Cryptocurrency investment products faced heightened selling pressure last week as crypto funds recorded a second consecutive week of outflows amid ongoing negative sentiment in the markets.
CoinShares’ head of research, James Butterfill, attributed the sell-off to the ongoing negative crypto market trend following the Oct. 10 flash crash, along with uncertainty over a potential US interest rate cut in December.
ETP trading volumes stayed elevated at $43 billion for the week, Butterfill said, noting a brief recovery on Thursday amid optimism over the US government shutdown. However, renewed outflows returned on Friday as those hopes faded, he added.
Bitcoin outflows persist, Ether fails to hold ground
Mirroring the prior week, Bitcoin (BTC) ETPs led the outflows last week with $932 million, slightly down from $946 million the week before.
Ether (ETH) funds were unable to resist the negative momentum, posting $438 million in outflows after recording $57 million in inflows the previous week.
Crypto ETP flows by asset as of Friday (in millions of US dollars). Source: CoinShares
Short Bitcoin ETPs followed the negative trend, posting $11.8 million of inflows last week. “This coupled with similar inflows a couple of weeks ago mark the highest weekly since May 2025,” CoinShares’ Butterfill noted.
Solana, XRP defy the trend
Several altcoins remained resilient to the crypto ETP sell-off, led by Solana (SOL) with $118 million of inflows last week. Over the past nine weeks, inflows in SOL ETPs totaled $2.1 billion, Butterfill observed.
Other altcoins like XRP (XRP), Hedera (HBAR) and Hyperliquid (HYPE) also posted inflows, netting $28 million, $27 million and $4.2 million, respectively.
The Christmas rally, also known as the “Santa Claus rally,” refers to a recurring pattern in which crypto markets tend to rise during the final weeks of December and early January.
Several factors contribute to this trend, including improved investor sentiment during the festive season and year-end portfolio adjustments as traders and institutions rebalance their holdings. Lower liquidity during the holidays can also amplify price movements, adding to the rally’s momentum. Around Christmas, crypto investors often behave differently than they do throughout the rest of the year.
While this pattern first appeared in traditional stock markets, its influence has since extended to gold and, more recently, to Bitcoin (BTC). Each year, as global markets slow for the holidays, investors revisit the idea of a “Christmas rally.”
Both gold and Bitcoin are viewed as stores of value, but they tend to behave differently when liquidity tightens or market sentiment shifts. As December approaches, many investors debate which asset — gold or Bitcoin — is more likely to benefit from the seasonal uptrend.
What makes gold the classic store of value?
For centuries, people have relied on gold to protect their wealth from inflation, which erodes the value of fiat currencies. Central banks around the world also hold significant gold reserves as part of their long-term monetary and reserve management strategies.
Gold usually sees strong seasonal demand in the fourth quarter each year, driven by several factors:
Jewelry purchases in China and India ahead of festive seasons
Central bank reserve accumulation
Institutional year-end risk management and portfolio adjustments.
Historically, gold does not experience sharp gains in December; instead, it tends to rise gradually. During periods of recessionary concern or geopolitical tension, gold often outperforms more volatile assets. While its price reacts to macroeconomic conditions, gold rarely delivers the dramatic returns associated with cryptocurrencies.
Did you know? Gold requires vaults, insurance and secure transportation. Bitcoin, on the other hand, relies on private key management, which can be as simple as using a hardware wallet. Both present security challenges. Gold faces the risk of physical theft, while Bitcoin is vulnerable to cyberattacks.
What makes Bitcoin a digital store of value?
Bitcoin’s reputation as “digital gold” has grown significantly since November 2022, when it traded around $16,000. Since then, its price has risen steadily.
Bitcoin first surpassed the $100,000 mark on Dec. 5, 2024, reaching $103,679. It has crossed this level several times since, recording a peak valuation of just above $125,000 in October 2025.
Its capped supply of 21 million coins and decentralized structure make Bitcoin attractive as a hedge against monetary inflation. However, unlike gold, it is generally viewed as a higher-risk asset because it is entirely intangible. Its price can surge rapidly when sentiment is strong and decline sharply during periods of uncertainty.
Bitcoin has shown notable fourth-quarter performance trends over the years:
Did you know? Bitcoin trades 24/7, allowing investors to react instantly, even during the holiday season. This includes weekends when traditional markets remain closed.
