BlackRock Bitcoin ETF investors are back in profit, in a promising sign of a 
December market recovery from the cohort that drove most of Bitcoin’s rise to 
new all-time highs during 2025.

BlackRock ETF investors bounce back to profit as price reclaims $90K

Delphi Digital researcher Simon Shockey is arguing that the real story in 
Zcash is no longer just its price – despite ZEC having one of the most eye- 
popping rallies of this cycle in recent months. “The most interesting thing 
about ZEC today is not the price,” he wrote on X. “It’s the fact that a GBTC- 
style discount dislocation just appeared around ZCSH.” For Shockey, the Zcash 
trust setup only makes sense when viewed through the lens of what happened 
with Grayscale’s Bitcoin product. He reminds readers that “funds were built, 
and later blown up, on two different GBTC trades.” The first was the premium 
arbitrage, where Grayscale allowed accredited investors to subscribe at NAV 
with a six-month lock while GBTC traded at a “~30–40%” premium in public 
markets. Will Zcash Follow The GBTC Playbook? The playbook, he writes, became 
almost mechanical: “subscribe at NAV, lock for six months, hedge BTC exposure 
with CME shorts, sell GBTC at a premium, pocket the spread and lever it.” It 
was so widely adopted that “every TradFi family office, hedge fund tourist, 
and crypto-native desk was running it. It became the trade. Until, well, it 
didn’t…” Related Reading: Why is Zcash Surging? Analysts Break Down the ZEC 
Rally and What Comes Next In February 2021, after years of trading rich to 
NAV, GBTC flipped to a discount. Anyone mid-lockup was now long an over-priced 
wrapper, paying to maintain a hedge and watching the discount widen to “-30%, 
-40%, even -45%.” Shockey calls that dislocation “career/cycle-ending almost 
overnight,” and notes that it helped detonate players like 3AC, BlockFi, 
Genesis and DCG. But he stresses that GBTC’s story had a second act: once the 
discount was entrenched, “a different trade emerged: buy GBTC at a discount, 
wait for regulatory clarity or ETF approval, redeem at NAV, capture the 
collapse in the discount.” Value-oriented funds “were early and underwater for 
a while. But they were ultimately right. The discount evaporated as ETF 
approval became inevitable.” Shockey’s contention is that a structurally 
similar phase may now be opening around Grayscale’s Zcash trust. “This morning 
Grayscale filed to convert ZCSH, their Zcash trust, into an ETP,” he writes. 
“That filing immediately creates the early outline of a GBTC-style discount 
trade.” He highlights that ZCSH recently traded around 33.50 dollars per 
share, even though “yesterday’s trust data, with a lower ZEC price, showed NAV 
around forty-one dollars per share.” By his math that is “still close to a 20 
percent discount. Every ZCSH share is priced materially below the ZEC it 
represents.” With an implied 0.0817 ZEC per share, “you are effectively 
getting ZEC exposure at ~$410 per ZEC when spot is well above that.” Related 
Reading: Why Is Zcash Thriving? Paid Promotion Or Real Momentum? The key 
structural shift is the proposed move from a closed trust to an exchange- 
traded product with redemptions. “The current trust structure does not allow 
redemptions,” Shockey notes. “The proposed ETP would, with one-to-one 
withdrawals of the actual ZEC held.” If regulators sign off, “the discount 
should tighten and ZCSH should move toward NAV. This is exactly what happened 
with GBTC as ETF approval became more realistic.” He is careful to add: “Not 
guaranteed. Not the same trade. But structurally very similar.” On the money- 
making angle, Shockey is explicit. “The discount closing is the cleanest 
angle. Buying ZCSH at a 20 percent discount and selling after convergence is 
the purest version of the trade.” Beyond that, “there is optionality if ZEC 
rerates during the approval window. If the privacy-oriented store-of-value 
narrative strengthens, ZEC can rise while the discount closes. That creates a 
second leg of upside that GBTC did not offer until very late.” He argues that 
a ZEC ETP “could unlock new demand,” since “most funds/investors cannot hold 
ZEC directly due to custody and mandate issues. An ETP solves that. New pools 
of capital often tighten discounts by themselves.” Narrative and political 
tailwinds, in his view, are real. “Bitcoin’s lack of privacy is back in focus. 
The quantum-risk discussion is getting louder.” He points to mainstream 
airtime, including comments from VanEck’s CEO about Bitcoin’s shortcomings and 
ZEC as a potential hedge, as a signal that the story has escaped pure crypto- 
Twitter. His closing summary captures the asymmetric, time-bounded nature of 
the bet: “If markets keep leaning toward the idea that ZEC is absorbing the 
role Bitcoin stepped away from, then ZCSH becomes the cleanest vehicle to 
express that view. You get ZEC exposure in public markets, which could become 
a major driver of rerating as flows pick up, plus a built-in twenty percent 
discount that only exists until the ETP is approved. ZODL?” At press time, 
Zcash traded at $509.84. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from 
TradingView.com

Grayscale’s Zcash ETF Bid Triggers ‘GBTC 2.0’ Debate: Crash Or Pump Ahead?

