1st May 2026 > > Glassnode, Meta, & Senate.
- May 1
- 3 min read
tl;dr
On-chain analytics suggest we could stall in price for a while. Meta is pivoting to a stablecoin system of payments. The US Senate has just damned all its staff.
Market Snap
Market Wrap
I can’t bear to look but all the techies will be out in force claiming any number of future predictions based upon BTC’s closing price at midnight EST. As if that means anything at all. It is all very sad that so much time and energy is wasted by these people selling nothing more than snake oil.
Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – On-chain analytics
Instead of spending time listening to snake-oil salesmen, use that time productively and read Glassnode’s take:
The “Short-Term Holder Cost Basis” is currently sitting at $79k. Some of these short-term coins are owned by diamond hands and are not for sale anytime soon. Plenty of them will be owned by speculative retail buyers who panic at the sight of red (I always see that as a buying opportunity) and are happy to get out at flat. This means there is a wall of selling pressure at $79k which is graphically illustrated here:
Another metric used by Glassnode is the “24-hour SMA of STH Realized Profit” which accelerated from $1mm per hour to $4mm per hour as the price approached $79k. This reinforces our knowledge of both the existence of the wall, and its strength.
All other things being equal, which they never are, this selling wall is going to take some time to clear.
Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Meta
Now that Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has ditched its widely ridiculed Metaverse (legless avatars anyone?) it is probably due for another name change.
Whatever, several years after abandoning its stablecoin Diem for entirely understandable regulatory reasons, Meta has teamed up with Stripe and Tempo to allow content creators in the Philippines to receive payments in USDC. Now, I know what you are thinking – that there is but one dominant form of content creation in the Philippines – but I guess we must all be wrong on that point.
The blockchains chosen are Solana or Polygon, both of which have super-fast settlement times at mere fractions of a cent enabling micro-payments to be as efficient as much larger ones, a key advantage of blockchain technology over TradFi settlement systems.
With 3 billion users across its various platforms, this is Meta’s first small step in support of the ever-accelerating stablecoin revolution. It won’t be the last.
Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Prediction markets
Prediction markets have had some bad press of late. Accusations of insider dealing regarding the ousting of ex-President of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro followed by the recent arrest of a special forces soldier is not a good look. Markets that allowed bets to be laid on the outcome of the Iran war were met with appropriately furious opprobrium. The move by some states to outlaw prediction markets was ironically highly predictable but difficult to enforce in a world of VPNs and self-custodial wallets.
The Senate has unanimously passed Resolution 708 – introduced by Senator Bernie Moreno, no fan of cryptos – that bans senators and their staff from using prediction markets for political outcomes, in recognition that insider dealing is always a temptation to some. Moreno makes the point furiously:
"United States Senators have no business engaging in speculative activities like prediction markets while collecting a taxpayer-funded paycheck, period. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a side hustle."
He is right but what does it say about government workers when they must be forcibly reminded of what should be a non-negotiable base of moral and ethical behaviour?
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