What has been happening this week in the world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies? Current events and background reports in our weekly review.
Selected articles of the week:
Whether Bitcoin has finally bottomed out remains uncertain. However, several signals suggest an advanced bottoming process. From its October 2025 all-time high above USD 126,000, it at times lost over half its value. In July it even fell below USD 60,000, but recently recovered to around USD 84,000. Its reaction to bad news stands out. In mid-September the Clarity Act failed in the US Senate. The Fed then raised its key rate to 3.75 to 4.00%. Bitcoin dipped at first but recovered strongly. In addition, demand returned to US spot ETFs. After outflows of about USD 746 million, some USD 484 million flowed back. Moreover, analytics firm Glassnode says long-term holders’ share of realized profits fell from 88 to 47%. At the same time, typical euphoria is absent, because Bitcoin holds around 59% of total market capitalization. The rally therefore rests on solid ground.
Bitcoin has rebounded from a low of around $60,000 to roughly $84,000. Has the 2026…
NEAR earns from trading on other blockchains
There is no broad altcoin rally, yet some projects still post strong gains. Layer-1 blockchain NEAR Protocol briefly fell below USD 1 in February and now trades at USD 5. Its own chain, however, plays a minor role. According to data platform DefiLlama, NEAR has around 60,000 daily active addresses there, versus 3.11 million on Solana. Instead, the growth comes from NEAR Intents. Users define only the desired outcome of a swap. Specialized solvers then settle it across multiple chains. Intents now processes around USD 1.3 billion per week. In addition, Confidential Intents lets users keep trade sizes private. Since February, revenue has funded token buybacks. At around USD 2 million in monthly net revenue, however, they offset only a limited share of inflation. The valuation of around USD 6 billion equals 250 times annualized revenue. As a result, the market already prices in much future growth.
Zcash hides transaction data with zk-SNARK proofs and now sits between a US spot ETF listing and the EU privacy coin ban of 2027.
Grayscale brings Zcash to the stock exchange, the EU pushes it out
Confidentiality with disclosure on request is also the core of Zcash. Launched in 2016, the cryptocurrency offers transparent and shielded addresses. Shielded addresses hide sender, recipient and amount using zk-SNARK cryptography. Via so-called viewing keys, however, users can still disclose payments to auditors or tax authorities. Meanwhile, Zcash is entering the regulated US market. In late August, asset manager Grayscale launched a Zcash ETF on NYSE Arca, the first US spot ETF on a privacy coin. In addition, Cypherpunk Technologies, backed by Winklevoss Capital, is building a mining fleet with around 18% of the hashrate. ZEC also rose 123.6% within 30 days to around USD 1,520. In Europe, however, developments run the other way. After all, the EU anti-money laundering regulation requires licensed providers to delist privacy coins by July 2027. Worldwide, over 70 exchanges had already removed at least one privacy coin by late 2025.
As the crypto market stages its latest recovery, numerous altcoins are posting significant gains. NEAR…
Bitget’s own controls release USD 351.6 million
Crypto exchange Bitget confirmed a hack of USD 351.6 million this week. The attack hit parts of the hot and warm wallets on seven chains, including Ethereum, the XRP Ledger and Base. The attacker’s route, however, is what stands out. Rather than stealing private keys, the attacker broke into a backend system of the wallet infrastructure. There it falsified transfer data, so the regular approval process released the outflows itself. Consequently, well-protected key custody helps little if someone manipulates the data upstream. Bitget suspects a North Korean hacking group behind the attack, although no authority has confirmed this yet. Meanwhile, withdrawals remain halted for now. According to Bitget, its own User Protection Fund of over USD 464 million covers the entire loss.
The Bitget hack drained USD 351.6 million from hot and warm wallets; the exchange suspects North Korea and has halted withdrawals.
A nutrition study explains the hunt for cheap coins
In addition: many retail investors prefer 100 whole tokens to 0.0003 Bitcoin. This behavior stems from unit bias. Psychologists Andrew B. Geier, Paul Rozin and Gheorghe Doros described the effect in 2006 in a study on eating behavior. Their subjects ate more when individual portions were larger. Applied to cryptocurrencies, anyone holding many units feels richer, even though the total value may be identical. Token projects exploit this deliberately by inflating supply to trillions of units. Meme coin BONK, for example, has over 75 trillion tokens. A price of one dollar would therefore require a valuation above USD 75 trillion. Likewise, XRP looks cheap at around USD 1.4, yet at around USD 84 billion it is the fifth-largest crypto asset. Consequently, only market capitalization is meaningful, that is, unit price times circulating supply. Moreover, the fully diluted valuation, which also counts locked tokens, is worth a look.
Unit bias leads crypto investors to favor low-priced coins. Why unit price is misleading and why market capitalization matters.
