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Prediction market activity reached an all-time high in weekly transactions despite a sharp crypto market downturn.

 

Polymarket continues to gain momentum across volume, partnerships, and product expansion, while Kalshi’s growth shows signs of divergence over longer periods.

 

Opinion’s anticipated TGE faces rising delay expectations, with market-implied probabilities dropping sharply following recent volatility.

Prediction markets hit record activity despite a market sell-off, led by Polymarket and Kalshi, while Opinion’s expected token launch faces growing uncertainty amid volatility.

 

Despite the sharp market sell-off over the weekend, prediction markets posted a record high in weekly transaction volume. According to Dune data, total prediction market transactions reached 26.39 million last week.

 

Among them, Polymarket led the market with 13.34 million transactions, ranking first. Kalshi followed closely with 11.88 million transactions, taking second place. Opinion ranked third with 379,300 transactions.

 

2 MARKET LEADERS: POLYMARKET AND KALSHI

 

Beyond the record-breaking weekly transaction count across prediction markets, the 2 leading platforms—Polymarket and Kalshi—have both maintained elevated trading volumes in recent weeks.

 

Last week, Polymarket recorded $2.0 billion in trading volume, up 18.4% week over week, ranking first among peers. Kalshi followed with $1.4 billion in volume, a 8.5% weekly increase, placing second.

 

Looking at a longer time frame, the past 30 days show a clear divergence. Polymarket’s trading volume has continued to trend upward—potentially driven by rising market expectations around a future token launch—while Kalshi’s volume has steadily declined over the same period, indicating a more pronounced pullback.

📌 Key Developments Worth Watching

 

▶ Polymarket

 

1) Trading fees on short-term crypto markets
Polymarket has begun charging fees—up to 3% taker fees—on its 15-minute crypto price movement markets. An updated “Trading Fees” page in Polymarket’s official documentation confirms that these short-term markets are now fee-enabled.

 

2) Launch of real estate prediction markets
On-chain real estate platform Parcl has partnered with Polymarket to introduce housing price prediction markets. Users can trade on monthly, quarterly, or annual movements and threshold outcomes for city-level housing price indices. Each market links to a dedicated Parcl reference page detailing settlement values, historical context, and calculation methodology.

 

3) Official prediction partner of the Golden Globes
Polymarket has been named the exclusive prediction market partner of the Golden Globes. During the awards season, Polymarket launched on-site Golden Globes prediction dashboards, with both Polymarket and the Golden Globes highlighting the collaboration on X.

 

4) Integration with Jupiter on Solana
Jupiter announced it will integrate Polymarket, enabling users to access prediction markets directly through the Jupiter app via a built-in “Predictions” feature—positioning Jupiter as a more innovative prediction interface on Solana.

 

5) Exclusive partnership with Major League Soccer (MLS)
Polymarket signed a multi-year exclusive licensing agreement with Major League Soccer. The partnership covers MLS Cup, conference competitions, and the All-Star Game, and includes new fan experiences such as in-match “second-screen” interactions to deepen viewer engagement.

 

>>> Learn more: What is Polymarket? Web3 Prediction Market

▶ Kalshi

 

Because Kalshi requires U.S. KYC verification, participation is limited for many users. As a result, recent developments are primarily macro- and ecosystem-focused.

 

1) First Prediction Market Conference (March)
Kalshi co-founder and CEO Tarek Mansour announced plans to host the inaugural Prediction Market Conference in March, bringing together researchers, economists, policymakers, and traders to discuss prediction markets and knowledge aggregation.

 

2) Coinbase prediction markets go live nationwide via Kalshi
Coinbase announced that its Prediction Markets product is now available across all 50 U.S. states through its partnership with Kalshi—marking a full nationwide rollout from a prior limited pilot.

 

Coinbase noted that all current prediction contracts are provided by Kalshi, a platform regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Additional contracts from other platforms may be added in the coming months. Contract prices reflect collective market-implied probabilities, and users can manage these positions alongside crypto assets, stocks, and cash within the Coinbase interface, with a minimum trade size of $1 (USD or USDC).