What are the macro forces driving the Christmas rally?
The outcome of any Christmas rally largely depends on macroeconomic conditions. Key factors include Federal Reserve policy, inflation data and overall market liquidity.
The US Federal Reserve reduced the federal funds rate by 25 basis points (bps) at its October 2025 meeting, setting the new target range at 3.75%-4.00%. The move was in line with market expectations and followed a similar rate cut in September, bringing borrowing costs to their lowest level since late 2022.
Lower interest rates tend to weaken the US dollar and can increase investor appetite for alternative assets such as Bitcoin.
The US annual inflation rate rose to 3.0% in September 2025, up from 2.9% in August, according to official data. However, core inflation eased slightly to 3.0% from 3.1%.
Periods of elevated inflation often increase investor interest in alternative assets such as Bitcoin and gold.
In terms of liquidity, Bitcoin tends to respond more sharply than traditional assets. Even relatively small amounts of institutional inflows, including exchange-traded fund (ETF) purchases, can influence short-term price movements.
Did you know? Gold’s largest buyers include central banks, sovereign wealth funds and jewelers. Bitcoin’s most enthusiastic adopters are retail investors, tech entrepreneurs and younger generations who favor digital assets.
Case studies: When Bitcoin and gold performed
Historical market cycles highlight how Bitcoin and gold respond differently to changing economic conditions. These examples provide insight into when Bitcoin tends to outperform gold and when gold acts as the more dependable safe haven.
Case study: When Bitcoin shined
In 2020, governments introduced large-scale monetary stimulus to counter the economic slowdown caused by the pandemic. Investors turned to assets that could help preserve value as fiat currencies weakened. Gold rallied strongly early in the year, while Bitcoin gained momentum in the second half.
By December 2020, Bitcoin had closed near record highs around $29,000, whereas gold ended the year with modest gains near $1,900. This case study illustrates that during periods of abundant liquidity and low interest rates, Bitcoin has historically shown stronger performance than traditional stores of value like gold.
Case study: When gold ruled
Between 2021 and 2022, inflation surged, prompting central banks to respond with sharp interest rate hikes. Risk assets fell broadly, and Bitcoin, being more speculative, suffered steep declines.
Gold, however, remained resilient, with periods of price gains as investors turned to it as a traditional safe haven. This case study illustrates that gold tends to preserve value better than Bitcoin during periods of monetary tightening and market stress.
Shares in Bitcoin treasury companies could be nearing the end of a period of dampened price action after an investment firm said it closed its short position against Strategy, the largest corporate Bitcoin holding company.
Kynikos Associates founder James Chanos said on Sunday that his investment firm unwound its short position on Michael Saylor’s Strategy (MSTR) and a long position on Bitcoin (BTC) at the start of the trading day on Friday.
“The Bitcoin treasury company bear market is gradually coming to an end,” The Bitcoin Bond Company CEO, Pierre Rochard, said in response.
Chanos said that shares in Strategy are down about 50% from their 2025 high and that the company’s market Net Asset Value (mNAV) has compressed to 1.23x.
“It is prudent to cover this trade with mNAV below 1.25x, having dropped from ~2.0x as recently as July 2025,” Chanos wrote in a note.
He added that MSTR’s implied premium, its enterprise value minus the value of its 641,205 BTC stash, has fallen from about $70 billion in July to $15 billion, suggesting the company may now be better valued.
While MSTR may still experience more mNAV compression, particularly if it issues more common equity, “the thesis has largely played out,” Chanos said.
“This is the kind of signal you want to see for a reversal,” said Rochard.
Shares in many of the 200 publicly traded companies holding Bitcoin on their balance sheets have tumbled in recent months, which has led some analysts to doubt the sustainability of Bitcoin treasury strategies.
MSTR, Metaplanet down massively from mid-year
Strategy has been the hardest hit in total value terms, with its market cap falling over 43% from $122.1 billion in July to $69.5 billion as of Friday.
Metaplanet, one of the best-performing stocks on the Tokyo Stock Exchange to start 2025, has similarly seen its market cap slashed by 56% since June 21.
One of the biggest factors holding the market back has been the US government shutdown, however, multiple US media outlets reportedt on Sunday that the Senate reached an agreement to pass a package of budget bills to end the shutdown.
Bitcoin bounced 2% to $106,430 within 50 minutes of the reports, suggesting that the government reopening could boost sentiment toward the crypto market.
