Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alex with the Token Metrics Daily Pulse for
Speaker 1: May twenty second, twenty twenty six. We've got a lot
Speaker 1: to get through today, from a major prediction market hack
Speaker 1: to some serious shifts in Ethereum's leadership. Grab a coffee,
Speaker 1: settle in, and let's dive right in. But first a
Speaker 1: quick word from our sponsor. Okay, so here's what's happening.
Speaker 1: Polymarket just lost seven hundred grand to an exploit. Ackers
Speaker 1: targeted an internal top up wallet and drained it. Bitcoins
Speaker 1: basically glued to seventy seven thousand, and alt coins are
Speaker 1: catching bids anyway, which is honestly kind of impressive with
Speaker 1: the majors completely asleep. So where does that leave the
Speaker 1: rest of the market. Bitcoin's flat around seventy seven k,
Speaker 1: Ethereum's doing nothing near twenty one hundred. Total market cap
Speaker 1: is basically unchanged at two point six trillion. Fearing Greed
Speaker 1: is at twenty eight that's still fear territory. But funding
Speaker 1: rates are bullish and open interest is climbing, so traders
Speaker 1: are getting ready even if prices aren't moving yet. The
Speaker 1: narrative board is lit up. Arcade games are leading up
Speaker 1: over fifty percent action games and the Growpad ecosystem are
Speaker 1: both up more than forty percent. Data availability is rising too,
Speaker 1: led by near Protocol up big after its AI and
Speaker 1: privacy upgrades. Even the Venus ecosystem joined the party. It's
Speaker 1: a risk on day for NIE sectors and there's one
Speaker 1: move worth putting on your radar. The S and P
Speaker 1: five hundred led majors this week up just under one percent.
Speaker 1: When crypto's stuck, any equity bid matters, it means risk
Speaker 1: appetite is still alive. The crypto read is simple. Firm
Speaker 1: stocks give bitcoin a floor. If equities roll over, Crypto
Speaker 1: likely follows. For the full chart breakdown and risk scenarios,
Speaker 1: this is the deeper version. The full macro regime walk
Speaker 1: through and what it means for your crypto allocation is
Speaker 1: in the month of playbook Alpha trial at tokenmetrics dot com.
Speaker 1: Let's get into the stories driving everything today. Polymarket got
Speaker 1: drained for seven hundred K from an internal top up wallet.
Speaker 1: It's a suspected private key hack. The takeaway is that
Speaker 1: user funds and core contracts are safe, but the timing
Speaker 1: is brutal. Polymarket is pushing into Japan right and Japan's
Speaker 1: gambling laws already make that tricky. A hack doesn't exactly
Speaker 1: help the regulatory conversation. If trading volume stays normal and
Speaker 1: users aren't fleeing, the market treats it as isolated. If
Speaker 1: volume drops twenty percent or withdrawal issues pop up, confidence
Speaker 1: is cracking, then there's Ethereum. In plain English, this is
Speaker 1: a hostile takeover proposal from the technical community. Dankrad Feist,
Speaker 1: a former Foundation researcher, wants a one billion dollar Ethereum
Speaker 1: advocacy group with a leader who actually wants to fight.
Speaker 1: They're frustrated with the Foundation's direction. When your own researchers
Speaker 1: start publicly plotting your replacement, that's an identity crisis. If
Speaker 1: big Ethereum holders back this with real money, it becomes
Speaker 1: a governance threat. If it's just noise, the Foundation can
Speaker 1: ignore it. Near Protocol is having a moment. It's up
Speaker 1: twenty eight percent today and forty five percent this week
Speaker 1: after rolling out privacy AI and scaling upgrades. This isn't
Speaker 1: just another layer two story. Near Protocol is chasing the
Speaker 1: AI settlement layer niche that everyone wants but nobody owns,
Speaker 1: which means the market is betting that AI plus privacy
Speaker 1: is the combo that actually matters. If near protocol holds
Speaker 1: above seven point fifty, while Bitcoin and ethereum go nowhere.
Speaker 1: This narrative has legs if it gives back half the
Speaker 1: gain in three days. It was just hot money chasing hype.
Speaker 1: Blockchain dot Com filed confidentially for a US public listing.
Speaker 1: It's one of the oldest crypto wallets and exchanges out there.
Speaker 1: This isn't a coinbase rerun. Blockchain dot Com is more
Speaker 1: international and retail heavy. The real question is whether public
Speaker 1: markets still want crypto exposure after the twenty twenty two hangover.
Speaker 1: If the valuation comes out above ten billion, appetite is
Speaker 1: back below eight billion, investors are still scarred. Finally, traditional
Speaker 1: finance and crypto are officially tying the knot. A major
Speaker 1: crypto exchange partnered with the parent company of the New
Speaker 1: York Stock Exchange to bring never expiring oil futures to cryptotraders.
Speaker 1: This is institutional infrastructure that actually matters, real commodities, real
Speaker 1: regulated markets. Hyper Liquid already proved this model works. The
Speaker 1: question is whether one hundred and twenty million retail traders
Speaker 1: actually want to trade oil, or if they just want crypto.
Speaker 1: If daily volume tops one hundred million in thirty days,
Speaker 1: crypto users want real assets. If it's days under twenty million,
Speaker 1: it was just a press release, So what should you
Speaker 1: actually be worried about? All right, before we get into
Speaker 1: the risks, quick word from our sponsor. Okay, we're back.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what to watch for. Prediction market security
Speaker 1: is a real concern. Polymarkets seven hundred k exploits shows
Speaker 1: growing pains as they chase institutional adoption. Then there's ethereum
Speaker 1: governance fragmentation. Dankrad Feist's billion dollar proposal signals a deepening
Speaker 1: rift between the Foundation and the technical community, and these
Speaker 1: alt coin shifts are fragile. Fear and greed is that
Speaker 1: twenty eight and bitcoin dominance is dropping. That suggests money
Speaker 1: is flowing to smaller tokens, but without fresh capital, these
Speaker 1: moves can reverse fast. Security breaches and governance fights are
Speaker 1: exposing structural cracks as crypto pushes mainstream. That flips if
Speaker 1: polymarket recovers smoothly and the Foundation addresses Feis directly and
Speaker 1: looking ahead funstrats, Tom Lee thinks trillions in new company
Speaker 1: listings from SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI won't crash the S
Speaker 1: and P five hundred, he argues under allocated investors will
Speaker 1: absorb it if he's right. Risk appetite stays intact if
Speaker 1: he's wrong. Watch out below. Quick up Dave from our world.
Speaker 1: If you held TMAI on Gate, dot Io, Bitpanda or MXC,
Speaker 1: the exchangeholder migration path is now open. Check your eligibility. Also,
Speaker 1: our hidden Gems feature is live for low cap tooken discovery.
Speaker 1: It's already in the platform. For those of you who
Speaker 1: are serious about your portfolio. Token Metrics Roundtable gives you
Speaker 1: private AI portfolio reviews, live monthly discussions, and everything in
Speaker 1: our alpha plan. Head to tokenmetrics dot com to see
Speaker 1: if it's a fit. This is educational content, not investment ADVI,
Speaker 1: always do your own research. I'm Alex, See you next time.