The Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) Group has further strengthened its position as the Middle East’s most liquid ETF hub. The exchange recently hosted the region’s first initial offering period (IOP) for a U.S.-based ETF, which culminated in the successful cross-listing of the KraneShares Wahed Alternative Income Index ETF (KWIN).
This milestone firmly underscores ADX’s continued push to expand access to global investment products and enhance market accessibility for regional investors.
Global demand and ETF mechanics
The IOP for the new ETF ran from 15 to 21 April. Highlighting strong and diverse international demand, the offering attracted investors from more than 46 different nationalities who subscribed directly through the ADX website.
Developed collaboratively by KraneShares and Wahed Invest, KWIN marks a key regional milestone. Key details of the newly listed ETF include:
It is the first Shari’ah-compliant ETF to be cross-listed from the U.S..
It represents the fourth ETF overall from the New York Stock Exchange to join the ADX.
The fund utilizes an options-based strategy designed to generate income.
It tracks the Wahed Shariah Alternative Income Index, which, as of March 2026, contained 306 holdings, including major companies such as Amazon and Lululemon.
Furthermore, KWIN represents the second ETF listing on the ADX since the onset of recent regional geopolitical developments, closely following the KraneShares Artificial Intelligence & Technology ETF (AGIX). According to ADX, this highlights the exchange’s ability to sustain strong momentum and retain investor trust.
A surging ETF ecosystem
The launch of KWIN officially increases the total number of ETFs listed on the ADX to 23. This latest addition brings the total ETF market capitalization on the Abu Dhabi exchange to nearly AED 27 dirhams.
The ADX’s ETF segment continues to experience rapid expansion. In the first quarter of 2026, ETF trading value reached 155 million dirhams, representing a massive 228 per cent year-on-year increase.
This immense growth aligns with broader market performance across the exchange. Over the same period, total trading value across the ADX approached 90 billion dirhams, an increase of 7.5 per cent.
Institutional and foreign engagement
The exchange’s first-quarter metrics also underscore strong international engagement and deep institutional trust:
Institutional participation rose to account for 78 per cent of the total trading value.
Foreign investors accounted for 47.5 per cent of trading.
Transactions from foreign investors exceeded 85 billion dirhams, marking a 22 per cent year-on-year increase.
Bitcoin BTC$81,437.09, the world’s largest digital asset by market value, has risen from roughly $63,000 to over $80,000 in the past three months, according to CoinDesk market data. And key signals that professionals watch closely are now all pointing in the same direction: $85,000.
The rally is not just about price, but about the ripples beneath the surface.
On-chain dynamics
Further gains look likely because bitcoin has topped two levels that on-chain analysts consider among the most important in the market: The True Market Mean at $78,200 and the Short-Term Holder Cost Basis at $79,100.
BTC has topped its True Market Mean and Short-Term Holder Cost Basis. (Glassnode)
Here is why those numbers matter. The True Market Mean is the average price active bitcoin investors paid for the coins they currently hold. The metric doesn’t count every bitcoin ever mined, including those sitting dormant for years or lost, but focuses on coins that are actually changing hands between investors.
That makes it a cleaner estimate of the level that matters most to people that are active in the market. When bitcoin trades above it, most active investors are in profit, and when it falls below it, many are underwater. That’s why analysts use it to gauge sentiment, spot periods of market stress or euphoria, and identify potential mean-reversion zones.
Speaking of the short-term holder cost basis, it represents the average acquisition cost for people who acquired coins less than six months ago. Again, this tells us the price that matters to traders, not long-term dormant holders.
Hence, when the spot price breaks above both these levels, it is said to reflect a bullish outlook.
“Should price sustain above these two levels in the coming week, the deep value regime that persisted from early February 2026 through now would rank among the shortest episodes of its kind in Bitcoin market history,” analysts at research firm Glassnode said in a report.
“Attention now shifts to the next major resistance at the Active Realized Price near $85.2k, which tracks the cost basis of all non-dormant supply and represents the next structural threshold the market must reckon with,” they added.
As of writing, bitcoin traded near $80,800, well above the true market mean and the short-term holder cost levels.
