In early 2026, the crypto market entered a period of volatility, but it is currently undergoing a stress test phase driven by escalating macro conflicts and global liquidity disturbances. The US and EU engaged in tariff threats over the sovereignty of Greenland, followed by Trump softening his stance and canceling the tariff threats. This represents a reemergence of the Trump-style TACO trade.

As institutional capital continues to increase its share in the crypto market, privacy is transforming from a marginalized demand for anonymity into a key infrastructural capability for blockchain's integration into the real-world financial system. The public transparency of blockchain was once considered its core value proposition, but as institutional participation becomes the dominant force, this characteristic is revealing structural limitations.

Entering 2026, the crypto market is undergoing a profound structural transformation. The long-repeated "four-year bull-bear cycle" is losing its explanatory power over the market, being replaced by a process of structural evolution characterized by parallel asset logics, diverging capital behaviors, and a slowing price rhythm.

The turning point for the crypto market in 2025 will not be in price, but in structure: the funding side will shift from retail investors to institutional dominance, the asset side will upgrade from the "crypto native narrative" to an on-chain dollar system centered on stablecoins and RWA, and the regulatory side will move from gray-market games to normalized global regulation.

The recent volatility in the crypto market is not an isolated phenomenon, but rather a structural adjustment caused by the superposition of three macroeconomic factors over time.

Ethereum will undergo a major upgrade called Fusaka on December 3, 2025. This is Ethereum's third milestone update since The Merge and the Dencun upgrade. It aims to significantly improve the network's scalability, reduce transaction costs, and optimize node operating efficiency. It also focuses on upgrading and optimizing functions related to account abstraction.

The crypto market has recently experienced a significant rebound, with Bitcoin breaking through $94,000 and stabilizing above the key level. Sentiment and liquidity have seen a temporary recovery. However, this rebound is mainly driven by improved expectations for macro liquidity, the return of funds after the panic selling, and a technical rebound, and is not enough to prove the systemic start of a bull market.

In the future, prediction markets are expected to become an "information pricing layer" embedded in social media, news, and financial terminals, while entrepreneurial and investment opportunities will mainly focus on key infrastructure areas such as rules and oracles, liquidity and capital efficiency, distribution and interaction, and compliance and AI integration.

By the end of 2025, the crypto market will be in a period of deep volatility driven by a high degree of macroeconomic factors: although Bitcoin is still in the high range of $90,000, sentiment has fallen to the level of extreme fear since the 2020 pandemic. The massive outflow of ETFs in a single day, the structural turnover of whales and retail investors selling at a loss have formed a typical "redistribution of chips" in the middle of a bull market.

This report uses the surge in Zcash (ZEC) as a starting point to systematically analyze the technological evolution, valuation repricing, and medium- to long-term investment logic of the privacy coin sector.

In November 2025, the crypto market will be at a structural turning point: after fiscal recession and peak interest rates, liquidity will flow back to the private sector, risk assets will become more differentiated, and the U.S. Treasury General Account (TGA) will only receive funds and not withdraw them due to the U.S. government shutdown. The balance will expand from about $800 billion to more than $1 trillion, which is equivalent to withdrawing about $200 billion of liquidity from the market and exacerbating the tightness of funds in the banking system.

The x402 protocol, jointly launched by Coinbase and Cloudflare in 2025, aims to build a native payment layer for the internet by activating the HTTP 402 status code, which has been dormant for thirty years.

Stablecoins have evolved from "crypto-native settlement chips" to "global digital dollar infrastructure."

Looking ahead to the fourth quarter of 2025, the market is likely to enter a cycle of "risk repricing" and "deleveraging", with overall volatility remaining high. BTC and ETH may seek to bottom out at key support levels.

Web3 is self-hosted, verifiable on-chain, and globally accessible, and relies on oracles, partial liquidation, unified collateral, and fund reuse to improve capital efficiency.