Gas fees on the Ethereum layer-1 blockchain dropped to just 0.067 Gwei on Sunday, amid a lull in the crypto markets sparked by October’s historic market crash.
Ethereum network transaction fees hit a recent high of 15.9 Gwei on October 10, the day of the market flash crash that caused some altcoins to shed over 90% of their value within 24 hours.
However, by October 12, fees dropped back down to just 0.5 Gwei and mostly remained well below 1 throughout October and November.
Ethereum layer-1 gas prices over the last month. Source: Etherscan
Investors and traders may take advantage of the low transaction fees to execute onchain transactions on the base layer. However, analysts and crypto industry executives warn that the excessively low fees might spell trouble for the Ethereum ecosystem.
The Ethereum base layer has seen a loss of revenue since 2024
During the 2021 bull run, transaction fees on the Ethereum layer-1 could cost users $150 or more during times of network congestion.
However, following the Ethereum Dencun upgrade in March 2024, which lowered transaction fees for Ethereum’s layer-2 scaling networks, fees contracted significantly, causing Ethereum’s revenue to decline by 99%.
Critics say the low network fees are unsustainable for any blockchain network and present both financial and security challenges due to the lack of revenue to incentivize validators or miners to process transactions and secure the blockchain.
Because fees are responsive to user demand, low fees and revenues could also signal that users are moving away from a particular blockchain network.
Ethereum, in particular, has chosen a scaling strategy that relies on an ecosystem of separate layer-2 networks, which represents a double-edged sword, according to research from crypto exchange Binance.
While layer-2 networks allow Ethereum to scale and compete with newer, high-throughput chains, the Layer-2 networks are also cannibalizing revenue from the base layer, creating additional competition for Ethereum within its own ecosystem.
For decades, research in distributed systems, especially in Byzantine consensus and state machine replication (SMR), has focused on two main goals: consistency and liveness. Consistency means all nodes agree on the same sequence of transactions, while liveness ensures the system continues to add new ones. Still, these properties do not stop bad actors from changing the order of transactions after they are received.
In public blockchains, that gap in traditional consensus guarantees has become a serious problem. Validators, block builders or sequencers can exploit their privileged role in block ordering for financial gain, a practice known as maximal extractable value (MEV). This manipulation includes profitable frontrunning, backrunning and sandwiching of transactions. Because transaction execution order determines validity or profitability in DeFi applications, the integrity of transaction ordering is vital for maintaining fairness and trust.
To address this critical security gap, transaction order-fairness has been proposed as a third essential consensus property. Fair-ordering protocols ensure that the final order of transactions depends on external, objective factors, such as arrival times (or receiving order) and is resistant to adversarial reordering. By limiting how much power a block proposer has to reorder transactions, these protocols move blockchains closer to being transparent, predictable, and MEV-resistant.
The Condorcet paradox and impossibility of ideal fairness
The most intuitive and strongest notion of fairness is Receive-Order-Fairness (ROF). Informally defined as “first received, first output,” ROF dictates that if a sufficient number of transactions (tx) arrive at a majority of nodes earlier than another transaction (tx′), then the system is required to order tx before tx′ for execution.
However, achieving this universally accepted “order fairness” is fundamentally impossible unless it is assumed that all nodes can communicate instantaneously (i.e., operating in an instant synchronous external network). This impossibility result stems from a surprising connection to social choice theory, specifically the Condorcet paradox.
The Condorcet paradox illustrates how, even when every individual node maintains a transitive internal ordering of transactions, the collective preference across the system can result in what are known as non-transitive cycles. For example, it is possible that a majority of nodes receive transaction A before B, a majority receive B before C, and a majority receive C before A. Hence, the three majority preferences form a loop (A→B→C→A). This means that no single, consistent ordering of the transactions A, B and C can ever satisfy all majority preferences simultaneously.
This paradox demonstrates why the goal of perfectly achieving Receive-Order-Fairness is impossible in asynchronous networks, or even in synchronous networks that share a common clock if external network delays are too long. This impossibility necessitates the adoption of weaker fairness definitions, such as batch order fairness.
Hedera Hashgraph and flaw of median timestamping
Hedera, which employs the Hashgraph consensus algorithm, seeks to approximate a strong notion of receive-order fairness (ROF). It does this by assigning each transaction a final timestamp computed as the median of all nodes’ local timestamps for that transaction.