 

>>> Learn more: What is Kalshi Prediction Market? How Does It Work

OPINION: TGE MAY BE DELAYED AMID MARKET SELL-OFF

 

Opinion is the first prediction market platform in the BNB Chain ecosystem. On March 18 this year, Opinion announced the completion of a $5 million seed round, led by YZi Labs, with participation from echo, Animoca Ventures, Manifold, and Amber Group. Opinion was also previously named one of the four top-performing projects in the former Binance Labs MVB program.

 

According to official information, on January 26 Opinion added an airdrop wallet-binding interface to its website, supporting allocation across up to 5 wallets. This move was widely interpreted as a signal that a token airdrop—and potentially a token launch—was approaching.

 

In addition, Opinion founder Forrest stated during interactions on the project’s official Discord late last year that the TGE was not expected to be later than February 17 (around the Lunar New Year).

However, following last week’s sharp market downturn, many community members now expect Opinion to delay its TGE. Data from Polymarket shows that the probability of the event “Opinion will officially launch its governance token before February 17” has dropped sharply—from over 70% in late January to a low of below 15%. While the odds have since rebounded, they currently stand at around 35%.

 

 

 

▶ Read the original article

 

 

 

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〈Prediction Markets Hit Record Activity: Top Platform Highlights〉這篇文章最早發佈於《CoinRank》。

The collapse of early-stage crypto funding signals a structural break, leaving the secondary market short of new narratives and assets.

 

Memecoins are not altcoin replacements but short-lived attention instruments, unsuitable for long-term, sustainable trading.

 

Asset tokenization and prediction markets are emerging as viable paths, turning real-world assets and events into the next core trading primitives.

As altcoins fade and primary markets collapse, crypto is redefining what’s tradable—shifting from tokens to tokenized assets and prediction markets driven by real-world uncertainty.

 

This weekend, amid mounting internal stress and external shocks, the crypto market was once again brutally washed out. Bitcoin is now hovering around $76,000, roughly aligned with Strategy’s average cost basis, while altcoins are in far worse shape—prices across the board are simply painful to look at.

 

Yet beneath this bleak short-term picture lies a deeper question:

 

🔍 What, exactly, will the crypto market be trading a year from now?

 

And behind that, an even more fundamental issue emerges:
If the primary market is no longer producing “the future” for the secondary market, then what will the secondary market be trading a year from now?
What happens to exchanges in that scenario?

 

The idea that “altcoins are dead” has been repeated for years, but over the past year, the market has hardly lacked new projects. Every day, projects are still lining up for TGE, and from a media perspective, we are still engaging at high frequency with teams seeking market exposure and promotion.

 

What this increasingly resembles is an industry-wide inventory clearance—or, more bluntly, a procession toward the end of the lifecycle. Tokens are issued, teams and investors get a formal conclusion, and what follows is either quiet stagnation or the passive hope that a miracle might arrive, funded by whatever remains on the balance sheet.

THE PRIMARY MARKET IS DEAD

 

For those of us who entered the industry during the ICO era—or even earlier, who have lived through multiple bull and bear cycles and witnessed how crypto once empowered countless individuals through industry-wide tailwinds, there is a deeply ingrained belief:
given enough time, a new cycle will emerge—along with new projects, new narratives, and new TGEs.

 

The reality, however, is that we are now far outside that comfort zone.

 

Let’s go straight to the data. Over the most recent four-year cycle (2022–2025), excluding special primary-market activities such as M&A, IPOs, and public fundraising, the number of crypto financing rounds shows a clear and sustained decline:

❗ 1,639 → 1,071 → 1,050 → 829

 

(source: Crypto Fundraising)

 

But the reality is worse than the headline numbers suggest. The shift in the primary market is not merely a contraction in total capital—it represents a structural collapse.

 

Over the past four years, early-stage funding rounds, which traditionally represent the industry’s fresh blood—including angel, pre-seed, and seed rounds—have fallen from 825 to 298, a 63.9% decline.

This drop is significantly steeper than the overall market decline (49.4%), indicating that the primary market’s ability to supply new life to the industry has been steadily eroding.

