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Bitcoin rises above $81,000, while NEAR jumps 23% on Zcash swap traffic
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- DeepHorus
Bitcoin extended its slow climb above $81,000 during Asian morning hours on Monday, adding less than 1% over 24 hours, according to CoinDesk data. The move followed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission clearing a path for onchain trading of tokenized U.S. stocks on Thursday, which helped spur a short squeeze. Regional equities and U.S. stock futures also rose as Washington and Beijing made progress in trade talks.
NEAR was the standout among major tokens, surging roughly 23% to just above $4. The jump traces to NEAR Intents, a swap service built on the NEAR blockchain that lets wallets trade tokens across different chains without moving funds first. Major consumer wallets such as ZODL and Vizor have integrated the service to offer ZEC swaps. Daily ZEC volume routed through the platform jumped sixfold in a single day over the past week, making NEAR a key routing layer for one of the market's most heavily traded tokens.
Elsewhere, ZEC gained 3% to just above $1,500, while BNB rose 2% to nearly $777. Ether and HYPE each picked up about 2%, and XRP, DOGE, SOL, and TRX advanced 1% or less.
Equities set the tone through the Asian session. MSCI's Asia Pacific gauge climbed nearly 1%, led by technology shares in South Korea and Taiwan, after U.S. officials described talks with China as "very successful" ahead of a summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping this week. S&P 500 futures rose less than 1%, and Nasdaq 100 contracts gained a little more.
Brent crude fell 2% to just above $101 a barrel, marking its fourth straight decline. That eased inflation worries and lifted Treasury futures.
Jeff Mei, chief operating officer at exchange BTSE, attributed the weekend's bitcoin spike to the SEC clearing onchain trading of tokenized U.S. stocks and the resulting short squeeze. He sees little on the calendar this week beyond remarks from Federal Reserve officials. Mei expects more volatility in the weeks leading up to the Fed's late-October meeting, with more than a month of speeches and a single inflation print to shift positioning.
The moves highlight how regulatory clarity and cross-chain infrastructure can drive crypto prices. Analysts say Coinbase, Robinhood, and Circle could be early winners of the SEC's tokenized-stock push. Meanwhile, APAC is becoming a key proving ground for stablecoins moving into regulated finance.
