Zcash’s native token, ZEC, has become one of the strongest performers in crypto, rising 130.9% over the past 30 days and 2252.0% over the past year, according to CoinGecko data cited in the source article. Its market capitalization has climbed to nearly $20 billion, overtaking DOGE and pushing ZEC into the global top 10 by market value. As of Sept. 9, ZEC accounted for more than 66.7% of the privacy-coin sector’s total market capitalization, while Glassnode said privacy is the only major crypto sector still above its October 2025 peak, up 213% from that level. The rally has also spilled into related assets such as ZCAT, and liquidations in ZEC markets have been led by short positions, including a large short on Hyperliquid linked to Garrett Jin. The move has split opinion. Overseas bulls including Balaji, Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan, Multicoin partner Tushar Jain, and crypto commentator Ansem have publicly backed ZEC, with Balaji calling for a $100,000 target. In contrast, Chinese-speaking market veterans and KOLs such as Wang Chun, Cobo CEO Shenyu, Jademont Zheng, Lanhu, and 0xTodd have questioned whether the rally reflects strong fundamentals. Their critiques cover Zcash’s founder rewards, governance disputes, the optional nature of privacy addresses, historical security concerns, and market structure. The article also traces Digital Currency Group and Grayscale’s involvement in Zcash from 2016 through mining, trust products, and the recent conversion of ZCSH into what the source describes as the first U.S. ETF directly tracking a privacy coin.

The first staking exchange-traded fund tied to Tron is set to enter the U.S. market on Wednesday, according to ChainCatcher. Issued by Canary Capital, the Canary Staked TRX ETF will trade under the ticker TRXS and is designed to give investors a traditional market route to gain exposure to the TRX token. The fund also includes the ability to earn additional TRX through the network’s proof-of-stake mechanism, with staking rewards reflected in the fund’s net asset value. Tron founder Justin Sun said the launch shows growing recognition of the Tron network as a key piece of infrastructure for the global digital economy. Canary Capital CEO Steven McClurg said Tron has become important infrastructure for digital asset payments and settlement as stablecoin adoption continues to expand globally. Over the past year, Canary Capital has launched several crypto ETFs, including products tracking HBAR, Litecoin and XRP. Data from The Block put TRX’s market capitalization at about $32.1 billion, ranking it as the eighth-largest cryptocurrency.

The Hashgraph Group, Merck KGaA and PwC Germany said Tuesday they are piloting a cocoa traceability system that links physical authentication scans to records written on Hedera, with the European Union’s deforestation regulation set to start applying to large and medium operators on Dec. 30, 2026. The announcement names no cocoa company and gives no details on tonnage, farm count, cost or a timeline beyond the pilot stage. It is also the third announcement tied to the passport platform since February without a named customer, and the second involving Darmstadt-based Merck KGaA, which operates as EMD in the United States and Canada and is unrelated to Merck & Co. The article argues that the pilot addresses product authentication and event logging, not the farm-level geolocation data the EU rule actually requires. Under Article 9, operators must retain for five years the geolocation of all plots where a commodity was produced, including polygon boundaries for plots above four hectares. The report also notes that cocoa is outside the scope of the EU’s Digital Product Passport regime under ESPR, despite the companies linking the pilot to that broader trend. Market data cited in the piece put HBAR at $0.077, down 2.5% over 24 hours, with Hedera showing a relatively small DeFi footprint next to its enterprise pilot activity.

SEC Chair Paul Atkins said the CLARITY Act will face a Senate cloture vote on Sept. 15, where 60 votes are needed to advance debate. The bill, H.R. 3633, missed its pre-recess window in August after disputes over ethics language and stablecoin yield provisions. A successful cloture vote would still leave several hurdles, including final Senate passage, House review and a presidential signature. Atkins also said the SEC has already moved ahead with its own backup framework. On Aug. 18, the agency proposed "Regulation Crypto Assets," a separate rulemaking track that would create securities-law registration exemptions for certain token offerings and open a 60-day public comment period. That means the legislative track and the regulatory track are now running in parallel. The Senate is set to reconvene on Sept. 14, leaving only 14 working days before the end of September. If the bill does not clear the Senate by then, the odds of a year-end finish would shrink further. The next key date is Sept. 16, when the Federal Open Market Committee will announce its rate decision. If CLARITY becomes law, BTC and ETH would be classified as digital commodities under CFTC oversight, while a grandfather clause would treat several spot ETF assets listed before Jan. 1, 2026 — including XRP, SOL, LTC, HBAR, DOGE and LINK — as commodities by default.