What to Know: Bitcoin trading in a tight range below resistance often pushes 
traders toward higher‑beta assets that still track the underlying BTC macro 
trend. Infrastructure that makes Bitcoin more usable for payments, DeFi, and 
smart contracts is increasingly seen as a leveraged way to express long‑term 
BTC conviction. Bitcoin Hyper integrates an SVM‑powered Layer 2 with Bitcoin 
settlement, targeting low‑latency smart contracts to tackle BTC’s speed and 
programmability limits. Range-bound markets with upside potential toward 
levels like $93,000 can create strong narratives for BTC-aligned scaling plays 
and yield-bearing ecosystems. Bitcoin has spent weeks moving sideways, with 
bulls still eyeing a breakout toward the $93K zone even as heavy resistance 
sits just overhead. In this kind of late-cycle chop, tactical traders often 
look for higher-beta ways to express the same bullish thesis without simply 
adding more spot BTC. Rather than chasing marginal upside on a trillion-dollar 
asset, many rotate into narratives that closely track Bitcoin but offer 
structurally higher torque if the next leg higher begins. Bitcoin Layer 2s and 
yield-bearing BTC ecosystems are at the center of that shift, especially with 
fees elevated and block space still constrained. That’s where Bitcoin Hyper 
($HYPER) enters the conversation. It’s pitching itself as a Bitcoin-aligned 
execution layer that feels closer to Solana in speed and throughput while 
still ultimately settling on Bitcoin. For traders, the appeal is twofold: 
exposure to BTC’s macro trend plus additional upside from payments, DeFi, and 
staking activity built on top of it. If Bitcoin does grind toward $93K in the 
months ahead, infrastructure that makes BTC faster, programmable, and yield- 
generating could attract outsized flows. Early access via the Bitcoin Hyper 
presale offers a way to stay positioned for Bitcoin’s broader move while 
taking on a more aggressive risk-reward profile than holding spot alone. 
Independent explainers are already unpacking where Bitcoin Hyper sits in the 
emerging Layer-2 race. Why Range‑Bound Bitcoin Pushes Flows Toward Higher‑Beta 
BTC Plays When Bitcoin spends weeks consolidating just beneath resistance, 
every new dollar of capital starts asking the same question: where does the 
risk pay off best? Historically, these conditions have pushed flows toward 
higher-beta expressions of the same macro view, leveraged derivatives, 
volatile altcoins, or infrastructure tokens that sit one layer out from BTC 
but still move in tandem with it. Layer-2 infrastructure has increasingly been 
the standout beneficiary. On Ethereum, rollup tokens and staking derivatives 
often outperform during consolidation because they enhance usability and 
unlock new yield on the base asset. A similar pattern is now emerging around 
Bitcoin as traders weigh Lightning, scaling-oriented sidechains, and next- 
generation programmable environments built on BTC collateral. Multiple 
architectures are competing to solve Bitcoin’s long-standing trade-offs 
between security, throughput, and programmability, from payment-channel 
networks to EVM-compatible sidechains to full smart-contract environments that 
settle back to Bitcoin. Within that mix, Bitcoin Hyper is positioning itself 
as a high-beta way to express the same core BTC thesis rather than a detached 
speculation play. A recent Bitcoin Hyper price-prediction breakdown has 
already started framing it in exactly that context. How Bitcoin Hyper Turns 
BTC Into a High‑Speed, Yield‑Bearing Asset Zooming in, Bitcoin Hyper positions 
itself as the first Bitcoin Layer 2 to integrate the Solana Virtual Machine 
(SVM), aiming to deliver execution speeds that rival, and in some cases 
surpass, Solana’s own environment. In practical terms, that means sub-second 
finality and ultra-low-latency processing for payments, DeFi, NFTs, and 
gaming, all while anchoring settlement and security back to Bitcoin. Its 
architecture is fully modular: Bitcoin L1 provides settlement, the real-time 
SVM Layer 2 handles smart-contract execution and high-throughput workloads, 
and a decentralized canonical bridge moves BTC in and out. Wrapped BTC becomes 
the base asset powering swaps, lending, and yield strategies. For developers, 
SPL-compatible tokens and a Rust-based SDK make it relatively easy to port 
Solana-style applications into a Bitcoin-aligned environment. That combination 
of throughput and Bitcoin-native alignment is already drawing interest. The 
presale has raised over $28.5M so far at a token price of $0.013335, signaling 
that investors are positioning for an ecosystem build-out rather than a short- 
lived meme rotation. In our deeper coverage of what is $HYPER, we’ve already 
noted how the architecture sets it apart from typical Bitcoin-adjacent plays. 
Our latest Bitcoin Hyper price prediction models point to meaningful upside if 
transaction volume, staking participation, and developer migration land even 
modestly in line with expectations. Smart money is accumulating as well: two 
high-net-worth wallets added $396K in recent weeks, with the largest buy at 
$53K. After TGE, high-APY staking (40%), a seven-day vesting period for 
presale stakers, and rewards tied to governance and community engagement are 
slated to keep capital sticky as the network comes online. For those who 
believe Bitcoin eventually breaks out while congestion and programmability 
constraints persist, a scalable Layer 2 like Bitcoin Hyper offers a direct, 
higher-beta way to express that thesis. Join the $HYPER presale. This article 
is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, 
investment, or trading advice; always do your own research. Authored by Aaron 
Walker, NewsBTC – https://www.newsbtc.com/news/bitcoin-hyper-presale-as- 
bitcoin-eyes-93k-range-break

Bitcoin Price Could Rally Toward $93K As Bulls Look To Bitcoin Hyper Presale

A new initiative by Cronos opens x402 PayTech Hackathon to $42,000 in prizes 
for developers building AI-native payment applications on its recently 
upgraded blockchain network. Cronos has kicked off registrations for its x402 
PayTech Hackathon, putting up a $42,000 pool…

Cronos launches x402 hackathon for AI payment systems

South Korea’s financial sector was hit by a coordinated Russia–North Korea 
supply chain attack using Qilin ransomware, with 2 TB of sensitive banking 
data stolen. South Korea&#8217;s financial sector suffered a coordinated supply 
chain attack attributed to Russian and North…

Cryptocurrency price in MYR