Bitcoin could be getting ready for a rally toward $94,500, but higher levels are expected to attract selling by the bears.
AAVE Price Prediction: Recovery to $185-195 Range Expected Within 30 Days
Peter Zhang
Jan 02, 2026 15:16
AAVE price prediction targets $185-195 recovery over next month as oversold RSI and descending wedge pattern suggest bullish reversal from current $152.82 level.
After analyzing current market conditions and technical indicators, our AAVE price prediction points toward a potential recovery in the coming weeks, despite recent bearish momentum. Trading at $152.82 with a 5.02% daily gain, AAVE appears positioned for a technical bounce from oversold conditions.
AAVE Price Prediction Summary
• AAVE short-term target (1 week): $165-170 (+8-11%)
• Aave medium-term forecast (1 month): $185-195 range (+21-28%)
• Key level to break for bullish continuation: $162.96 (SMA 20)
• Critical support if bearish: $146.40 (analyst consensus)
Recent Aave Price Predictions from Analysts
Current analyst sentiment shows a mixed but cautiously optimistic outlook for our AAVE price prediction. CoinCodex maintains a conservative short-term target of $177.48, citing bearish market sentiment and resistance at $150.26-154.52. However, Blockchain.News presents a more bullish Aave forecast with targets of $185-195, supported by oversold RSI conditions and a potential descending wedge breakout pattern.
The analyst consensus reveals an interesting dynamic: while immediate sentiment remains cautious, medium-term predictions align around the $180-200 range. This suggests that despite current technical challenges, fundamental support for AAVE remains intact at these levels.
AAVE Technical Analysis: Setting Up for Reversal
Our Aave technical analysis reveals several compelling factors supporting a recovery scenario. The RSI at 40.17 sits in neutral territory but has moved up from oversold levels, suggesting selling pressure may be exhausting. The MACD histogram at -0.3727 shows bearish momentum, but the relatively small divergence between MACD (-9.8345) and signal line (-9.4618) indicates weakening downward pressure.
The Bollinger Bands positioning tells a crucial story for our AAVE price target. Currently trading at the 0.34 position within the bands, AAVE sits closer to the lower band ($131.41) than the middle band ($162.96), historically a favorable setup for mean reversion trades. The daily ATR of $10.06 suggests normal volatility levels, providing clear risk parameters for position management.
Volume analysis from Binance shows $11.4 million in 24-hour trading, indicating adequate liquidity for the anticipated move. The price action above the immediate support at $143.63 provides a solid foundation for the recovery thesis.
Aave Price Targets: Bull and Bear Scenarios
Bullish Case for AAVE
The primary AAVE price target centers on the $185-195 range, representing a 21-28% upside from current levels. This target aligns with the upper portion of the analyst consensus and corresponds to technical resistance levels identified in the data.
For this bullish scenario to unfold, AAVE must first reclaim the SMA 20 at $162.96, which would signal the beginning of trend reversal. A sustained break above this level would likely trigger momentum toward the immediate resistance at $198.12, with the ultimate target near $200 representing a complete retracement of recent losses.
The 52-week high at $357.78 remains distant, but the current 57.29% discount from those levels provides substantial upside potential for longer-term holders willing to weather near-term volatility.
Bearish Risk for Aave
Despite the optimistic Aave forecast, significant downside risks remain. The critical support level at $146.40, identified by analyst consensus, represents the line in the sand for bulls. A break below this level would likely trigger accelerated selling toward the strong support at $143.63.
In a bearish scenario, AAVE could retest the 52-week low at $146.02, representing a potential 5-6% downside from current levels. The declining moving averages (SMA 50 at $174.44 and SMA 200 at $250.33) continue to exert downward pressure on longer-term trends.
Should You Buy AAVE Now? Entry Strategy
Based on our technical analysis, the current level presents a reasonable entry point for those seeking to buy or sell AAVE. The optimal entry strategy involves scaling into positions between $150-155, with the first tranche deployable at current levels around $152.82.
