Zcash’s rise mirrors a shifting mood toward privacy in an increasingly monitored online world. Cryptocurrencies focused on privacy have come onto investors’ radar recently, ranking among the most popular token categories. According to CoinGecko, which tracks a combined market capitalization of almost $22 billion across privacy coins, their value rose 52.2% in the past 24 hours. Rival data aggregator CoinMarketCap places the category at nearly $55 billion, with Zcash (ZEC) now leading the pack. One of the early privacy-focused cryptocurrencies, Zcash launched in October 2016. It traded below $80 at the start of this October but exploded 375% over the month to reach $380 by Halloween, flipping Monero (XMR) as the largest privacy token by market cap. Read more
Zcash’s rise mirrors a shifting mood toward privacy in an increasingly monitored online world. Cryptocurrencies focused on privacy have come onto investors’ radar recently, ranking among the most popular token categories. According to CoinGecko, which tracks a combined market capitalization of almost $22 billion across privacy coins, their value rose 52.2% in the past 24 hours. Rival data aggregator CoinMarketCap places the category at nearly $55 billion, with Zcash (ZEC) now leading the pack. One of the early privacy-focused cryptocurrencies, Zcash launched in October 2016. It traded below $80 at the start of this October but exploded 375% over the month to reach $380 by Halloween, flipping Monero (XMR) as the largest privacy token by market cap. Read more
Scott Bessent met Prime Minister Lawrence Wong during the APEC 2025 summit, as world leaders gathered to address global growth, energy security and technology. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent praised Singapore’s leadership in stablecoin and digital asset adoption during a meeting with Prime Minister Lawrence Wong on Friday, according to an official readout from the US Department of the Treasury. The discussion was held at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) 2025 summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, where world leaders are meeting to discuss global growth, energy security and technology. Bessent also told APEC leaders during the Economic Leaders’ Informal Dialogue that through their work with APEC economies, the US is “seeing record levels of capital being invested into advanced manufacturing and technology sectors.” Read more
Scott Bessent met Prime Minister Lawrence Wong during the APEC 2025 summit, as world leaders gathered to address global growth, energy security and technology. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent praised Singapore’s leadership in stablecoin and digital asset adoption during a meeting with Prime Minister Lawrence Wong on Friday, according to an official readout from the US Department of the Treasury. The discussion was held at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) 2025 summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, where world leaders are meeting to discuss global growth, energy security and technology. Bessent also told APEC leaders during the Economic Leaders’ Informal Dialogue that through their work with APEC economies, the US is “seeing record levels of capital being invested into advanced manufacturing and technology sectors.” Read more
Crypto users must deal with costly fees, protocol-level restrictions and multiple service providers to execute simple stablecoin transactions. The number of different stablecoin tickers and token standards is fragmenting liquidity across the crypto ecosystem and burdening users with a poor experience that is costly, technical,and time-consuming, according to onchain sleuth ZachXBT. Cross-chain bridging restrictions, gas and transaction fees that must be paid in the native token of the blockchain being used, and a lack of universal token support across exchanges are all obstacles users face in transferring stablecoins across the crypto ecosystem, ZachXBT said. He gave the following example: From there, the user may realize that their exchange of choice doesn’t support the token or a swap on that token and is forced to bridge to a different blockchain, spend more on gas fees, download another wallet or sign up for another exchange to execute the transaction. The lack of a smooth user experience and intuitive us...