Why Privacy Coins Are Quietly Crushing the Market | Trading the Markets

Financial conditions have weighed on crypto as the dollar strengthened and bond yields rose, though conditions eased somewhat over the latest three weeks as credit spreads and yields fell. Chris’s indicator equally weights real yields, credit spreads, the dollar index, and equity volatility; he would be more concerned if credit spreads approached 4. He remains bullish on Bitcoin but expects choppy trading, with $76,000–$76,300 identified as key support and $82,000 as the weekly breakout level to reclaim. Bitcoin bounced from its 20-week moving average and held above its 10-week, while another speaker noted that its RSI remained bullish even as its monthly mega trend was bearish. Cycle comparisons were framed as observations, not reliable forecasts.

Zcash and Monero stood out as privacy coins, trading near or at all-time highs while Bitcoin remained well below its own. The speakers expect interest in both to persist, citing new privacy laws in Europe and the assets’ perceived use cases. Zcash was praised for its product, use case, large team, and influential supporters who know how to promote it. Its chart was stronger than most assets reviewed, with two consecutive green weekly candles and a price near its high outside its initial launch period, although it remained below its megatrend.

Monero was described as a long-standing privacy rival to Zcash, with distinct attributes including broad distribution, decentralization, no team behind it, and transaction-masking capabilities. The speakers also emphasized a constraint on the privacy-token trade: limited exchange listings and jurisdictional restrictions make these assets difficult to acquire. Holding them can be viewed with suspicion or associated with laundering or concealment, which may limit performance; they said Zcash differs somewhat. The discussion described Monero as sharply underperforming Zcash this year and below a July 2025 peak, while also characterizing privacy coins as near or at highs, so it did not establish a consistent relative-performance picture.

Ethereum was viewed as weaker than Bitcoin, with declining RSI momentum and an ETH/BTC chart below major moving averages. The pair was approaching three consecutive weekly closes below its 20-week moving average, and the speaker expected the downtrend to continue unless conditions changed. They pointed to layer twos capturing transaction fees and the decline of costly NFT mints as factors limiting value accrual to ETH. NEAR was linked to privacy, AI, and interoperability, including masked Hyperliquid transactions and activity in the Zcash ecosystem. Its chart had recovered after a bounce at the 50-day moving average, but network inflation and the amount of value returned to token holders remained concerns.

Pump.fun generated $67 million in the last 30 days and averaged $13 million a week in revenue, according to the speaker, who ranked it third in crypto revenue behind two major stablecoin issuers and ahead of Hyperliquid, Tron, and Polymarket. The platform buys back and burns tokens and hosts creators issuing meme tokens to support their work; its fees can exceed Hyperliquid’s in some weeks or months. PUMP was called volatile and high beta but structurally bullish, with higher highs and higher lows despite trading below its weekly mega trend. Hyperliquid, meanwhile, had maintained higher highs and higher lows, held its 200-day cloud, and bounced after partnership news. Kraken’s parent company announced it would use Hyperliquid as backend infrastructure for DeFi perpetual trading on Kraken; the speaker considered Hyperliquid a hold, with no clear sell signal or trend breakdown.

Uniswap was described as a major, innovative DEX protocol earning revenue, with activity linked to v4 and Robinhood transactions having since tailed off. After weekly gains of 38%, 13%, and 42%, a 15% correction, and another 42% gain, it had fallen below its megatrend but remained nearly twice its August breakout level. Circle traded sideways below its 200-day moving average, alongside USDC capitalization holding flat or slightly declining at roughly $71 billion to $76 billion, with no substantial new stablecoin adoption since its March peak. Galaxy Digital was weighed down by credit exposure and difficulties rolling out AI data centers despite exposure to other promising areas; Jeff Dorman’s view, cited by a speaker, was that Galaxy was undervalued.

Other chart views remained conditional: Venice had held a strong uptrend and outperformed most assets, while Wormhole had stabilized after giving back much of a brief surge but still needed to recover from technical damage. Chris was waiting for BAT’s correction to settle, watching roughly $0.12 at the 0.618 Fibonacci retracement: a hold and bounce would be constructive, while a break could mean further downside. Bittensor remained choppy after repeated givebacks, and Chris wanted to see a stronger trend and a break of its long-term downtrend.