Risk management remains crucial given the mixed signals. A stop-loss at $145.50, just below the critical $146.40 support level, provides a clear exit strategy with limited downside exposure. For aggressive traders, a tighter stop at $149.50 could limit losses while maintaining upside participation.
Position sizing should reflect the medium confidence level in this prediction. Conservative allocation of 1-2% of portfolio value allows for meaningful participation while limiting overall risk exposure.
AAVE Price Prediction Conclusion
Our AAVE price prediction anticipates a recovery to the $185-195 range within 30 days, representing a medium-confidence forecast based on current technical conditions. The combination of oversold RSI, potential descending wedge breakout, and analyst consensus around similar targets supports this outlook.
Key indicators to monitor include RSI movement above 50, MACD histogram turning positive, and most critically, a sustained break above the SMA 20 at $162.96. Failure to hold support at $146.40 would invalidate this bullish thesis and likely trigger further downside.
The timeline for this Aave forecast spans the next 20-30 days, providing sufficient time for technical patterns to develop while maintaining near-term relevance for trading decisions. Market participants should prepare for continued volatility as AAVE works through this critical technical juncture.
Image source: Shutterstock
SHIB Price Prediction: Targeting $0.0000085 by January End Amid Technical Recovery
Jessie A Ellis
Jan 02, 2026 14:10
SHIB price prediction shows potential 22% upside to $0.0000085 resistance level, with bullish MACD momentum supporting near-term recovery despite neutral RSI conditions.
SHIB Price Prediction Summary
• SHIB short-term target (1 week): $0.0000078 (+12% from current levels)
• Shiba Inu medium-term forecast (1 month): $0.0000085-$0.00001019 range
• Key level to break for bullish continuation: $0.0000085
• Critical support if bearish: $0.000007
Recent Shiba Inu Price Predictions from Analysts
The latest SHIB price prediction consensus among major analysts reveals a cautiously optimistic outlook for the meme token. Blockchain.News leads with the most conservative near-term target of $0.0000085 by end of January 2026, citing golden cross patterns and bullish MACD indicators as primary drivers.
Shiba Inu forecast models show significant variation in longer-term projections. MEXC News targets $0.00001019 by December 2025, while CoinCodex and DigitalCoinPrice converge around $0.000012-$0.0000124 for end-2026 predictions. The most aggressive forecast comes from CoinLore, projecting $0.0000935 in 2026 – representing a potential 1,150% increase that carries low confidence given its extreme deviation from consensus.
The SHIB price target convergence around $0.0000085 for January suggests this level represents meaningful technical resistance that multiple analysts recognize as achievable in the near term.
SHIB Technical Analysis: Setting Up for Cautious Recovery
Current Shiba Inu technical analysis reveals a mixed but improving picture. The RSI reading of 51.88 positions SHIB in neutral territory, indicating neither overbought nor oversold conditions – creating room for movement in either direction.
The MACD histogram showing 0.0000 with noted bullish momentum suggests the recent 9.18% daily gain may have legs for continuation. The Stochastic indicators paint a more aggressive picture, with %K at 93.81 indicating potential overbought conditions in the short term, though the %D at 60.24 suggests the momentum shift is still developing.
SHIB’s position at 0.79 within the Bollinger Bands indicates the token is trading closer to the upper band, suggesting recent buying pressure. The 24-hour volume of $15.4 million on Binance provides adequate liquidity for the predicted moves, though this volume needs to increase to confirm any sustained rally toward analyst targets.
The distance of -54.72% from the 52-week high indicates substantial room for recovery if broader market conditions remain supportive.
Shiba Inu Price Targets: Bull and Bear Scenarios
Bullish Case for SHIB
The primary SHIB price prediction for the bullish scenario targets $0.0000085 within the next 3-4 weeks. This represents the first major resistance level identified by multiple analysts and aligns with technical patterns suggesting a golden cross formation.
For this target to materialize, SHIB needs to maintain momentum above current levels and break through immediate resistance. The bullish MACD histogram supports this scenario, and a sustained break above $0.0000085 could open the path toward the $0.00001019 level predicted by MEXC News.