However, this is inherently prone to manipulation. A single adversarial node can deliberately distort its local timestamps and invert the final ordering of two transactions, even when all honest participants received them in the correct order.
Consider a simple example with five consensus nodes (A, B, C, D and E) where Node E acts maliciously. Two transactions, tx₁ and tx₂, are broadcast to the network. All honest nodes receive tx₁ before tx₂, so the expected final order should be tx₁ → tx₂.
In this example, the adversary assigns tx₁ a later timestamp (3) and tx₂ an earlier one (2) to skew the median.
When the protocol computes the medians:
For tx₁, the timestamps (1, 1, 4, 4, 3) yield a median of 3.
For tx₂, the timestamps (2, 2, 5, 5, 2) yield a median of 2.
Because the final timestamp of tx₁ (3) is greater than that of tx₂ (2), the protocol outputs tx₂ → tx₁, thus reversing the true order observed by all honest nodes.
This toy example demonstrates a critical flaw: The median function, while appearing neutral, is paradoxically the actual cause of unfairness because it can be exploited by even a single dishonest participant to bias the final transaction order.
As a result, Hashgraph’s often-touted “fair timestamping” is a surprisingly weak notion of fairness. The Hashgraph consensus fails to guarantee receive-order fairness and instead depends on a permissioned validator set rather than on cryptographic guarantees.
Achieving practical guarantees
However, to circumvent the theoretical impossibility demonstrated by Condorcet, practical fair-ordering schemes must relax the definition of fairness in some way.
The Aequitas protocols introduced the criterion of Block-Order-Fairness (BOF), or batch-order-fairness. BOF dictates that if sufficiently many nodes receive a transaction tx before another transaction tx′, then tx must be delivered in a block before or at the same time as tx′, meaning no honest node can deliver tx′ in a block after tx. This relaxes the rule from “must be delivered before” (the requirement of ROF) to “must be delivered no later than”.
Consider three consensus nodes (A, B and C) and three transactions: tx₁, tx₂, and tx₃. A transaction is considered “received earlier” if at least two of the three nodes (a majority) observe it first.
If we apply majority voting to determine a global order:
tx₁ → tx₂ (agreed by A and C)
tx₂ → tx₃ (agreed by A and B)
tx₃ → tx₁ (agreed by B and C)
These preferences create a loop: tx₁ → tx₂ → tx₃ → tx₁. In this situation, there’s no single order that can satisfy everyone’s view at once, which means strict ROF is impossible to achieve.
BOF solves this by grouping all the conflicting transactions into the same batch or block instead of forcing one to come before another. The protocol simply outputs:
Block B₁ = {tx₁, tx₂, tx₃}
This means that, from the protocol’s perspective, all three transactions are treated as if they happened at the same time. Inside the block, a deterministic tie-breaker (such as a hash value) decides the exact order in which they’ll be executed. By doing this, BOF ensures fairness for every pair of transactions and keeps the final transaction log consistent for everyone. Each one is processed no later than the one that precedes it.
This small but important adjustment lets the protocol handle situations where transaction orderings conflict, by grouping those conflicting transactions into the same block or batch. Importantly, this does not result in a partial ordering, as every node must still agree on one single, linear sequence of transactions. The transactions inside each block are still arranged in a fixed order for execution. In cases when no such conflicts occur, the protocol still achieves the stronger ROF property.
While Aequitas successfully achieved BOF, it faced significant limitations, particularly that it had very high communication complexity and could only guarantee weak liveness. Weak liveness implies that a transaction’s delivery is only guaranteed after the entire Condorcet cycle it is a part of is completed. This could take an arbitrarily long time if cycles “chain together.”
The Themis protocol was introduced to enforce the same strong BOF property, but with improved communication complexity. Themis achieves this using three techniques: Batch Unspooling, Deferred Ordering, and Stronger Intra-Batch Guarantees.
In its standard form, Themis requires each participant to exchange messages with most other nodes in the network. The amount of communication required increases with the square of the number of network participants. However, in its optimized version, SNARK-Themis, nodes use succinct cryptographic proofs to verify fairness without needing to communicate directly with every other participant. This reduces the communication load so that it grows only linearly, which allows Themis to scale efficiently even in large networks.