Futures market flows
A subtle shift is underway in the futures market that could help push bitcoin higher.
The signal comes from funding rates, the small recurring payments traders make to keep leveraged futures bets open. For most of the past three months, funding rates were negative, indicating unusually heavy demand to bet against bitcoin in futures markets.
Much of that activity likely came from hedge funds and institutional traders running a popular arbitrage strategy: buying bitcoin or spot bitcoin ETFs while simultaneously shorting futures contracts. That trade created steady selling pressure in the futures market even as bitcoin rallied.
Now, funding rates have flipped back to neutral or slightly positive. That suggests many of those short positions have already been closed, removing a key source of downward pressure on the market.
It also raises the possibility of a short squeeze. If bitcoin continues rising, traders still betting against it may be forced (squeezed) to buy back futures contracts to exit their positions, which can accelerate gains.
“The flip toward neutral doesn’t invalidate the carry trade; it indicates that shorts paying for the privilege are no longer present at scale. Either funding migrates back negative as new ETF capital recreates the trade or the squeeze has further to run,” analysts at OG exchange Bitfinex said, explaining potential for more gains ahead.
Options dynamics
The third signal comes from the options market, where traders use contracts to position for or protect against price moves. Calls are bullish bets that give upside exposure if bitcoin rises, while puts are used as insurance against downside risk.
Options positioning is now set up in a way that could amplify the current move higher.
Market makers, the firms that provide market liquidity, have what’s known as “short gamma” exposure around the $82,000 level, with roughly $2 billion sitting near current prices, according to Glassnode.
Short gamma matters because it forces these dealers to hedge in the direction of the prevailing trend, which is bullish, to stay balanced.
In practice, that means as bitcoin pushes higher, dealer hedging itself can add incremental buying pressure, potentially accelerating the rally toward $85,000. Market makers make money by providing liquidity, meaning they try to stay neutral on price direction rather than betting on it.
But this cuts both ways. If the market turns lower, these same dealers would likely have to hedge in the opposite direction, selling into the decline, which can add to downside pressure.
“Short gamma means dealers are positioned in a way that forces them to hedge in the direction of the move, buying as price rises and selling as it falls. This creates a feedback loop that can accelerate price action, which helps explain the recent push toward $83K,” Glassnode explained.
Caveat
None of the things discussed above happens in a vacuum. Bitcoin still trades closely with U.S. tech stocks, so if equities suddenly turn risk-off, it can quickly slow the momentum or even pause the trend altogether.
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase was sued in California federal court over frozen crypto allegedly tied to a $55 million DAI phishing theft from August 2024.
The complaint, filed Monday in a San Francisco federal court, alleges that after laundering the proceeds through crypto mixer Tornado Cash, the attacker deposited part of the “traceable stolen funds” into a Coinbase retail user account, where the funds remain frozen.
The Puerto Rico-based plaintiff is asking the court to declare him the rightful owner of the frozen assets and order Coinbase to return them. The lawsuit also names an unknown John Doe defendant accused of carrying out the theft.
The lawsuit questions the responsibility of cryptocurrency exchanges in handling stolen funds that were traceably sent to these platforms after an exploit. The complaint claims that Coinbase has “acknowledged” that it holds these traced funds and has “indicated that a court order adjudicating ownership is required before it will release the frozen assets.”
The case highlights a problem in crypto theft recovery where exchanges may freeze suspected stolen funds after receiving alerts, but often require a court order before releasing assets to a claimant.
The lawsuit comes nearly two years after an exploiter stole $55 million in Dai stablecoins through a sophisticated phishing attack that deceived the victim into clicking a malicious link to a fraudulent DeFi Saver login, authorizing the attacker to gain access to his account and wallets.
Cointelegraph has reached out to Coinbase for more details surrounding the stolen funds and the path towards user recovery.
Coinbase sued for funds linked to the $55 million DeFi Saver hack. Source: CourtListener
Crypto wallet drainer was used to facilitate $55 million exploit
The $55 million exploit was carried out using the malicious Inferno Drainer platform, which offers a scam-as-a-service malware for malicious actors seeking to facilitate digital asset theft without the need to exploit code-level protocol vulnerabilities.
