Bitcoin Above $81,000, NEAR Jumps 23% on ZEC Traffic
NEAR is benefiting from sharply rising ZEC traffic through NEAR Intents, while Bitcoin stays above $81,000 after the SEC move on tokenized stocks.
Key Takeaways
- Bitcoin traded just above $81,000 in Asia on Monday morning, slightly higher than 24 hours earlier.
- NEAR rose about 23% to just above $4 on sharply increasing ZEC traffic through NEAR Intents.
- The SEC made room last week for onchain trading in tokenized U.S. stocks, giving the crypto market extra support.
Bitcoin traded just above $81,000 (€70,700) in Asia on Monday morning, putting it slightly higher than 24 hours earlier. The price kept building on gains from the past few days after the U.S. regulator made room last week for onchain trading in tokenized U.S. stocks. Meanwhile, NEAR jumped about 23% to just above $4 (€3.49), mainly because ZEC traffic through NEAR Intents has been rising sharply.
NEAR Benefits From Swap Traffic
The move in NEAR was tied to NEAR Intents, a swap service on the NEAR blockchain that lets a crypto wallet swap one token for another across different chains without the user first having to move funds themselves. Major consumer wallets, including ZODL and Vizor, have built in the service to offer ZEC swaps.
According to market data, the daily ZEC flow through the service became six times larger in one week. As a result, NEAR is increasingly acting as a routing layer for one of the most heavily traded tokens in the market, and that showed up in the price of its native token.
Bitcoin Holds On to Recent Gains
That kept Bitcoin close to the level above $81,000 (€70,700) after a quiet climb during the Asian session. Jeff Mei, chief operating officer at crypto exchange BTSE, linked Bitcoin's recent rise to the SEC decision on onchain trading in tokenized U.S. stocks and the short squeeze that followed. The earlier jump after a Fed signal also showed how quickly macro and policy news can push the price higher.
The broader crypto market showed a mixed picture. ZEC rose about 3% to just above $1,500 (€1,310), and BNB gained 2% to nearly $777 (€678). Ether and HYPE each climbed about 2%, while XRP, DOGE, SOL, and TRX rose by 1% or less.
Broader Market Picture Remains Relevant
For European crypto readers, the key point is that the SEC is now allowing a new kind of trading in tokenized stocks. That could blur the line between traditional markets and crypto infrastructure even more, especially as major financial firms also work on systems for around-the-clock trading in tokenized stocks and ETFs. For the crypto market, that could matter because more use of blockchain in investment products could also draw more attention to the infrastructure behind it.