Assume five nodes (A–E) participating in consensus receive three transactions: tx₁, tx₂, and tx₃. Due to network latency, their local orders differ:
As in Aequitas, these preferences create a Condorcet cycle. But instead of waiting for the entire cycle to be resolved, Themis keeps the system moving using a method called batch unspooling. It identifies all transactions that are part of the cycle and groups them into one set, called a strongly connected component (SCC). In this case, all three transactions belong to the same SCC, which Themis outputs as a batch-in-progress, labeled Batch B₁ = {tx₁, tx₂, tx₃}.
By doing this, Themis allows the network to keep processing new transactions even while the internal order of Batch B₁ is still being finalized. This ensures the system stays live and avoids stalling.
Overview:
The concept of perfect fairness in transaction ordering may seem straightforward. Whoever’s transaction reaches the network first should be processed first. However, as the Condorcet paradox demonstrates, this ideal cannot hold in real, distributed systems. Different nodes see transactions in different orders, and when those views conflict, no protocol can build a single, universally “correct” sequence without compromise.
Hedera’s Hashgraph tried to approximate this ideal with median timestamps, but that approach relies more on trust than on proof. A single dishonest participant can distort the median and flip transaction order, revealing that “fair timestamping” is not truly fair.
Protocols like Aequitas and Themis move the discussion forward by acknowledging what can and cannot be achieved. Instead of chasing the impossible, they redefine fairness in a way that still preserves order integrity under real network conditions. What emerges is not a rejection of fairness, but its evolution. This evolution draws a clear line between perceived fairness and provable fairness. It shows that true transaction-order integrity in decentralized systems cannot depend on reputation, validator trust or permissioned control. It must come from cryptographic verification embedded in the protocol itself.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
Cointelegraph does not endorse the content of this article nor any product mentioned herein. Readers should do their own research before taking any action related to any product or company mentioned and carry full responsibility for their decisions.
Optimism around Bitcoin was far stronger at the start of the year, but it may not be long before the cryptocurrency regains that same level of hype, according to Galaxy Digital’s head of research, Alex Thorn.
“Attention will come back to Bitcoin, it always does,” Thorn said during an interview with CNBC on Friday, emphasizing that “Bitcoin was the hottest trade of the year at the start of the year” after Donald Trump’s win in the US presidential election.
“For everyone worldwide and all sorts of asset classes…That’s just not true for the rest of the year.”
Investor attention has been distracted in other areas
Thorn said investors have turned their attention toward areas like AI, nuclear energy, quantum technology, and gold. “There were a lot of other places to get gains this year that impeded the allocation to Bitcoin,” he said.
“We’re entering a much more mature era, where distribution from old hands to new is incredibly healthy for distributing the ownership of Bitcoin,” Thorn added.
While Thorn remains long-term bullish on Bitcoin (BTC), he reduced Galaxy Digital’s year-end price target to $120,000 from $185,000. A move to $120,000 represents an increase of around 17% from Bitcoin’s current price of $102,080, according to CoinMarketCap.
Bitcoin is down 15.72% over the past 30 days. Source: CoinMarketCap
Many of the sectors Thorn said are pulling investor attention away from Bitcoin, especially gold, are the same ones it’s often compared to.
JPMorgan analysts recently said that the rise in gold volatility during its rally to all-time highs in October makes the precious metal riskier and Bitcoin “more attractive to investors,” based on the Bitcoin-to-gold volatility ratio falling to 1.8, meaning BTC carries 1.8 times the risk of gold.
Quantum computing continues to divide the Bitcoin industry
As for AI, it was reported on Oct. 10 that Bitcoin and Nvidia stock (NVDA) are now moving more in sync than at any point in the past year. That has some market watchers worried about a looming crash similar to the dot-com bubble era in the late 1990s.
Meanwhile, the ongoing debate over the potential threat of quantum computing to Bitcoin continues to divide experts. Borderless Capital’s Amit Mehra recently said quantum computing remains years away from threatening Bitcoin.
Meanwhile, Charles Edwards, founder of quantitative Bitcoin and digital asset fund Capriole, said the situation is far more urgent and argues that the industry must implement solutions as soon as possible before it is too late.
Opinion by: Agata Ferreira, assistant professor at the Warsaw University of Technology
A new consensus is forming across the Web3 world. For years, privacy was treated as a compliance problem, liability for developers and at best, a niche concern. Now it is becoming clear that privacy is actually what digital freedom is built on.