In addition to notifying law enforcement, the victim contracted crypto analytics platforms Zero Shadow and Five Stones intelligence to trace the stolen crypto. The companies found evidence linking the laundering of the funds to Ukrainian citizen Okelsiy Oleksandrovych Gorelikhin.
On Nov. 30, 2024, Zero Shadow notified Coinbase that stolen funds linked to the theft had been deposited into a Coinbase address, asking the exchange to conduct due diligence and freeze the assets.
On Dec. 2, 2024, Coinbase confirmed that the address belongs to a Coinbase retail user and that it implemented “friction measures” preventing dissipation of those funds pending investigation.
The court filing argued that the stolen cryptocurrency held in the Coinbase account was “identifiable property traceable to Plaintiff’s stolen assets” and added that the defendant had previously demanded the return of the assets.
Related: Arbitrum voters consider $71M ETH release for Kelp recovery
The year 2024 was a breakout year for scam-as-a-service tools, with usage of Inferno Drainer tripling in the first half of the year, rising from roughly 800 malicious decentralized applications created at the start of the year to over 2,400 by the end of it, according to blockchain security firm Blockaid.
Magazine: AI-driven hacks could kill DeFi — unless projects act now
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure
Paraguay now controls 4.3% of the global Bitcoin network — a figure that caught the attention of Colombia’s president and may be shaping the country’s next big energy bet.
An Indigenous Community At The Center
Colombian President Gustavo Petro went public this week with a proposal to turn the country’s Caribbean coast into a Bitcoin mining hub, citing Paraguay’s rise as proof the model works for developing nations.
In a post on X, Petro named three cities — Barranquilla, Santa Marta, and Riohacha — as potential sites for mining operations.
He also put forward an unusual condition: that the Wayúu people, Colombia’s largest Indigenous community and long-time residents of the Caribbean coast, be made co-owners of any such project.
“It’s an immense boost to the development of the Caribbean,” Petro wrote.
Si las monedas virtuales se basan en energía fósil estalla el calentamiento mundial y el colapso climático
Hoy los países con abundantes energías limpias encerradas como Venezuela y Paraguay, logran atraer las inversiones en minería del bitcoin. La.minería del bitcoin es el… https://t.co/KroCrG9qkD
The proposal draws on Colombia’s existing energy profile. According to World Bank data published in April 2024, the country generates about 75% of its electricity from renewable sources — more than twice the global average.
Petro argued that tapping those clean energy supplies for Bitcoin mining would sidestep the environmental concerns he has raised about fossil fuel-powered mining operations.
Paraguay’s Rise Sets The Template
The Paraguay comparison is central to Petro’s pitch. The landlocked South American country tapped hydroelectric power from the Itaipu dam and, based on reports, now ranks fourth globally in Bitcoin mining hashrate — behind only the US, Russia, and China.
BTCUSD currently trading at $81,503. Chart: TradingView
Analysts at Hashlabs have said the mining industry can deliver meaningful economic impact to emerging countries by converting surplus electricity into a cash-generating export.
That opening is growing. US commercial miners are increasingly shifting focus toward artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, where profit margins are higher.
Reports indicate that shift is leaving room for countries with low electricity costs to capture a bigger slice of the global Bitcoin network.
A Short Window To Act
There is one major constraint hanging over Petro’s plan. His presidential term ends in August, giving him roughly three months to move the proposal forward. He is barred by Colombia’s constitution from seeking re-election. Colombia holds its next presidential election on May 31.
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
Editorial Process for bitcoinist is centered on delivering thoroughly researched, accurate, and unbiased content. We uphold strict sourcing standards, and each page undergoes diligent review by our team of top technology experts and seasoned editors. This process ensures the integrity, relevance, and value of our content for our readers.
The Trump brothers’ bitcoin mining venture cut its cost per coin by nearly a quarter in three months, going against industry trends.
American Bitcoin (ABTC) said in a Wednesday filing that its cost to mine one bitcoin fell to roughly $36,200 in the first quarter, a 23% drop from $46,900 in Q4 2025.