 

The few sectors where financing activity has increased are financial services, exchanges, asset management, payments, and AI-powered crypto applications. But in practical terms, these areas have limited relevance to the broader market—most of them, quite frankly, will never issue tokens.

 

By contrast, native crypto sectors such as L1s, L2s, DeFi, and social protocols have experienced far more pronounced declines in financing, underscoring just how severely the original engine of crypto innovation has stalled.

 

 

One data point that is often misread is the sharp decline in the number of funding rounds, alongside a rise in average deal size. The primary driver behind this divergence is precisely what was noted earlier: “large projects” have been capturing substantial capital from the traditional finance side, significantly inflating the average ticket size.

 

At the same time, leading VCs have increasingly concentrated their bets on a small number of “super projects”, committing ever larger checks to fewer names—Polymarket’s multiple nine-figure funding rounds being a prime example.

 

From the perspective of crypto-native capital, this top-heavy and self-reinforcing negative cycle is even more pronounced.

MEMES WERE NEVER A SUBSTITUTE FOR ALTCOINS

 

When we talk about the depletion of crypto-native projects, one commonly cited counterexample is the explosion of meme tokens.

 

Over the past two years, a recurring narrative has taken hold in the industry:
memes are the replacement for altcoins.

 

Looking back now, that conclusion has proven to be fundamentally wrong.

 

In the early days of the meme wave, we approached memes the same way we once approached mainstream altcoins—screening dozens of projects for so-called fundamentals, community quality, and narrative coherence, hoping to identify the one that could survive long term, continuously reinvent itself, and eventually grow into Doge—or even “the next Bitcoin.”

 

Today, if anyone still tells you to “hold memes for the long run,” you would probably assume something is seriously wrong with their judgment.

 

🔍 Modern memes function as an instant monetization mechanism for attention.

They are a game of attention versus liquidity, products of mass production by developers and AI tools, and an asset class defined by extremely short lifecycles but continuous supply.

 

Memes no longer aim to survive.
They aim to be seen, traded, and exploited.

 

Within our own team, we have several traders who have achieved consistent, long-term profitability in meme markets. Unsurprisingly, what they focus on is not a project’s future, but timing, propagation speed, emotional structure, and liquidity pathways.

 

Some argue that memes are no longer tradable. In my view, however, Trump’s “final harvest” moment ironically marked the point at which memes, as an asset class, truly matured.

 

Memes were never meant to replace long-term assets. Instead, they represent a return to pure attention finance and liquidity warfare—more refined, more ruthless, and far less suitable for most retail traders.

 

>>> More to read: What is Memecoin And Why Are They Popular?

LOOKING OUTSIDE FOR SOLUTIONS

 

📌 Asset Tokenization

 

As memes become professionalized, Bitcoin becomes institutionalized, altcoins stagnate, and new projects face an impending supply gap, a practical question emerges for people like us—ordinary participants who enjoy value research, comparative analysis, and judgment-based speculation, but who are not pure high-frequency probability gamblers and want something sustainable:

 

🔍 What is left to trade?

 

This question is not exclusive to retail traders.

 

It confronts exchanges, market makers, and platforms just as directly—after all, a market cannot rely indefinitely on higher leverage and increasingly aggressive derivatives to maintain activity.

 

In fact, as the industry’s internal logic begins to unravel, it has already started looking outward for answers.

 

The most widely discussed direction is clear:
repackaging traditional financial assets into on-chain, tradable instruments.

 

Tokenized equities and precious metals are rapidly becoming strategic priorities across exchanges. From major centralized venues to decentralized platforms like Hyperliquid, this path is increasingly viewed as a critical breakthrough—and the market response has been positive.

 

During last week’s most extreme days in the precious metals rally, daily silver trading volume on Hyperliquid briefly exceeded $1 billion. At one point, tokenized stocks, indices, and precious metals occupied nearly half of the top 10 trading pairs, helping push HYPE up over 50% in the short term, driven by the narrative of “full-asset trading.”

 

>>> More to read: Real-world Assets (RWA): Bridging Traditional And Defi Markets

📌 Prediction Markets

 

Beyond bringing external assets on-chain, there is another path:
bringing external uncertainty on-chain—prediction markets.

