WLFI situation, that's either reassuring
Speaker 1: or it means the fallout hasn't priced in yet, probably
Speaker 1: the former, hopefully. Okay, So here's the bigger picture on
Speaker 1: what's actually moving narratives right now. Let's start with the
Speaker 1: regulatory story that's getting buried under the WLFI drama because
Speaker 1: it shouldn't be. Treasury Secretary Bessen went to the Senate
Speaker 1: this week and called crypto resistant leaders nihilists. That's not
Speaker 1: diplomatic language. That's a signal the administration is done being
Speaker 1: polite about legislative timelines, and Coinbase publicly backed something called
Speaker 1: the Clarity Act alongside him. Why this matters. The Clarity
Speaker 1: Act would define which tokens or commodities and which are securities,
Speaker 1: which means it would finally answer the legal question that
Speaker 1: stopped banks and big institutions from launching crypto products for
Speaker 1: three years. If this passes, it doesn't just help Coinbase,
Speaker 1: it unlocks a wave of products that compliance teams have
Speaker 1: had sitting in draft folders since twenty twenty one. Watch
Speaker 1: the Senate Banking Committee this week. If they schedule a
Speaker 1: vote or even a hearing, that's the most significant US
Speaker 1: cryptoregulatory development in years. If they stay quiet after Besson's testimony,
Speaker 1: it was theater, not pressure. Now back to World Liberty
Speaker 1: Financial because the structure here is worth understanding. They borrowed
Speaker 1: seventy five million using their own token as collateral on
Speaker 1: a protocol their own advisor co founded, which means the
Speaker 1: same people who created the token are also running the
Speaker 1: platform that accepted it as a deposit. This circular logic
Speaker 1: borrow against your own token on your own protocol. It
Speaker 1: looks fine until it doesn't, and the tell will be
Speaker 1: the next forty eight hours. If the team posts collateral
Speaker 1: top ups or repayments, meaning they add more assets or
Speaker 1: pay down the loan they're managing it silence means they're
Speaker 1: not a forced liquidation of a position. This size doesn't
Speaker 1: stay contained. It reprices collateral across adjacent positions in the
Speaker 1: lending market. That's the contagion risk and why this matters
Speaker 1: beyond just one project. Okay, shifting to Bitten, Sir Tao.
Speaker 1: That's the token for the Bittencer Network, which is basically
Speaker 1: a decentralized marketplace for AI computing power, dropped fifteen percent
Speaker 1: after a firm called Covenant AI publicly called the network
Speaker 1: decentralization theater before exiting. The takeaway is this for a
Speaker 1: project whose entire value proposition is decentralized AI compute. That's
Speaker 1: not a minor critique. It's an attack on the core thesis.
Speaker 1: Analysts are flagging a potential further forty five percent decline
Speaker 1: if the narrative holds. Bittenser's response or lack of one,
Speaker 1: will define whether this is a speed bump or something
Speaker 1: more structural. Quick one. On World Sam Altman's IRIS scanning project,
Speaker 1: they're cutting the unlock rate for their world coin token
Speaker 1: by more than forty percent starting in July, which means
Speaker 1: fewer tokens will be released into the market each month.
Speaker 1: Less supply hitting the market sounds bullish on the surface,
Speaker 1: but the second order question is why now the token
Speaker 1: has been under sustained price pressure and slowing unlocks is
Speaker 1: the lever to slow the bleeding. It's the token equivalent
Speaker 1: of a company pausing its stock buy back to stop
Speaker 1: the chart from looking worse. The real tell is whether
Speaker 1: the team pairs this with any demand side catalyst, new partnerships,
Speaker 1: expanded integrations, anything that makes people want to hold the
Speaker 1: token rather than just not sell it. And then there's
Speaker 1: the narrative rotation down, which is honestly the most interesting
Speaker 1: macro signal today. Meme tokens up nineteen percent in seven
Speaker 1: days deepin. That's decentralized physical infrastructure think wireless networks and
Speaker 1: storage built on crypto rails up thirteen percent. AI tokens
Speaker 1: up eight percent. Here's what's interesting. This is happening while
Speaker 1: bitcoin dominance holds at fifty seven percent, so this isn't
Speaker 1: broad all coin season yet, it's specific pockets of speculative heat.