That puts it materially below the publicly listed miner average of around $80,000 per bitcoin in late 2025, as CoinDesk reported, and inside the band where mining at current bitcoin prices remains genuinely profitable rather than a managed loss.
The improvement came from spreading higher production volume across a stable fixed-cost base, plus what management called “continued energy pricing discipline.”
The Drumheller site in Alberta, which was switched on and began running miners in late March, added roughly 3.05 exahash of computing power, a measure of how many guesses per second the mining hardware can make to find new bitcoin. Total fleet capacity hit 28.1 exahash by quarter-end, with around 89,000 mining machines running.
As such, American Bitcoin posted an $81.8 million net loss for the quarter, with most of that driven by mark-to-market accounting on its bitcoin holdings as the price dropped roughly 22% over the period.
Revenue came in at $62.1 million versus $78.3 million in Q4 2025, reflecting a lower average revenue per coin mined of $76,000 versus $100,000.
Strip out the non-cash bitcoin revaluation, however, and the underlying mining business was profitable. The company added 1,620 bitcoin to its strategic reserve in the quarter, taking its holdings to roughly 7,021 BTC, a 30% increase in three months.
Of that, 817 came from mining and 803 from open-market treasury purchases. American Bitcoin is now the 16th largest publicly traded bitcoin holder globally.
What makes the quarter notable structurally is the contrast with the rest of the cohort. Public miners have collectively pivoted toward AI and high-performance computing, signing more than $70 billion in cumulative contracts and reducing their bitcoin treasuries by over 15,000 BTC since late 2024 to fund the transition.
ABTC shares were down about 1% in after-hours trading and remain nearly 90% below their September 2025 listing peak of around $1.25.
OpenTrade, an institutional-grade platform for onchain and real-world asset (RWA)-backed lending and stablecoin yield products, has raised fresh capital to expand its yield infrastructure.
The platform secured $17 million in its latest strategic funding round led by Mercury Fund and Notion Capital, OpenTrade said in a Wednesday announcement seen by Cointelegraph.
The new funding will support the continued expansion of OpenTrade’s permissioned and permissionless yield infrastructure, as well as the growth of its vault-focused service Curation+, CEO David Sutter told Cointelegraph.
“The company also plans to expand its asset management and trading team, increase engineering capacity, and build a dedicated customer success function to support its growing client base,” Sutter said.
CEO positive on regulation amid CLARITY Act debate over stablecoin rules
The raise comes as US lawmakers debate how stablecoin rewards should be regulated under the CLARITY Act, a broader digital asset market structure bill that has been delayed partly by disputes over whether crypto firms should be allowed to offer interest-like incentives on stablecoin balances. Sutter expressed optimism over recent progress around the stalled legislation.
CLARITY is nearing a Senate Banking Committee vote after a compromise between crypto and banking stakeholders. The deal would allow usage-based rewards like cashback or discounts on stablecoin activity but prohibit yield on idle balances.
OpenTrade surpassed $200 million in total value locked (TVL) in April. Source: OpenTrade
“Our structure is derived from securities lending in traditional finance, but adapted to the lending of stablecoins instead of securities,” Sutter said, adding that there may be market-specific nuances affecting availability to institutional or qualified investors.
Sutter told Cointelegraph that the legal architecture underpinning the platform has been purpose-built to offer its products to clients globally while maintaining compliance with existing traditional finance and digital asset regulatory standards.
“There are strong regulatory tailwinds for the industry at large, which will be conducive to continued growth for stablecoins,” Sutter added.
Related: Ripple CEO says market structure bill not ‘done deal,’ despite compromise
Circle Ventures was an early investor in OpenTrade
Founded in 2023, OpenTrade seeks to provide scalable and compliant yield products for fintechs and institutional investors.
OpenTrade’s infrastructure routes user deposits into tokenized vaults that allocate capital across a mix of yield sources, primarily RWAs such as fixed-income instruments, alongside selected decentralized finance (DeFi) strategies. Each vault follows a defined allocation strategy and operates through smart contract-based mechanisms that manage deposits, track positions and distribute returns.