 

According to Dune data, despite last weekend’s sharp crypto selloff, prediction market activity not only held up but increased. Weekly transaction counts hit a new all-time high of 26.39 million.

 

Among them, Polymarket led with 13.34 million trades, followed closely by Kalshi at 11.88 million.

 

From a crypto-native user’s perspective, a fair question arises:
Why do we trade prediction markets? Are we just gamblers?

 

Of course we are.

 

But in truth, altcoin traders were never really betting on technology either—they were betting on events:
Will it get listed?
Will a partnership be announced?
Will a token launch?
Will a new feature go live?
Will there be regulatory tailwinds?
Will it catch the next narrative?

 

Price was always the outcome. Events were the starting point.

 

What prediction markets do—for the first time—is extract this logic from being an implicit variable hidden inside price charts, and turn it into a directly tradable object.

 

You no longer need to buy a token to indirectly bet on whether something happens.

You can bet directly on whether it will happen at all.

 

More importantly, prediction markets fit perfectly into the current environment of project scarcity and narrative exhaustion.

 

As new tradable assets become fewer, market attention naturally shifts toward macro conditions, regulation, politics, influential individuals’ actions, and major industry milestones.

 

In other words, while tradable assets are shrinking, tradable events are not—they may even be increasing.

 

This is why nearly all meaningful liquidity growth in prediction markets over the past two years has come from non-crypto-native events.

 

At its core, prediction markets import uncertainty from the real world into the crypto trading system. From a user experience standpoint, they are also more intuitive for traditional crypto traders:

 

The core question is reduced to just one thing:
Will this outcome happen—and is the current probability priced too high or too low?

 

Unlike memes, the barrier here is not execution speed, but information judgment and structural understanding.

 

Put this way—
doesn’t it suddenly feel like something you could actually try?

 

>>> More to read: What is Crypto Prediction Market? A Complete Beginner’s Guide

 

 

▶ Read the original article

 

 

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〈What will be tradable in the crypto market a year from now?〉這篇文章最早發佈於《CoinRank》。

Bitcoin’s major decline occurred before USDe price deviations, indicating USDe did not initiate the October 10 market crash.

 

USDe price dislocation remained largely isolated to one exchange and did not propagate across the broader market.

 

Exchange infrastructure stress, API disruptions, and rigid liquidation mechanisms amplified volatility and drove cascading liquidations.

A DELAYED DEBATE THAT EXPOSED A DEEPER DIVIDE

 

The sharp market crash on October 10 should have faded into history, like many previous episodes of extreme volatility. Prices eventually stabilized, and attention moved on.

 

Instead, months later, the event returned to the center of industry discussion. This time, the focus was not price, but responsibility.

 

OKX founder and CEO Star Xu publicly argued that the crash was not accidental. In his view, Binance’s yield campaign around Ethena’s USDe, combined with its collateral treatment, created structural leverage that amplified market stress and triggered cascading liquidations.

 

 

Dragonfly partner Haseeb Qureshi strongly rejected this explanation. He argued that the narrative fails on both timing and cross exchange transmission, and that it misidentifies correlation as causation.

 

As Binance founder Changpeng Zhao and Ethena founder Guy Young joined the discussion, the debate evolved into a broader question. Was the October 10 crash driven by risky product design, or by infrastructure failure under extreme stress?

 

The answer matters. It determines what the industry chooses to fix next.

 

THE OKX ARGUMENT: STRUCTURAL LEVERAGE AS THE ROOT CAUSE

 

Star Xu’s position can be summarized clearly. Yield incentives combined with incorrect collateral classification created systemic leverage.

 

According to this view, Binance offered temporary high yield on USDe while allowing it to function as margin collateral with treatment similar to USDT and USDC. This design encouraged users to view USDe as a low risk asset.

 

However, USDe is not a traditional fiat backed stablecoin. It is a synthetic dollar product supported by hedging and trading strategies. Its stability depends on execution conditions and market structure, not only on reserves.

 

Star Xu described a leverage loop that emerged from this setup. Users converted stablecoins into USDe to earn yield. They then used USDe as collateral to borrow stablecoins, which were again converted into USDe. This cycle repeated.

