What has been happening this week in the world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies? Crypto Valley Journal's weekly review rounds up the most relevant current events and background reports. Alongside the price moves, this week's stories turn on practical questions of market access, infrastructure security, and how investors judge what a token is really worth.

Bitcoin: Early Signals Point to an Advanced Bottoming Process

Whether Bitcoin has finally bottomed out remains uncertain. However, several indicators suggest the process is well advanced. From its all-time high above USD 126,000 in October 2025, the leading cryptocurrency at times lost more than half of its value. In July, it even dropped below USD 60,000 before recently recovering to around USD 84,000.

The asset's reaction to bad news stands out. In mid-September, the Clarity Act failed in the US Senate, and the Federal Reserve then raised its key interest rate to between 3.75 and 4.00 percent. Bitcoin dipped at first but recovered strongly. Demand has also returned to US spot ETFs: after outflows of roughly USD 746 million, some USD 484 million flowed back in. Analytics firm Glassnode additionally reports that long-term holders' share of realized profits fell from 88 to 47 percent. At the same time, typical euphoria is absent, with Bitcoin holding around 59 percent of total market capitalization. Taken together, the review concludes that the rally rests on solid ground. Both data series are easy to follow from here: US spot ETF issuers report flows after each trading day, and Glassnode publishes its holder metrics on an ongoing basis, so upcoming readings will show whether the returning demand and the reset in profit-taking hold.

NEAR Earns From Trading on Other Blockchains

There is no broad altcoin rally, yet some projects continue to 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 only a minor role in this performance. According to data platform DefiLlama, NEAR counts around 60,000 daily active addresses, compared with 3.11 million on Solana.

Growth instead comes from NEAR Intents. Users define only the desired outcome of a swap, and specialized solvers then settle it across multiple chains. Intents now processes around USD 1.3 billion per week. A companion feature, 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, these buybacks offset only a limited share of inflation. With a valuation of roughly USD 6 billion — equal to 250 times annualized revenue — the market is already pricing in substantial future growth. The case illustrates how cross-chain infrastructure, rather than a chain's own activity, can become a protocol's main source of revenue. Because DefiLlama tracks the address and volume figures publicly and the buybacks are funded directly from revenue, the revenue-to-inflation ratio is the number to watch as the protocol develops.

Zcash: Privacy Coin Between a US ETF and an EU Ban

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.

Confidentiality with disclosure on request is the core of Zcash. Launched in 2016, the cryptocurrency offers both 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 built on a privacy coin. In addition, Cypherpunk Technologies, backed by Winklevoss Capital, is building a mining fleet with around 18 percent of the hashrate. ZEC also rose 123.6 percent within 30 days to around USD 1,520.

In Europe, developments run in the opposite direction. The EU anti-money laundering regulation requires licensed providers to delist privacy coins by July 2027. Worldwide, more than 70 exchanges had already removed at least one privacy coin by late 2025. The result is a split market for the same asset: regulated access is expanding in the US while scheduled to end in Europe. With the delisting deadline fixed for July 2027, further removals by licensed providers as that date approaches are the concrete steps to watch.

Bitget's Own Controls Released USD 351.6 Million

Crypto exchange Bitget this week confirmed a hack of USD 351.6 million. The attack hit parts of the hot and warm wallets on seven chains, including Ethereum, the XRP Ledger, and Base.

What stands out is the attacker's route. Rather than stealing private keys, the attacker broke into a backend system of the wallet infrastructure and falsified transfer data, so the approval process released the outflows itself. Well-protected key custody, in other words, helps little if someone manipulates the data upstream. Bitget suspects a North Korean hacking group behind the attack, although no authority has confirmed this. Withdrawals remain halted for the time being. According to Bitget, its own User Protection Fund of over USD 464 million covers the entire loss. For exchange customers, the case shows that security review has to extend beyond key custody to the systems that prepare transfer data for approval — this time the weak point sat in the workflow, not the vault. With withdrawals halted for now, Bitget's next updates on reopening and on the investigation are the markers to watch.

A Nutrition Study Explains the Hunt for Cheap Coins

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 deliberately exploit this by inflating supply into the trillions. Meme coin BONK, for example, has more than 75 trillion tokens — a price of one dollar would require a valuation above USD 75 trillion. Likewise, XRP looks cheap at around USD 1.4, yet at roughly USD 84 billion it is the fifth-largest crypto asset. Consequently, only market capitalization — unit price times circulating supply — is a meaningful gauge, and the fully diluted valuation, which also counts locked tokens, is worth a look.

This weekly review was originally published by Crypto Valley Journal.