Extended bullish targets for Q1 2026 range from $0.000010 to $0.000012, contingent on broader crypto market recovery and potential catalysts within the Shiba Inu ecosystem.
Bearish Risk for Shiba Inu
The bearish scenario for our SHIB price prediction centers on a failure to hold current support levels. Critical support sits at $0.000007, representing a key psychological level that has historically provided buying interest.
A break below this level could trigger further selling toward $0.0000068, representing approximately 15% downside risk from current levels. The elevated Stochastic %K reading of 93.81 warns of potential short-term correction pressure that could test these support zones.
Risk factors include broader cryptocurrency market weakness, regulatory concerns affecting meme tokens, or failure to sustain the current bullish MACD momentum.
Should You Buy SHIB Now? Entry Strategy
Based on current Shiba Inu technical analysis, the buy or sell SHIB decision depends on risk tolerance and time horizon. For aggressive traders, current levels offer entry opportunity targeting the $0.0000085 resistance.
Conservative buyers should wait for a pullback toward $0.0000072-$0.0000075 range, providing better risk-reward ratios. This approach allows for tighter stop-losses below the critical $0.000007 support level.
Position sizing should reflect the high volatility nature of meme tokens. Risk management requires stop-loss placement below $0.000007 for any positions taken above current levels. Target profit-taking at $0.0000085 offers approximately 22% upside potential with clearly defined risk parameters.
SHIB Price Prediction Conclusion
Our Shiba Inu forecast anticipates a measured recovery toward $0.0000085 within the January timeframe, representing a medium-confidence prediction supported by improving technical indicators and analyst consensus.
The bullish MACD momentum and neutral RSI provide the technical foundation for this move, while the multiple analyst targets around this level offer fundamental validation. However, the elevated Stochastic readings suggest potential near-term volatility that could create better entry opportunities.
Key indicators to monitor include MACD signal line crossovers, RSI breaking above 60 for sustained bullish momentum, and volume confirmation above $20 million daily averages. Invalidation of this SHIB price prediction occurs on a decisive break below $0.000007 support, which would shift the bias toward the $0.0000068 bearish target.
Timeline for target achievement extends through January 2026, with potential extension into February if broader market conditions remain supportive.
Image source: Shutterstock
WLD Price Prediction: Targeting $0.58-$0.62 by End of January 2026
Joerg Hiller
Jan 02, 2026 14:04
Worldcoin shows bullish momentum with MACD turning positive. WLD price prediction targets $0.58-$0.62 range within 3-4 weeks based on technical breakout patterns.
WLD Price Prediction Summary
• WLD short-term target (1 week): $0.56 (+5.7%)
• Worldcoin medium-term forecast (1 month): $0.58-$0.62 range
• Key level to break for bullish continuation: $0.59 (immediate resistance)
• Critical support if bearish: $0.47 (strong support level)
Recent Worldcoin Price Predictions from Analysts
The latest WLD price prediction data from major exchanges shows remarkable consensus around modest upside potential. MEXC’s conservative forecast targets $0.4962, while Bitget projects $0.5009 and Coinbase sets a longer-term Worldcoin forecast at $0.52. These predictions, however, appear overly cautious given current technical momentum.
The analyst consensus suggests 5% annual growth assumptions, which may underestimate WLD’s near-term potential. Current price action at $0.53 has already exceeded Coinbase’s long-term target, indicating these predictions may need upward revision. The convergence of these forecasts around $0.50 creates a psychological support floor for any potential pullbacks.
WLD Technical Analysis: Setting Up for Breakout
Worldcoin technical analysis reveals a compelling setup for continued upside. The MACD histogram at 0.0086 signals the first bullish momentum shift in recent sessions, while the RSI at 49.46 provides ample room for further gains without reaching overbought conditions.
The Bollinger Bands positioning is particularly noteworthy, with WLD trading at 0.79 relative position between the bands. This suggests strong momentum within the upper half of the trading range, with the upper band at $0.55 serving as the next immediate target. The 7-day and 12-day moving averages have converged at $0.51, creating a strong support base below current levels.