 

As long as markets were calm, the loop appeared profitable and safe. Reported yields increased, and risks remained hidden. But when volatility arrived on October 10, the accumulated leverage turned fragile. Liquidations accelerated, and USDe price deviations became part of a broader cascade.

 

 

In this narrative, the crash was not caused by a single shock, but by leverage that had been quietly built into the system.

 

THE TIMING AND TRANSMISSION PROBLEM

 

Haseeb Qureshi’s rebuttal focused on facts that challenge this story.

 

First, the timeline does not align. Public data shows that Bitcoin’s sharp decline and local bottom occurred roughly thirty minutes before USDe showed significant price deviation on Binance. This suggests that the major market move was already underway before USDe became unstable.

 

If USDe reacted after the primary sell off, it is difficult to argue that it initiated the crash.

 

Second, the scope of impact was limited. USDe price deviations were largely confined to Binance’s order book. Other major venues did not experience the same dislocation. A true systemic trigger would normally propagate across platforms.

 

Previous systemic failures such as Terra, Three Arrows Capital, or FTX affected balance sheets everywhere. USDe did not produce a similar global effect.

 

From this perspective, USDe appears less like the source of the fire and more like one of the first assets to show stress after the system had already begun to fail.

 

A MORE PLAUSIBLE EXPLANATION: INFRASTRUCTURE FAILURE UNDER STRESS

 

Rather than a simple cause, Haseeb Qureshi proposed a layered explanation that better fits market mechanics.

 

The initial shock came from outside crypto. Political and macro uncertainty spiked, and crypto markets were among the few risk assets still trading at full speed.

 

Trading volume surged. At the same time, key exchange infrastructure struggled. API availability and execution reliability degraded at critical moments. This impaired market makers’ ability to rebalance inventory across venues.

 

Without functioning arbitrage, prices diverged. Liquidation engines continued to operate mechanically, even as liquidity disappeared. Automatic deleveraging mechanisms further disrupted hedging flows.

 

In this environment, market makers could no longer act as buyers of last resort. Altcoin markets, which are highly path dependent, entered a vacuum. Once price discovery broke, declines became structural rather than incremental.

 

Within this framework, USDe was not irrelevant. But it functioned as an early stress indicator inside an already unstable system, not as the original trigger.

 

WHO WAS RIGHT AND WHO WAS NOT

 

Based on timing, transmission, and market structure, the weight of evidence favors Haseeb Qureshi’s interpretation of the October 10 crash.

 

This does not mean Star Xu identified a false risk. Leverage loops driven by yield incentives are real and dangerous. They deserve scrutiny.

 

However, elevating that risk into the primary cause of the October 10 crash overstates its role. The data does not support USDe as the initiating factor.

 

The more credible conclusion is that infrastructure failure and liquidation mechanics under extreme conditions played the dominant role. Binance’s responsibility, therefore, lies more in system reliability than in the existence of a yield campaign itself.

 

These are different categories of responsibility, and they imply very different fixes.

 

WHY THIS DEBATE MATTERS

 

The significance of this debate is not about assigning blame. It is about choosing the correct lesson.

 

If the industry concludes that the problem was simply USDe or similar yield products, it may avoid deeper reforms. The more uncomfortable truth is that crypto markets still lack robust stabilizing mechanisms during stress.

 

Liquidation systems are designed to minimize platform losses, not to protect market integrity. API resilience, liquidity backstops, and volatility buffers remain underdeveloped.

 

October 10 was not an anomaly. It was a stress test that arrived earlier than expected.

 

Understanding its true cause will determine whether the next shock becomes manageable, or catastrophic.

〈The October 10 Crash Revisited: Was USDe the Cause, or a Misplaced Blame?〉這篇文章最早發佈於《CoinRank》。

Bitcoin downside may be limited without a broader equity bear market

Compass Point analysts suggest Bitcoin is testing weak support, but a deeper decline would likely require a full U.S. equity market downturn. The $60,000 level is seen as a critical psychological and structural floor if risk assets continue to deteriorate.