OpenTrade vaults (an excerpt). Source: OpenTrade
The latest funding round brings OpenTrade’s total funding to $30 million and included backing from prominent industry investor a16z Crypto. The London-based company previously raised $7 million in a strategic round led by Mercury Fund and Notion Capital in June 2025, following a $4 million seed round in November 2024.
OpenTrade also secured funding from investors such as Circle Ventures and Polygon Ventures in May 2023, while announcing plans to launch a platform for USDC-denominated investments and tokenized financial assets.
OpenTrade co-founders Dave Sutter and Jeff Handler previously worked at Centre, a now-dissolved consortium of Circle and Coinbase providing standards governance for the USDC stablecoin.
Magazine: Will the CLARITY Act be good — or bad — for DeFi?
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure
The Fear & Greed Index suggests digital asset traders are fearful even after the latest price recovery above $82,000 that Bitcoin has observed.
Crypto Fear & Greed Index Is Still Pointing At A Fearful Market
The “Fear & Greed Index” is an indicator created by Alternative that tells us about the average sentiment present among traders in the Bitcoin and wider cryptocurrency markets. It represents the investor mentality as a score lying between 0 and 100. All values above 53 on the scale correspond to a sentiment of greed, while those below 47 suggest fear among the investors. Naturally, the metric being between these two cutoffs implies a net neutral market mentality.
Here is how the latest value of the Fear & Greed Index looks:
The metric has a value of 46 at the moment | Source: Alternative
As displayed above, the indicator has a value of 46, which means that Bitcoin traders are holding a sentiment that leans fearful. The degree of fear is only slight, however, as the metric is sitting right on the edge of the zone.
On Tuesday, the Fear & Greed Index had surged to a value of 50, implying that sentiment was exactly in the balance. Despite bullish momentum in the market continuing over the past day, however, sentiment has actually deteriorated. This could be a potential indication that investors are still not convinced by the recovery surge.
Though the latest pullback in the metric doesn’t mean that the recovery hasn’t caused any uplift in sentiment. As the chart below shows, the Fear & Greed Index was in the depths of fear during the first half of April.
How the Fear & Greed Index has fluctuated over the past twelve months | Source: Alternative
The indicator was so low back then that it was inside a zone called the extreme fear. This region, which corresponds to values of 25 and lower, indicates the presence of the worst FUD in the market. The index saw a long stay inside this region before the recent Bitcoin recovery rally finally triggered a sustained break.
While the sentiment is currently still inside the fear territory, it’s possible that the investor mood could improve further in the coming days if the current bullish momentum continues. It only remains to be seen, however, how things will play out in the market.
In some other news, the price uplift during the past day has meant that a large number of liquidations have occurred over in the derivatives sector. These liquidations have heavily leaned in the short direction, as the heatmap below from CoinGlass shows.
The majority of the assets have seen a short-heavy flush | Source: CoinGlass
Out of the $211 million in liquidations that Bitcoin-related contracts have witnessed, over $200 million have involved the bearish bets. Overall, short liquidations have amounted to $441 million in the digital asset sector.
Bitcoin Price
Bitcoin has surged to the $82,500 mark following the latest continuation to its rally.
The trend in the price of the coin over the last five days | Source: BTCUSDT on TradingView
Featured image from Dall-E, chart from TradingView.com
Editorial Process for bitcoinist is centered on delivering thoroughly researched, accurate, and unbiased content. We uphold strict sourcing standards, and each page undergoes diligent review by our team of top technology experts and seasoned editors. This process ensures the integrity, relevance, and value of our content for our readers.
The crypto VC’s co-founder said the firm has been buying ZEC since February, and has “built a significant position.”
Zcash (ZEC) rallied over 30% to become today’s top gainer after crypto-focused venture capital firm Multicoin revealed that it’s been accumulating the privacy coin for the past three months.
The VC firm’s co-founder and managing partner Tushar Jain wrote in an X post on May 5 that the firm has acquired “a significant position in ZEC since February.”
ZEC is currently trading around $575, up over 32% in the past 24 hours to reach its highest level since November. The rally pushed ZEC to the top 24-hour gainer spot among the top-100 cryptocurrencies on CoinGecko.