The Ethereum Foundation’s announcement of the Privacy Cluster — a cross-team effort focused on private reads and writes, confidential identities and zero-knowledge proofs — is a sign of a philosophical redefinition of what trust, consensus and truth mean in the digital age and a more profound realization that privacy must be built into infrastructure.
Regulators should pay attention. Privacy-preserving designs are no longer just experimental; they are now a standard approach. They are becoming the way forward for decentralized systems. The question is whether law and regulation will adopt this shift or remain stuck in an outdated logic that equates visibility with safety.
From shared observation to shared verification
For a long time, digital governance has been built on a logic of visibility. Systems were trustworthy because they could be observed by regulators, auditors or the public. This “shared observation” model is behind everything from financial reporting to blockchain explorers. Transparency was the means of ensuring integrity.
In cryptographic systems, however, a more powerful paradigm is emerging: shared verification. Instead of every actor seeing everything, zero-knowledge proofs and privacy-preserving designs enable verifying that a rule was followed without revealing the underlying data. Truth becomes something you can prove, not something you must expose.
This shift might seem technical, but it has profound consequences. It means we no longer need to pick between privacy and accountability. Both can coexist, embedded directly into the systems we rely on. Regulators, too, must adapt to this logic rather than battle against it.
Privacy as infrastructure
The industry is realizing the same thing: Privacy is not a niche. It’s infrastructure. Without it, the Web3 openness becomes its weakness, and transparency collapses into surveillance.
Emerging architectures across ecosystems demonstrate that privacy and modularity are finally converging. Ethereum’s Privacy Cluster focuses on confidential computation and selective disclosure at the smart-contract level.
Others are going deeper, integrating privacy into the network consensus itself: sender-unlinkable messaging, validator anonymity, private proof-of-stake and self-healing data persistence. These designs are rebuilding the digital stack from the ground up, aligning privacy, verifiability and decentralization as mutually reinforcing properties.
This is not an incremental improvement. It is a new way of thinking about freedom in the digital network age.
Policy is lagging behind the technology
Current regulatory approaches still reflect the logic of shared observation. Privacy-preserving technologies are scrutinized or restricted, while visibility is mistaken for safety and compliance. Developers of privacy protocols face regulatory pressure, and policymakers continue to think that encryption is an obstacle to observability.
This perspective is outdated and dangerous. In a world where everyone is being watched, and where data is harvested on an unprecedented scale, bought, sold, leaked and exploited, the absence of privacy is the actual systemic risk. It undermines trust, puts people at risk and makes democracies weaker. By contrast, privacy-preserving designs make integrity provable and enable accountability without exposure.
Lawmakers must begin to view privacy as an ally, not an adversary — a tool for enforcing fundamental rights and restoring confidence in digital environments.
Stewardship, not just scrutiny
The next phase of digital regulation must move from scrutiny to support. Legal and policy frameworks should protect privacy-preserving open source systems as critical public goods. Stewardship stance is a duty, not a policy choice.
It means providing legal clarity for developers and distinguishing between acts and architecture. Laws should punish misconduct, not the existence of technologies that enable privacy. The right to maintain private digital communication, association and economic exchange must be treated as a fundamental right, enforced by both law and infrastructure.
Such an approach would demonstrate regulatory maturity, recognizing that resilient democracies and legitimate governance rely on privacy-preserving infrastructure.
The architecture of freedom
The Ethereum Foundation’s privacy initiative and other new privacy-first network designs share the idea that freedom in the digital age is an architectural principle. It cannot depend solely on promises of good governance or oversight; it must be built into protocols that shape our lives.
These new systems, private rollups, state-separated architectures and sovereign zones represent the practical synthesis of privacy and modularity. They enable communities to build independently while remaining verifiably connected, thereby combining autonomy with accountability.
Policymakers should view this as an opportunity to support the direct embedding of fundamental rights into the technical foundation of the internet. Privacy-by-design should be embraced as legality-by-design, a way to enforce fundamental rights through code, not just through constitutions, charters and conventions.
The blockchain industry is redefining what “consensus” and “truth” mean, replacing shared observation with shared verification, visibility with verifiability, and surveillance with sovereignty. As this new dawn for privacy takes shape, regulators face a choice: Limit it under the old frameworks of control, or support it as the foundation of digital freedom and a more resilient digital order.
