Bears in the Driving Seat, What to Watch for this Week + What’s with Zcash?

Gold bugs are rejoicing as the yellow stuff keeps hitting new highs amid debasement concerns, global uncertainty and geopolitical strife. Meanwhile everything else, crypto included, is getting hammered as investors become increasingly jittery.

Today’s forward guidance looks at where the markets may head in the coming week and examines what’s behind the latest sell-off in crypto and equities. Meanwhile we also dig into Zcash, one of the few crypto projects to have had a good run over the last few weeks. What’s all the fuss about and does ZEC’s success herald the end of the bull market?

🏅 The Next Hyperliquid? 🏅

Today’s video takes a look at edgeX, one of the strongest contenders for Hyperliquid’s crown as king of the perp DEXes. Love them or loathe them, perps are here to stay and are playing an increasingly prominent role in crypto trading. So, knowing the best venues to use and how to use them properly is key - although if you feel that perps aren’t for you, then you’re best advised to avoid them entirely. This tutorial shows you how to get the most out of edgeX’s platform and helps you understand the risks associated with perps trading.

You can watch that video here.

📈 Crypto Market Forecast 📈

At the time of writing, a private credit crisis appears to be unfolding. For those who don’t know, private credit is when non-bank institutions lend money. The private credit market has grown exponentially since the 2008 financial crisis, because subsequent regulations made it harder for banks to lend. The result was that other institutions stepped in to fill the gap.

This is a problem, because in contrast to traditional loans that come from banks, private credit is relatively unregulated and very opaque. Put simply, nobody knows exactly how much money is being lent out, what terms those loans have, and who is doing the borrowing. The only thing that people know is that the goal of private credit is the same as any lending: to maximize yields.

In practical terms, that means there’s an incentive for private credit lenders to go further and further out along the risk curve, lending to riskier and riskier borrowers to get a high yield. This is where crypto comes in, specifically crypto treasury companies. The main reason why there have been so many is because they offer various forms of high yield to investors: see MicroStrategy.

What’s interesting is that crypto treasury companies started experiencing issues in July according to a now deleted research report by CoinDesk. As some of you may have noticed, crypto has been lagging stocks and precious metals since the summer. It’s possible that this was due to issues in private credit, which also seem to have started emerging around that time.

However, it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that we started seeing other entities connected with private credit begin to go under, like a subprime auto lender in September. And it wasn’t until a few days ago that investors started realizing that there could be a systemic issue related to private credit, especially since some smaller regional banks seem to be caught in this web.

Newsflash, this means we could be dealing with a situation that’s similar to the 2008 financial crisis. At first glance, it looks like it could be nothing more than a 2023-style banking crisis where the Fed can just step in and provide an emergency facility. Upon closer inspection though, you realize that the opacity of private credit makes it hard to identify the problem and provide a solution.

This means the Fed will likely be forced to provide broad-based stimulus in the form of rate cuts and/or QE to try and calm credit markets. Case in point, Fed chairman Jerome Powell recently signalled that the Fed will be ending its QT program soon. This was presumably intended to try and calm the credit markets, but it looks like more words and actions will be needed soon.

What’s fascinating is that this is similar to the summer of 2007, when the financial system started experiencing stress from subprime mortgages, which are analogous to private credit today. In June 2007, hedge funds associated with Bear Stearns started experiencing pressure from subprime mortgages. This is analogous to the fall of the aforementioned subprime auto lender last month.

In August 2007, the Fed stepped in with emergency stimulus after markets started crashing. This triggered a final melt up in the markets into early October 2007, when it became apparent that the subprime crisis was much bigger than it appeared. What happens in the coming weeks could be almost identical - Fed intervention followed by a blow off top, and then the actual bust.

Again, this is just because the current private credit bubble resembles the subprime mortgage bubble, as explained in this informative video. As with subprime mortgages, the structure and scale of private credit is opaque, and this means the issues could be much worse than meets the eye. Any upcoming intervention by the Fed may only delay the crisis rather than solve it.

In sum then, what happens in the crypto market over the next week ultimately depends on what happens with the emerging private credit crisis, particularly the Fed’s response or lack thereof. History suggests the Fed will intervene, and the fact that it’s probably impossible to pinpoint the source of the stress means that broad-based intervention is likely. Markets will rally as a result.

🔍 Zcash 🔍

Zcash (ZEC), a privacy coin from the 2017 cycle, has been one of the best altcoin performers in the past few weeks.

Its ZEC coin went from a price of roughly $42 on September 4th to a high of $292 by October 12th – that’s almost a 7x return in just over a month. While most of the market was caught by surprise, long-time Zcash community members and holders claimed this explosive move was long overdue. After all, it had been trading between $20 to $50 for almost three years now. There’s no doubt Zcash believers feel vindicated.

In fact, we’ve even had prominent figures like Naval Ravikant and Mert shilling Zcash for months now. Notably, Ravikant described Zcash as an “insurance against Bitcoin" while Mert called it a natural reaction to state surveillance of money. Above all, the comparison of ZEC being a better version of BTC is all over the timeline.