 

Blame narratives continue to shape market volatility

Changpeng Zhao has pushed back against renewed scrutiny over Binance’s alleged role in October’s flash crash. The ongoing blame game highlights how trust, perception, and narrative risk continue to amplify volatility during market stress.

 

Macro events and policy uncertainty remain key drivers

Developments ranging from Elon Musk’s decision to combine xAI with SpaceX, to unresolved stablecoin yield discussions at the White House, and legal troubles facing Russia’s largest Bitcoin mining firm, show that external political, regulatory, and corporate forces are increasingly influencing crypto market expectations.

Welcome to CoinDesk Daily Data Report. In this column series, CoinDesk will provide important daily cryptocurrency data news, allowing readers to quickly understand the latest developments in the cryptocurrency market.

 

Crypto bear market is nearing end, with $60K as key bitcoin floor, Compass Point analysts say

 

According to Compass Point analysts, bitcoin is testing weak support but further downside would likely require a broader U.S. equity bear market. The firm points to $60K as a key potential floor, framing it as an important level for market stabilization if risk assets worsen.

 

CZ pushes back against Binance ‘FUD’ as blame game for crypto crash persists

 

Changpeng Zhao responded to renewed scrutiny over Binance’s alleged role in October’s crypto flash crash. His comments push back on accusations circulating in the market as the blame game around the sell-off continues.

 

Elon Musk merges AI company xAI with rocket company SpaceX to build AI in space

 

Elon Musk has combined xAI with SpaceX in a deal that Bloomberg reports could price a future IPO at around $1.25 trillion. The move aims to blend SpaceX’s infrastructure with xAI’s technology for space‑based AI applications.

 

Russia’s biggest bitcoin mining firm’s founder arrested for tax evasion while his company faces bankruptcy

 

The founder of Russia’s largest bitcoin mining firm was arrested on tax‑evasion charges as the company faces mounting pressure from energy debts, regulatory constraints, and insolvency claims. An En+ subsidiary has reportedly filed an insolvency claim, compounding the firm’s troubles.

 

Crypto industry, banks not yet close to stablecoin yield deal at White House meeting

 

Industry insiders met with White House advisers to discuss stablecoin yield and market‑structure legislation, but sources say the parties remain far apart. The administration urged compromises this month to move the Senate’s crypto bill forward.

〈CoinRank Daily Data Report (2/3)｜Crypto bear market is nearing end, with $60K as key bitcoin floor, Compass Point analysts say〉這篇文章最早發佈於《CoinRank》。

Privacy coins tend to surge when major crypto narratives are exhausted, making their rallies a recurring late cycle signal rather than a sustainable growth trend.

 

In recent cycles, privacy rallies have been driven more by regulatory contrast and emotional positioning than by real technological breakthroughs or broad user demand.

 

The gap between actual privacy needs and the extreme design of many privacy coins limits long term adoption, causing these assets to function as the final rotation before market momentum fades.

PRIVACY RALLIES ARE A RECURRING LATE CYCLE SIGNAL

 

In every major crypto cycle, certain signals tend to appear near the end. One of the most consistent is the sudden rally of privacy focused tokens. This pattern has repeated for more than a decade, and each time it briefly captures market attention before fading again.

 

Privacy coins rarely lead a bull market. They almost never define the next long term trend. Yet they reliably show up when the market is running out of ideas. This is not coincidence. It reflects a structural response to late cycle conditions rather than a renewed belief in privacy as a growth sector.

 

When privacy becomes the focus, it usually means the market has reached a point where there is little left to speculate on.

 

WHEN NARRATIVES ARE EXHAUSTED CAPITAL LOOKS BACKWARD

 

Late in a bull market, most dominant narratives have already been priced in. DeFi has peaked, NFTs have fragmented, and new infrastructure stories lack immediate credibility. Even promising themes like AI and on chain integration require time before real adoption appears.

 

At this stage, the market often turns backward instead of forward. It searches for ideas that feel timeless rather than new. Privacy fits this role perfectly. It has existed since 2014. It is tied to the original ideals of decentralization. And it does not require near term data to support its value.

 

In the transition between bull and bear markets, privacy is often reframed as a return to fundamentals rather than another speculative trade. This reframing gives late stage capital a narrative justification for one last rotation.