Crypto prices broadly advanced over the past week, but the gains were far from uniform. Drawing on weekly performance data for the top 100 tokens on CoinGecko, Odaily separated the market into three groups: sharp gainers, moderate risers, and the few names that fell even as the broader market moved higher. STX led the field with a 121.2% weekly gain, making it the biggest outlier among the top performers and the only non-Meme token at the very top of the list. CASHCAT, ENA, PENGU, TRUMP, ZEC, PUMP, MELANIA, and PEPE also ranked among the strongest movers, with weekly gains ranging from 49.3% to 102.2%. A second tier of tokens posted gains between 10% and 20%, including LDO, WLD, MORPHO, LINEA, NEAR, HBAR, ASTER, ETHFI, BNB, and ONDO. Odaily said this group was more closely tied to fundamentals and infrastructure themes than the first wave of narrative-led rallies. On the downside, only a handful of tokens fell during the same period. JELLYJELLY, WLFI, JTO, and LAB all posted weekly losses, with LAB down 13%, the weakest showing in the sample. All figures in the report were current as of Aug. 26.

Grayscale has withdrawn registration filings for three single-asset crypto exchange-traded funds tied to Cardano (ADA), Polkadot (DOT) and Hedera (HBAR), according to CoinDesk. The three withdrawals were submitted within four minutes of each other late last Friday. Grayscale did not give a detailed explanation, saying only that it no longer intends to move forward with the planned launches. The filings had been made at different points in 2025. Cardano and Polkadot were proposed in February and formally filed on Aug. 29, while the Hedera filing was submitted on Sept. 9. The pullback came as the underlying tokens had already suffered steep declines since February 2025, with ADA down about 70%, DOT down about 80%, and HBAR down more than 70%. Grayscale has not stepped back from ETFs across the board. The firm still has 17 listed ETF products, including a Bitcoin Mini Trust, an Ethereum staking mini ETF and a Hyperliquid staking ETF. The products it dropped were all smaller single-asset altcoin ETFs, in contrast with continued demand for Bitcoin- and Ethereum-linked funds.

Bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds brought in about $854 million to $865 million last week, according to Decrypt’s Morning Minute newsletter, marking their strongest weekly inflow since May and the first notably large return of capital after an eight-week stretch of outflows through June and early July. Ethereum ETFs also had a solid week, with $244 million in net inflows, which the newsletter said was roughly equivalent to $1.25 billion in Bitcoin ETF buying on a market-cap-adjusted basis. The report linked the move to a softer macro backdrop. U.S. earnings were broadly positive last week, while the July jobs report came in well below expectations, showing a loss of 23,000 jobs versus forecasts for an 80,000 gain. Unemployment still edged down to 4.1%. After that data, the odds of a September rate hike dropped from 67% to 42%. Elsewhere, major crypto assets were mostly flat over the weekend but still 3% to 4% above last week’s levels, with BTC at $65,000 and ETH at $1,916. The newsletter also tracked gains in select altcoins, token and protocol activity, Robinhood Chain assets, and a mixed NFT market, while noting fresh developments around the Clarity Act, NYSE tokenization infrastructure, MARA’s Bitcoin sales and borrowing, and Grayscale’s withdrawn ETF filings.

According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Grayscale has withdrawn its S-1 registration filings for three cryptocurrency ETFs: the Grayscale Cardano Trust ETF, the Grayscale Hedera Trust ETF and the Grayscale Polkadot Trust ETF. The applications, known by the tickers ADA, HBAR and DOT, were pulled on August 10. BlockBeats reported the development.