Speaker 1: The Meme surge could be retail coming back, or it
Speaker 1: could be leverage speculators chasing momentum before the music stops.
Speaker 1: The deepin move is more interesting structurally, real world infrastructure
Speaker 1: tokens gaining historically happens when the narrative shifts from crypto
Speaker 1: is speculative to crypto has utility. Two very different stories.
Speaker 1: One of them is more durable than the other, and
Speaker 1: a few quick hits before we get to risk. Hong
Speaker 1: Kong just granted its first batch of stable coin licenses,
Speaker 1: which means A is moving faster on regulatory clarity than
Speaker 1: the US And that's exactly the competitive pressure Besent is
Speaker 1: trying to use to push the clarity act through Telegram's
Speaker 1: Ton network is building crypto payments directly into the app
Speaker 1: for its nine hundred million users. That's the largest potential
Speaker 1: on ramp in the industry if the network can handle
Speaker 1: it when it actually arrives. And okx founder Star Shu
Speaker 1: publicly called cz a liar this week with a one
Speaker 1: billion dollar bet reportedly behind it, the two largest crypto
Speaker 1: exchange founders are in open conflict. That's a lot, all right,
Speaker 1: before 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 watching for? Risk? Three things. First,
Speaker 1: memes up nineteen percent and seven days, while bitcoin dominance
Speaker 1: stays elevated. That combination historically precedes sharp mean reversion in
Speaker 1: the speculative layer, which means the high beta stuff the
Speaker 1: riskiest assets tend to fall hard and fast when Bitcoin
Speaker 1: even hiccups. Second, the WLFI circular borrow structure seventy five
Speaker 1: million borrowed against their own token on their own protocol.
Speaker 1: If that position gets forced into liquidation, meaning the platform
Speaker 1: automatically sells their collateral to cover the loan, it doesn't
Speaker 1: stay contained. It reprices collateral across adjacent lending positions. That's
Speaker 1: the DeFi contagent scenario nobody wants to think about on
Speaker 1: a green day. Third, and this is the one I'm
Speaker 1: watching most closely today, CPI data is dropping. CPI is
Speaker 1: the Consumer Price Index, basically the government's main measure of
Speaker 1: inflation prediction. Markets have June rate cut probability at just
Speaker 1: eight and a half percent nearly a million dollars in
Speaker 1: volume behind that view. If inflation prints hot today, that
Speaker 1: expectation doesn't need to move much to hurt risk assets.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin at seventy three thousand is pricing in a benign
Speaker 1: macro environment. That assumption gets tested today. Looking ahead, CPI
Speaker 1: is the immediate one that's today or tomorrow, and it's
Speaker 1: the macro event that either validates Bitcoin's hold at seventy
Speaker 1: three thousand or cracks it. Then watch the Senate Banking
Speaker 1: Committee next week for any Clarity Act movement following Besen's testimony,
Speaker 1: and keep an eye on World Liberty Financial in the
Speaker 1: next forty eight hours. Collateral top ups mean they're managing it.
Speaker 1: Silence means they're not. That's the clock that's ticking right now.
Speaker 1: If you found this useful, the best thing you can
Speaker 1: do is share it with someone who's trying to make
Speaker 1: sense of crypto right now. And if you want daily
Speaker 1: market signals and weekly breakdowns, head to tokenmetrics dot com
Speaker 1: to learn more about what we offer. As always, this
Speaker 1: is educational content, not investment advice. Do your own research
Speaker 1: before making any financial decisions. I'm Alex, See you next time.