 

2017 SHOWED HOW POWERFUL THE PRIVACY STORY COULD BECOME

 

The 2017 cycle marked the peak moment for privacy coins. At that time, the crypto industry lacked direction. There were few meaningful applications, and even Bitcoin’s role as the central asset was still debated.

 

In that environment, privacy tokens moved to the center of attention. Concepts like zero knowledge proofs and ring signatures felt revolutionary. Some projects were openly marketed as better versions of Bitcoin.

 

Market enthusiasm reached extreme levels. Certain privacy coins briefly attracted more discussion than Bitcoin itself. Prices moved in ways that now seem irrational. This was not because privacy solved a broader problem, but because the market needed something to believe in once growth narratives ran thin.

 

THE 2021 TO 2022 PHASE TURNED PRIVACY INTO A CAPITAL STORY

 

The next major return of privacy came at the end of the 2021 cycle. This time, the driver was not technical exploration but capital packaging.

 

After DeFi, NFTs, and the metaverse, the market needed another funding narrative. Privacy was repositioned as the next infrastructure layer. Large financing rounds and top tier investors created the impression that privacy was finally ready for mass adoption.

 

 

What was missing was demand validation. Very few participants questioned whether everyday users were willing to accept higher costs and complexity purely for privacy. When the market cooled, the answer became clear. Adoption existed, but it was narrow. The gap between narrative and reality was exposed quickly.

 

THE CURRENT CYCLE IS ABOUT REGULATION NOT TECHNOLOGY

 

In the current cycle, the timing of privacy coin rallies is especially revealing. Most major moves began in the second half of 2025, well after the broader bull market had matured.

 

There was no clear technological breakthrough driving these gains. The most plausible explanation was regulatory contrast. As crypto became increasingly regulated, privacy coins stood out precisely because they were less compliant.

 

By 2025, crypto had largely been absorbed into regulatory frameworks across major jurisdictions. Identity checks and anti money laundering rules became unavoidable. Although crypto assets were no longer treated as securities, they were not treated as anonymous instruments either.

 

Against this backdrop, privacy coins became a symbolic counter trade. For some investors, they represented resistance rather than opportunity. This made them attractive at a moment when trust in the system felt fragile.

 

LATE ENDORSEMENTS OF PRIVACY OFTEN SIGNAL DISTRIBUTION

 

Public support for privacy from influential figures and institutions mostly appeared after price moves had already begun. From a market structure perspective, this timing matters.

 

Rather than acting as catalysts, these endorsements often coincided with periods of distribution. The narrative helped justify prices, but it did not explain their origin. In past cycles, similar patterns emerged just before sharp reversals.

 

Even when specific events temporarily extended momentum, the overall structure remained the same. Prices surged quickly and retraced just as fast.

 

REAL WORLD PRIVACY NEEDS ARE MORE LIMITED THAN THE NARRATIVE SUGGESTS

 

Privacy has survived for more than ten years because it does serve real use cases. However, these use cases are far narrower than the narrative implies.

 

Most people do not want complete invisibility. They want discretion. In traditional finance, dark pools exist to reduce market impact, not to remove auditability. Transactions can still be verified if necessary.

 

In contrast, many privacy coins push privacy to an extreme. When anonymity is the default rather than an option, it creates friction with regulators and institutions. This leads to a paradox where using a privacy coin can itself become a red flag.

 

For the majority of users, there is little incentive to hold or transact in assets that attract disproportionate scrutiny.

 

WHY PRIVACY COINS APPEAR AT THE END OF THE CYCLE

 

Privacy coins tend to rally late because they do not depend on immediate adoption or delivery. They function as emotional assets rather than productive ones.

 

When the market runs out of future oriented stories, it turns to ideology. Privacy becomes a symbol of dissatisfaction with the current system. This makes it a powerful narrative tool, but a weak foundation for sustained value.

 

As a result, privacy coins often act as the final rotation before momentum breaks. They are rarely the beginning of something new. More often, they are the market’s last attempt to keep the cycle alive.

〈When Privacy Coins Rally, the Cycle Is Usually Near the End〉這篇文章最早發佈於《CoinRank》。