Bitcoin’s notorious four-year boom-and-bust cycle may be losing its grip as 
institutional demand, deeper liquidity, and shifting ownership patterns 
reshape market dynamics, potentially redefining how investors position bitcoin 
in long-term portfolios, according to Fidelity’s analysis. Fidelity: Bitcoin 
Is No Longer Just a Trade — It’s Emerging as a Core Long-Term Portfolio Asset 
Bitcoin’s long-standing four-year […]

Fidelity Discusses Bitcoin Moving From Short-Term Trade to Long-Term Macro Portfolio Asset

Paradigm&#8217;s Matt Huang previously said developments in AI were &#8220;too interesting 
to ignore&#8221; and that both AI and crypto will have plenty of overlap.

Crypto VC Paradigm expands into AI, robotics with $1.5B fund: WSJ

When US crypto regulators cracked down on Tornado Cash in 2022, the assumption 
was simple: shut down the tool, shut down the problem. It didn&#8217;t work out that 
way. Related Reading: Is Bitcoin The Poor Man’s Hedge Against Inflation? 
Coinbase CEO Thinks So New research from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative 
Finance (CCAF) shows that coin mixer usage has climbed back toward pre-ban 
levels — and that the people most effectively pushed out by the sanctions were 
not the criminals, but ordinary users seeking financial privacy. Railgun Now 
Dominates A Recovering Market According to CCAF researchers Wenbin Wu and 
Keith Bear, total crypto mixer transactions reached approximately 32,000 in 
2025 — a significant jump from roughly 21,000 in 2024 and 16,000 in 2023. 
Usage has been climbing steadily since the US Treasury lifted its sanctions 
against Tornado Cash on March 21, 2025. Railgun, a protocol that screens 
deposits against lists of flagged addresses, now handles 71% of all mixer 
transaction volume. Tornado Cash accounts for around 25% of 2025 transactions, 
while Privacy Pools holds the remaining 5%. Both Railgun and Privacy Pools 
attempt to filter out known bad actors before crypto funds enter the system. 
But reports from CCAF note a meaningful gap — blacklists are updated only as 
new exploits are discovered, leaving a window where funds from freshly flagged 
addresses can still pass through. Sanctions Scared Off Legitimate Users More 
Than Criminals The 2022 crackdown caused immediate disruption. Tornado Cash&#8217;s 
daily transactions collapsed by 97% within days. Across the broader mixer 
market, volume fell 45%. But the disruption was uneven. Wu told researchers 
that sanctions &#8220;primarily deterred compliant users while illicit actors 
adapted&#8221; — first by migrating to alternative platforms, then to cross-chain 
bridges and decentralized exchanges altogether. Deposit patterns tell the same 
story. Before 2022, centralized exchanges — which require identity 
verification — contributed meaningfully to mixer funding. After the ban, those 
deposits essentially vanished. By 2025, 95% of all crypto mixer funding came 
from unlabeled wallet addresses with no recorded entity ties, up from 76% in 
2020. Related Reading: Bitcoin Sell-Off Slows Down, But The Road To Recovery 
Is Long — Analyst Most Transactions Now Happen Within 24 Hours Before the ban, 
most mixer activity occurred more than 24 hours after wallet creation. That 
pattern has flipped. Researchers say this faster behavior is &#8220;consistent with 
users seeking to avoid identification.&#8221; Still, a 2023 Federal Reserve Bank of 
St. Louis paper found that only around 30% of Tornado Cash traffic could be 
linked to illegitimate sources — a reminder that privacy tools serve lawful 
purposes too. The demand, from both camps, never went away. Featured image 
from Unsplash, chart from TradingView

Crypto Mixing Is Back — And Criminals Adapted Faster Than The Rules Did

The bill, introduced by Federal Deputy Tabata Amaral, amends the current 
regulation and establishes the crime of cryptocurrency tax evasion, aiming to 
curb the rising volume of remittances and settlement alternatives using dollar 
proxies, including stablecoins. Brazil Aims To Criminalize Undeclared 
Stablecoin Transactions In New Bill Brazil is taking measures to tighten its 
grip on […]

Bill Criminalizing Crypto-Powered Foreign Currency Tax Evasion Surges in Brazil

XRP’s liquidity structure on higher timeframes is in a situation where the 
path of least resistance could extend to the $4 level. The remark came from 
crypto analyst Bird in response to hourly and daily liquidity heatmaps shared 
by Cryptoinsightuk, which show a clear contrast between short-term and higher- 
timeframe liquidity positioning. At the time of writing, XRP is trading around 
$1.45, still below the large liquidity clusters visible above the current 
price. According to Bird, that imbalance may not stay unresolved for long. 
Hourly Liquidity Cleared, Short-Term Volatility Reduced XRP&#8217;s liquidity 
heatmap on the hourly candlestick chart shows that much of the nearby 
liquidity below the current price has already been swept. The visible clusters 
around the $1.30-$1.50 range have all been cleared, meaning that the short- 
term stop hunts and liquidation pools have largely been cleared out. Related 
Reading: Analyst Predicts Bitcoin Price Surge To $500,000 As Ribbon Fractal 
Emerges According to Bird, this trend shows that hourly XRP liquidity is 
basically gone. This means there is less immediate incentive for XRP to stay 
around current levels on lower timeframes. When short-term liquidity dries up 
like this, the outlook is that the price will gravitate to areas where larger 
pools are untouched. Since the nearby liquidity has already been taken, the 
next logical target is now where there are larger concentrations of resting 
orders. As noted by the analyst, these resting orders are stacked all the way 
up past $4. XRP Hourly Liquidity. Source: @Cryptoinsightuk on X Daily 
Liquidity Stacked Above $4 Liquidity on the daily heatmap appears layered and 
dense above the current price, stretching through multiple resistance bands 
and extending above the $4 price level. The upper regions show heavy trading 
activity and visible liquidity clusters between $2.50 and $4.00, which is a 
reflection of a thick concentration of stop orders and resting interest. 
Related Reading: Bitcoin Final Sell-Off Coming? Analyst Says It’s Time To 
‘Buckle Up’ In liquidity-based trading theory, price action is often drawn to 
areas where there are large position orders, especially when those zones have 
not yet been tapped. Bird described this higher-timeframe liquidity as stacked 
all the way up past $4, with the notion that the higher-timeframe liquidity is 
sitting there like a magnet. XRP Daily Liquidity. Source: @Cryptoinsightuk on 
X Bird also referenced a five-month breakdown in Bitcoin dominance. At the 
time of writing, the Bitcoin dominance is at 57.9%, down from 58.2% last week. 
This means Bitcoin has been steadily losing dominance. A decline in dominance 
is always due to capital rotation into altcoins. If that trend continues, XRP 
could easily become one of the best beneficiaries, particularly given its 
visible higher-timeframe liquidity targets. The analyst also noted that 
sentiment has not yet reached extreme lows. XRP, in particular, has maintained 
a relatively positive positioning among investors compared to other 
cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. That combination of declining 
dominance and neutral-to-cautious sentiment can create conditions for XRP&#8217;s 
projected rally above $4. Featured image created with Dall.E, chart from 
Tradingview.com

Cryptocurrency price in VEF