The tech is getting ready. The laws need to catch up.
Opinion by: Agata Ferreira, assistant professor at the Warsaw University of Technology.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
Shares of crypto-focused companies have tumbled this week, capping a bruising stretch for the digital asset sector marked by renewed macroeconomic fears and lingering fallout from October’s liquidity crunch and mixed corporate earnings.
Coinbase (COIN), Block Inc. (XYZ) and Robinhood (HOOD) have fallen 11% to 14% this week, according to Google Finance data, erasing recent gains and underscoring the fragile sentiment surrounding crypto-linked equities.
On Oct. 30, Coinbase reported stronger-than-expected earnings and revenue as it advanced its “Everything Exchange” initiative, aimed at expanding the volume and diversity of tradable assets on its platform. Yet, despite the upbeat results, shares failed to maintain momentum amid broader market pressures and declining risk appetite.
Meanwhile, the Jack Dorsey-led fintech Block Inc. came under renewed selling pressure after missing quarterly forecasts and facing investor scrutiny over slowing growth and profitability within its flagship Square payments unit.
Robinhood, by contrast, delivered solid third-quarter results on the back of a surge in crypto trading volumes. However, a leadership shake-up and softer-than-expected growth in its crypto segment overshadowed the earnings beat, sending shares lower.
Despite this week’s declines, Robinhood remains the best-performing stock of the trio — up more than 200% year-to-date.
Robinhood stock’s year-to-date performance. Source: Google Finance
Crypto-linked stocks are under pressure as broader risk-off sentiment sweeps through the digital asset market, driven by uncertainty over the ongoing US government shutdown and lingering fallout from last month’s historic liquidation event, which wiped out roughly $19 billion in leveraged positions.
The crash prompted Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek to call for a regulatory review into how exchanges managed the sell-off.
The episode has also revived concerns about hidden vulnerabilities in the industry — or “dead bodies,” as some market watchers refer to them — leading analysts to scale back their outlook for the crypto sector.
Those fears prompted another wave of selling in the crypto markets this week, with Bitcoin (BTC) briefly sliding below $100,000, marking a 20% correction from its all-time high.
Since reaching an all-time high in early October, Bitcoin’s price has experienced renewed volatility to the downside. Source: Cointelegraph
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes has revealed that Zcash (ZEC) is now the second-largest holding in his family office Maelstrom, trailing only Bitcoin (BTC).
“Due to the rapid ascent in price, ZEC is now the 2nd largest *LIQUID* holding in MaelstromFund portfolio behind BTC,” he wrote in a Friday post on X.
The disclosure comes amid a sharp rally in Zcash, which has climbed from a low of $137 to over $730 in the past month, representing an increase of more than 400%.
Other privacy coins have also posted strong weekly gains, with Dash (DASH), Decred (DCR) and ZKsync (ZK) all gaining more than 100%. However, major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) have remained range-bound amid broader market uncertainty.
At the time of writing, ZEC trades at $548, down about 11.8% in the past 24 hours, with a market capitalization of $8.9 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. Trading activity remains elevated, with 24-hour volume up 139% to $4.63 billion.
ZEC drops after massive rally. Source: CoinMarketCap
Zcash’s circulating supply stands at 16.28 million ZEC, with a maximum supply cap of 21 million. The token’s fully diluted valuation (FDV) is around $11.5 billion.
Zcash’s hybrid model, which supports both transparent and shielded transactions, has made it a more palatable option. Like Bitcoin, it has a fixed supply of 21 million coins and is secured by a proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism.
Zcash’s comeback driven by grassroots privacy movement
Zcash Foundation executive director Alex Bornstein said the recent resurgence of Zcash has been entirely organic, fueled by rising public concern over government surveillance and data control. Speaking on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction show, Bornstein noted that the renewed interest reflects a “powerful narrative” around digital privacy and financial autonomy.
Bornstein clarified that the Zcash Foundation, a US-registered nonprofit, had “absolutely nothing to do” with the wave of renewed attention surrounding ZEC. “We were surprised to see when these mentions started popping up. Then to see that kind of wave just start to spread and then crest was extraordinary,” he said.
Opinion by: Saad Naja, Founder and CEO at PiP World
While the world debates whether AI is the next dot-com bubble, chasing valuations rather than implications, they’re missing the underlying innovation story. The same AI infrastructure fueling trillion-dollar bets is already rewriting how money moves. AI is no longer an investment theme. It’s the market itself.