If you don’t know where this comes from, here’s a bit of lore.

Just like BTC, Zcash’s ZEC has a hard capped max supply of 21M coins. It’s also a forked version of the Bitcoin codebase with added privacy features. While the project officially launched in 2016, its creators have been ideating and developing it since early 2013. At its core, Zcash is part of the early cypherpunk movement that sought to create an independent global financial system free from state control and surveillance.

While Bitcoin managed to nail the state control aspect, surveillance has yet to be sufficiently countered. There are over a dozen pieces of software today that make analyzing transaction flows on the Bitcoin blockchain a piece of cake. In fact, there’s a 2010 discussion on the Bitcointalk forum, where Satoshi admits that a ZK-enabled private version of Bitcoin would make “a much better, easier, and more convenient version” of the blockchain. This underpins much of the philosophy and technology behind Zcash.

With that said, we still haven’t answered the question of ‘why now?’

If the technology and use case are so good, shouldn’t it have at least matched Bitcoin’s upward trending long-term price action? Instead, Zcash is still well below its 2018 high price of $703.

Well, depending on who you ask, there are some different explanations/theories.

One of the more prominent ones relates to a fundamental surge in adoption of the Zcash network. For instance, proponents like Josh Swihart note that much of the price action follows a notable rise in ZEC present in shielded pools. At the time of writing, nearly 30% of the circulating ZEC supply is present in these shielded pools. This marks a noticeable increase in privacy-enabled transactions on the network, hinting at real usage beyond just speculation.

Swihart attributes this growth in shielded ZEC to the recent launch of Zashi – the flagship wallet for the Zcash network. Notably, Zashi is touted to offer a cleaner user experience than Phantom or MetaMask. It also offers extended support for long-term cold storage through Keystone and will soon integrate with Ledger Live under the direct oversight of Ledger’s CTO. Swihart also notes that the launch of NEAR Intents has allowed users to bridge into ZEC from any chain. Notably, this allows users to perform swaps and cross-chain pay within Zashi itself. Not to mention, the network is also planning to shift to a hybrid consensus model that combines PoW with PoS mechanisms. This will enable users to stake ZEC and earn yield while miners secure the base layer. Overall, the shift towards a better user experience and network support is assumed to have increased fundamental demand.

However, community members like Sacha believe the shift is much more cultural than purely technological. Sacha notes that the rising capabilities of artificial intelligence technology has made state and social surveillance by bad actors a more pressing threat. They also note that Zcash is seeing a meaningful renewal in cultural momentum in the hands of a younger crop of community members like Mert and Arjun Khemani. When you combine this with the rise of CBDCs over the next decade, you’ll see why privacy is making a comeback.

There’s also been a focus on privacy in the wider crypto community. Notably, Telegram founder Pavel Durov’s arrest in France last year sparked a wide range of privacy-focused initiatives – from Jack Dorsey’s Mesh network-enabled messaging app Bitchat to the Ethereum Foundation’s recent commitment to privacy.

There’s also the matter of Zcash’s four-year halving cycles. Proponents like Arjun note that Zcash just crossed its second halving. Arjun argues that even BTC couldn’t sustain a price above $1,000 until after its second halving. He claims that ZEC is finally about to enter a period of true price discovery.

However, whether this pump truly marks a pivotal point for Zcash is yet to be determined.

After all, there’s the simple explanation that much of this is just momentary price action driven by speculative market narratives. We’re at the tail end of a cycle where price action was largely driven by memetic narratives and speculation. It shouldn’t be too surprising to see ZEC pump, especially when there’s an ongoing joke that ZEC pumps mark the end of bull runs. Well, the charts don’t lie – there really has been a ZEC pump at every market top. There’s also the explanation that OG Bitcoin whales tend to use Zcash to privately exit the markets when BTC hits all-time highs.

Nevertheless, it is still true that the fundamentals have never looked better for Zcash. The question is - can it sustain this momentum at a time when crypto narratives seem to have a shelf life shorter than milk?

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🔮 Video Pipeline 🔮

* Commercial Real Estate Update: A $1 trillion problem?
* Pokemon Cards: The ins and outs of this crazy market!
* Altcoin Treasuries Vs Altcoin ETFs: Will they trigger an altseason or crash?
* Market Algos: How do they control global markets?

🏆 What's New at CoinBureau.com This Week? 🏆

* Kraken Review 2025: Features, Fees, Security, and UX
* Discover the Top 12 DEX for Your Crypto Needs (October 2025 Updated)
* Pepe Coin Price Prediction (2025-2030): Why $1 Is Impossible + Realistic Targets

📖 Quote of the Week 📖

It’s tough out there - people are tired. Q4 has gotten off to a terrible start. But, it’s in times like these that our conviction is tested. Do you hold, or do you fold?

"It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting" - Jesse Livermore

Team Coin Bureau

Disclosure: Authors may own cryptoassets named in this newsletter. These are unqualified opinions, and a Coin Bureau newsletter, is meant for informational purposes only. It is not meant to serve as investment advice. Please consult with your investment, tax, or legal advisor.