Hey, it's Alex with the Token Metrics Daily Pulse for April fourth, twenty twenty six. The market looks calm on the surface, it is not calm underneath. Let's get into it, but first a quick word from our sponsor. Okay, so here's what's happening. Bitcoin is sitting right around sixty seven thousand dollars up less than one percent, basically flat. And if that's all you looked at today, you think nothing was happening. But here's what's actually going on under the hood.
Large holders, the whales who've been in this market since the last cycle, dumped nearly one hundred and eighty eight thousand bitcoin over the past ninety days. At the same time, net demand is contracting at sixty three thousand bitcoin per month. That means the market is losing more buyers than it's
gaining every single month, and yet institutions keep buying. So you've got this weird situation where the price holds, but the people selling are the ones who know this market best, and the people if buying are the ones who are newest to it. That's not a healthy handoff. That's old money cashing out into new money's excitement and Meanwhile, bears are piling into shorts, right into a potential squeeze, and that's exactly where we're headed next. So where does the
rest of the market stand? Pretty quiet, honestly, Thethereum barely moved. It's just over two thousand dollars, which is basically unchanged. Solana is around eighty dollars, up just under one percent. Total market cap is sitting around two point four trillion. Bitcoin dominance is a fifty six percent, which tells you all coins aren't getting much love right now. DeFi total
value locked is around ninety to three billion. Nothing screaming in either direction on price, but the narrative rotation underneath is interesting. Deepen that's decentralized physical infrastructure networks think wireless networks and storage run by tokenholders is up over twenty percent this week, meme coin up fourteen percent, AI tokens up nearly thirteen. Meanwhile, DeFi and smart contract platforms are
both down around five percent. So money is moving, it's just moving towards the speculative end of the spectrum, away from the infrastructure place. Make of that what you will. Prediction markets are also worth a look here. Sixty five and a half percent probability that bitcoin hits sixty thousand before it hits eighty thousand. The crowd is leaning bearish, but almost nobody is betting on a real crash. The odds of bitcoin touching forty thousand this month are basically
zero according to the markets. Bearish but not catastrophist. That's the vibe, all right, So what's actually driving all this? Let me walk you through the five stories that matter today. First, the demand picture. Five separate data sources are telling the same story about bitcoin right now, and it's not comfortable. Net demand is negatative sixty three thousand bitcoin per month.
Institutions are buying. That part's real, but the sellers are the large holders who've been here since the last cycle. The technical term for what's happening is supply absorption, which just means institutions are mopping up what whales are offloading. The price stays stable, but the underlying order book is slowly deflating. Think of it like a tire with a
slow leak. It looks fine until it doesn't. The number to watch if that net demand figure flips from negative to zero or above in the next week, the institutional bid is winning. If it stays negative while whale selling continues. The price support is borrowed, not built. Second story, and this one's a real tension. Bears are short into a squeeze setup. There's two and a half billion dollars in short liquidations stacked right around seventy two thousand dollars. Here's
why that matters. If Bitcoin rallies to that level for any reason, those shorts wiped out automatically, their forced by orders fuel to move higher. New longs pile in on the momentum, and suddenly a weak fundamentals market looks like a breakout. It's the oldest trick in crypto. The bears aren't wrong about the demand picture, we just covered that, but they might just be wrong about the timing, and
in this market, timing is everything. If bitcoin closes above about sixty nine and a half thousand on heavy volume in the next two days, the squeeze is probably starting. If it stalls below sixty eight thousand, bears survive and the weak demand story reasserts. Third Charles Schwab, This one's actually big. Schwab is planning to launch spot Bitcoin and Ethereum trading, not an ETF. Actual Spot trading in the first half of this year. Schwab has over thirty five
million brokerage accounts. That's your parents brokerage, your uncle's retirement account adjacent app When someone with the Schwab account can buy bitcoin the same way by applestock, the is crypto real conversation is over. The question just becomes which assets they offer next. Watch for an official launch data announcement this week. If they confirm before June thirtieth, expect a short term positive reaction in Bitcoin and Ethereum. Fourth Solana
and quantum computing. Okay, so this one's a bit more technical, but stay with me because it matters the short version. Quantum computers, if they get powerful enough, could theoretically crack the cryptography that protects crypto wallets. Google published research suggesting nearly seven million bitcoin are sitting in addresses that could be exposed now. Solana's specific problem is that its entire competitive advantage is speed. Post quantum cryptography, the kind of
encryption that would be quantum resistant is computationally heavier. Implementing it without slowing the chain down is an unsolved engineering problem. Ethereum is already planning for this. Bitcoin developers are still debating it. Solana is at least asking the right questions, but asking and solving are very different things. This isn't Tomorrow's problem, but it's not science fiction either. Fifth story
and this one reframes everything else. Large bitcoin holders the richest cohort lost an average of three hundred and thirty seven million dollars per day throughout all of Q one twenty twenty six, every single day for three months straight. Two things can be true at once. Institutions are buying with optimism about the future, and the people who've been in this market the longest are losing the most right now. When the people who know the most about this market
are on the wrong side of it. That's worth sitting with quick hits before we get to risks. Tether made delay of fundraising round. They're reportedly unwilling to accept evaluation below five hundred billion dollars, and institutional appetite might not be there at that number. That's a signal about how stretched private crypto valuations have gotten. Nevada extend its ban
on cal She's sports prediction markets. A judge ruled they're indistinguishable from gambling, which is a setback for the whole prediction market industry. Bitcoin minor Mara is cutting staff even while sitting on over a billion dollars in bitcoin. Operational costs are squeezing them even as their treasury appreciates. A DeFi lending protocol called high Profile got its domain hijacked.
Users were warned not to interact with the site. Classic DNS attack still one of the most underrated attack vectors in DeFi. And Leapwallet, one of the most used wallets in the Cosmos ecosystem, is shutting down another piece of infrastructure gone, which raises real questions about developer sustainability in smaller layer one ecosystems. All right, before we get into the risks, quick word from our sponsor. Okay, we're back. Let's talk about what to watch for. So what should
you actually be watching out for? Three things on my radar. One whale distribution into institutional demand. When large holders sell to ETF buyers, the price can stay stable while the ownership quality quietly degrades. Institutions are steady accumulators until something changes their thesis. If institutional flows slow while whales keep selling, there's no bid left to catch the price. Two the
short squeeze creating a false signal. A mechanical rally to seventy two thousand could look exactly like a trend reversal when it's actually just forced buying. If the squeeze fires without the demand fundamentals improving underneath it, anyone who chases that move is walking into a distribution event. Three. The quantum computing narrative moving faster than the protocols can respond. The Google headline about cracking Bitcoin in nine minutes is
already circulating widely. If that story gets amplified in a major media cycle, it could trigger panic selling from holders with older wallet formats, regardless of whether the actual threat is anywhere close to eminent. Narrative risk is real risk. Looking ahead at the next week. Three things I'm watching Schwab's official launch announcement. If they confirm a date before June thirtieth, that's a genuine catalyst for Bitcoin and ethereum.
The seventy two thousand dollars short squeeze level any session this week could be the one, and if it triggers, it moves fast. And Tether's fundraising decision. If they pull the rays rather than accept below their five hundred billion valuation, that's a sentiment read for the entire private crypto market, not just tether. That's the pulse for today. If you want the full written breakdown with all the charts and source links, head over to the newsletter at tokenmetrics dot com.
Everything we covered is there with the data behind it. And if you're finding this useful, subscribe to the podcast and share it with someone who's trying to make sense of this market. This is educational content, not in estment advice. Always do your own research. I'm Alex, See you next time.