What few noticed is that the same AI infrastructure driving the headlines is already reshaping the markets from within.
The invisible battle happening behind the candlesticks isn’t bulls and bears anymore; it’s between self-learning AIs that never sleep.
Markets aren’t just humans using algorithms. They’re autonomous swarms fighting for milliseconds. Agents watch every market 24/7, spotting risks, debating strategies and executing without hesitation.
The next traders aren’t humans
Recent breakthroughs in AI and blockchain acceptance have created the perfect conditions for agentic markets to flourish. AI provides cognition; meanwhile, blockchain supplies trust, verification and payment rails. This offers the medium for AI agents to transact, prove, and exchange value freely.
AI has crossed the chasm from stock picker to near-autonomous day trader. It learns and acts faster than any human. It spots what humans miss, predicts the move before it happens and never second-guesses itself. It’s the ultimate insider, without inflaming the SEC. It’s early days for agentic AI in trading, but make no mistake — it’s here and already moving the markets while most traders sleep.
Agentic trading even in freefall
During the biggest crypto flash crash on Oct. 10, while the rest of the crypto market was in freefall, AI agents did the opposite. They stayed calm, shorted the chaos, and ended the week up 40%. They gave us a glimpse into the future of markets. One where the AI agents don’t just follow code, they respond like real traders.
Some cut risk instantly. Others waited for confirmation. A few leaned into the drawdown. What’s striking is not just the gains, it’s the composure. Each AI agent made its own independent decisions, yet collectively, they converged on profitable outcomes. That’s the essence of agentic intelligence, autonomous systems learning to interpret chaos as opportunity.
The rise of self-learning markets
Companies describe similar behavior within trading desks, where agentic systems parse live data from public disclosures and feed execution layers in real-time. Over time, agents evolve from code to cognition. Autonomous systems that read markets, understand intent and execute strategies on their own. Acting like a digital hive mind, adjusting logic mid-session as markets shift around them.
For years, quant funds and high-frequency traders have pitted humans plus algorithms against the market. Enter AI versus AI. Self-directed systems plan, reason and execute around the clock. What’s emerging is a battlefield of AIs — institutional, retail, and synthetic — talking to each other in real-time.
When AI trades with AI, human intent disappears. Prices move on machine-to-machine negotiations, not emotion or fundamentals. The market begins to trade itself.
A majority of global trading volume now runs through algorithmic systems, estimates ranging from 60% to 89%, depending on the market. Within months, Symphony’s agentic trading layer was clearing $140 million in transactions, working with 15 of the world’s biggest financial institutions to test self-learning yield and execution agents.
Everyday investors can finally compete
For decades, investing was about finding an edge. AI gives retail investors that power for the first time. Retail traders can soon deploy the same logic once reserved for billion-dollar funds. Swarm intelligence that scans arbitrage, simulates momentum, hedges risk and executes collaboratively. It’s the retail equivalent of a hedge fund in your pocket.
The walls between institutional and retail finance are eroding. AI makes the 1%’s playbook accessible to the 99%. The next outperformers will deploy agentic swarms, rather than tracking indexes.
When markets trade themselves
AI versus AI warfare will define liquidity, volatility and price discovery. Humans will still set direction, risk tolerance and capital allocation, but won’t press the buttons. Markets will begin to self-trade in swarms of autonomous participants. Power will shift to whomever fine-tunes the feedback loops. When agents detect each other’s footprints, they’ll evolve meta-strategies, sometimes to cooperate, sometimes to manipulate one another.
Trading floors are going quiet. The next generation of traders won’t shout orders; they’ll train AI agents. The winners won’t just be institutions, they’ll be retail traders who fine-tune their swarms alongside human judgment.We’re entering the agentic arms race.
Markets of tomorrow won’t sleep or panic. Agentic AI will learn, evolve, compete and occasionally conspire at breakneck speed.
While institutions continue to build layers of agents, retail investors face a choice. Follow the herd into AI stocks, or start training their own AI as their wing(wo)man. They won’t have an AlphaGo moment.
Quiet, relentless outperformance hides in the charts, open to anyone brave enough to seize their AI agent.
Opinion by: Saad Naja, Founder and CEO at PiP World.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