ZEC 1-year price chart. Source: CoinGecko
In yesterday’s X post, Jain wrote that the firm’s thesis for investing in Zcash lies in the asset’s focus on privacy and representation of “the cypherpunk ideals crypto was founded on.”
“We believe that truly private, censorship and seizure resistant assets have clear product-market fit and demand is accelerating. We believe $ZEC is the cleanest way to express this thesis in public markets,” Jain wrote.
ZEC saw a massive and extended rally that lifted other privacy-focused assets in the second half of last year. The rally began in late September, shortly before the Winklevoss brothers revealed their dedicated ZEC digital asset treasury company, Cypherpunk (Nasdaq: CYPH), which had already accumulated over 200,000 ZEC by its public launch.
The DAT made another purchase in late 2025, and a smaller one in March, bringing its total holdings to over 294,700 ZEC, worth just under $170 million at press time. CYPH rallied over 7% today, per Yahoo Finance.
Zcash had a turbulent start to the year when a governance dispute resulted in the core development team and leadership exiting Electric Coin Capital, the firm previously responsibly for Zcash’s development.
The coin tumbled as low as $200 in February and March, but began its recovery after its new development company, Zcash Open Development Lab — formed by the same team from ECC — announced in March that it had raised $25 million in a seed round with participation from major VC firms and angel investors, including Winklevoss Capital and Cypherpunk Technologies, but, notably, not Multicoin.
As it continues to aggressively push into the enterprise market and build agentic AI tools, Anthropic is now targeting a major industry: finance.
The AI lab introduced ten ready-to-run agent templates earlier this week, targeting what it said is the most time-consuming work in financial services, such as building pitchbooks, screening due diligence files and closing the books at the end of the month. The templates ship as a plugin in Claude Cowork and Claude Code. Each template is a reference architecture that includes skills (instructions and domain knowledge), connectors (access to data) and subagents (powered by other Claude versions), Anthropic said. The AI lab said that financial firms can adapt any of the agents to their own modeling conventions, risk policies and approval flows.
Also this week, Anthropic entered into a $1.6 billion joint venture with Fidelity National Information Services for financial crime software and another $1.5 billion joint venture with other Wall Street companies to sell its AI tools to businesses.
Related:Enter Bob, IBM’s Friendly AI Coding Assistant
The financial services agents and other financial ventures are further signs that Anthropic has begun to evolve from a model provider into an AI platform provider serving specific industries. Earlier this year, the Claude stunned the legal industry when it introduced its Claude Cowork plugins, which some saw as a threat to entry-level legal jobs and legal information providers. In April, the cybersecurity industry also became worried about Claude Mythos’ ability to identify and exploit security weaknesses.
Now, the AI model maker is at it again, this time creating agents to support research, client coverage, and finance and operations.
A Focus on Enterprise
On the one hand, Anthropic appears to be on track to profitability after losing money since its 2021 founding, as it approaches an expected IPO this year.
“Anthropic has done a really strong job of going after enterprise business,” said Tom Coshow, an analyst at Gartner. “Most people would agree that it’s been impressive.”
In targeting the enterprise market, the vendor has also pursued the mindshare and opportunities that software service providers saw in AI technology, as well as with older financial services firms with dated IT systems. With these new agents, Anthropic competes against traditional data systems like Bloomberg and FactSet, which junior analysts use to pull together comparative analyses, as well as legacy consulting services such as Infosys and Accenture.
The Industry
With the financial service agents, Anthropic is going after one of the most lucrative industries in the country, said Michael Bennett, associate vice chancellor for data science and AI strategy at University of Illinois Chicago.
Related:Enterprises Contain AI Agents to Balance Risk, Reward
The finance industry holds sensitive data and manages special client relationships. Enterprises will have to decide whether to grant agents access to that sensitive information, Bennett said. However, ROI is also important in finance.
“This is a major tool for increasing ROI on those [finance] relationships,” Bennett said. “If only for the increase in speed, in preparation, in advising and actually even finding new clients, there’s going to have to be a lot of soul searching in the industry.”
Hard Choices
Moreover, with Anthropic’s domain-specific agents now threatening smaller finance companies with expertise in these areas, those firms will likely need to make challenging decisions.
“Would enterprises be better off partnering with a company that builds AI agents for finance, or do Anthropic agents really know how to handle all the edge cases out of the book?” Coshow said. “If they do, that’s a very big threat to a lot of people.” It’s also unclear if the Anthropic agents require tweaks and significant work to connect to data, he added.
Related:SoundHound Launches Self-Learning AI Agent Platform
“Everything involving AI agents is about whether or not they can contextualize the data that they’re using to make a decision about what to do and how reliable they are,” Coshow added. “How much of their AI are they going to own, and do they feel like they own it if Anthropic is doing everything for them?” he continued. “This is the intelligence that is going to drive enterprises in five years.”
The Career Threat
In addition to the dangers to smaller vendors and the potential existential crisis facing older financial firms and newer fintech vendors, the new agents could erode the roles of junior finance associates and entry-level analysts, Bennett said.
“The work that they do now is going to be covered in many instances by a subscription,” he said. “We should expect a significant impact in the industry, if only for that reason.”
He added that educators will also face pressure to figure out how to train entry-level finance workers to advance in an environment in which AI agents are proliferating.
Zcash (ZEC) has outperformed the broader crypto market over the past month, rising by over 125% compared to an average 15% gain for most coins.
ZEC/USD versus TOTAL crypto market cap 30-day performance chart. Source: TradingView
The privacy-focused cryptocurrency may rally further in the coming weeks as a mix of bullish technical and fundamental catalysts converges.
Key takeaways:
US crypto hedge fund Multicoin Capital revealed it has been buying ZEC since February.
Robinhood will list ZEC as Zcash’s network activity has been booming in the past weeks.
ZEC technicals are painting a 40% rally setup.
Multicoin disclosure boosts ZEC momentum
On Tuesday, Multicoin Capital, a US-based crypto hedge fund managing $2.687 billion in assets, revealed a “significant position” in ZEC, fueling speculation that institutional investors are warming up to privacy-focused digital assets again.
Its co-founder, Tushar Jain, revealed that the firm had been accumulating ZEC since February.
Jain described Zcash as “the most direct public market vehicle” for exposure to private, censorship-resistant and seizure-resistant money, framing the investment as a bet on rising demand for financial sovereignty and cypherpunk-style privacy tools.
Source: X
ZEC has rallied by over 43% in the past 24 hours, showing that traders have interpreted the Multicoin announcement as institutional validation of the privacy coin narrative.
ZEC’s flag breakout hints at further gains
From a technical perspective, Zcash has entered the breakout phase of a prevailing bull flag pattern on the weekly chart.
A bull flag forms when the price consolidates lower within a descending parallel channel after a strong uptrend. It resolves when the price breaks above the channel’s upper trendline and rises by as much as the previous uptrend’s height.
ZEC/USDT weekly chart. Source: TradingView
Applying that rule to ZEC’s chart puts its breakout target near $800. As of Wednesday, Zcash traded as high as $607, leaving the token on track to test the bull flag’s measured upside target located roughly 40% above.
Zcash’s weekly relative strength index (RSI), a momentum indicator that measures whether an asset is overbought or oversold, also suggests the rally may continue.
The RSI currently remains just below 70, a level traders typically associate with overheated market conditions, indicating ZEC may still have room to climb before buyers show signs of exhaustion.
BitMEX Co-Founder Arthur Hayes said ZEC’s target is 10% of Bitcoin’s market capitalization, a scenario that would imply a multi-trillion-dollar valuation for ZEC and prices potentially ranging between $8,000 and $10,000 per coin based on current supply levels.
ZEC has rallied alongside the broader crypto market as US–Iran peace-deal hopes improve risk appetite, mirroring patterns in early April.
Its Robinhood listing on April 23 added another tailwind by opening spot access to 25.9 million funded users, including those in stricter jurisdictions like New York.
Meanwhile, more than 30% of circulating ZEC now sits in shielded addresses, according to data resource ZecHub.WIKI. This tightening supply shows a big jump in demand for private on-chain transactions over the past year.
This article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and is intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice or recommendations. All investments and trades carry risk; readers are encouraged to conduct independent research.