Volume confirmation at $16.2 million on Binance spot indicates genuine buying interest supporting the 7.75% daily gain. The Stochastic indicators show %K at 86.96, suggesting short-term overbought conditions that may lead to brief consolidation before the next leg higher.
Worldcoin Price Targets: Bull and Bear Scenarios
Bullish Case for WLD
The primary WLD price target sits at $0.59, representing the immediate resistance level that needs to break for trend continuation. A clean break above this level opens the door to $0.62-$0.65, where the 50-day moving average at $0.58 will provide initial resistance before clearing toward stronger resistance at $0.75.
Technical confluence supports this bullish Worldcoin forecast. The positive MACD crossover, combined with price trading above the 20-day EMA at $0.53, establishes a foundation for higher prices. The daily ATR of $0.03 suggests normal volatility, allowing for measured upward movement without excessive whipsaws.
Bearish Risk for Worldcoin
Downside risks emerge if WLD fails to hold the $0.52 pivot point. A break below this level would target the immediate support at $0.47, coinciding with the strong support zone and near the 52-week low of $0.48. This represents a 11.3% downside risk from current levels.
The bearish scenario would be confirmed by MACD rolling over into negative territory and RSI breaking below 45. Volume expansion on any downward moves would increase the probability of testing the lower Bollinger Band at $0.46.
Should You Buy WLD Now? Entry Strategy
Current levels present a reasonable buy or sell WLD decision point for traders with proper risk management. The optimal entry strategy involves scaling into positions between $0.52-$0.53, using the pivot point and current EMA 26 as support reference.
Stop-loss placement should be positioned at $0.49, approximately 7.5% below current levels and below the key $0.50 psychological support. This provides adequate protection while allowing normal price fluctuations. Position sizing should remain moderate given the 72% distance from 52-week highs, indicating WLD remains in a longer-term recovery phase.
For conservative investors, waiting for a successful break above $0.59 immediate resistance would provide confirmation of the bullish thesis before entering positions.
WLD Price Prediction Conclusion
The WLD price prediction for the next 3-4 weeks targets the $0.58-$0.62 range with medium-high confidence. Technical momentum is building with MACD turning positive and price action breaking above key moving averages. The Worldcoin forecast is supported by volume confirmation and healthy RSI positioning.
Key indicators to monitor include the MACD maintaining positive territory, successful break above $0.59 resistance, and sustained trading above the $0.52 pivot point. Failure to hold $0.50 would invalidate the bullish prediction and suggest deeper correction toward $0.47 support.
The timeline for this prediction centers on January 2026, with initial targets potentially reached within 7-10 trading days if momentum sustains. Traders should monitor daily volume for confirmation and be prepared to adjust position sizing based on volatility expansion measured by the ATR indicator.
Image source: Shutterstock
The Top 5 Busiest Blockchains of 2025
Onchain analytics firm Nansen ranked Solana, BNB Chain, Base, Tron and NEAR Protocol as the busiest blockchains in 2025.
Solana led the pack with 23.01 billion transactions, while BNB Chain followed with 3.89 billion. Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 Base handled 3.29 billion for third, as Tron trailed with 3.22 billion and NEAR came in fifth with 1.89 billion.
Even as 2025 was marked by institutional adoption, retail-focused use cases continued to dominate transaction volumes, particularly on blockchains with low fees and high throughput.
Solana’s DEX boom and memecoin craze
Solana’s dominance came on the back of a trading boom that pushed it to the top of decentralized exchange (DEX) rankings in early 2025.
CoinGecko reported that Solana DEX trading dominated 40% of the industry’s market share by recording $293.7 billion in the first quarter of 2025. It was driven in part by a memecoin frenzy around celebrity and political tokens like $TRUMP, a Solana-based token launched on Jan. 18 tied to US President Donald Trump.
DefiLlama data showed that Solana remained among the top chains by DEX volume throughout the year, with monthly volumes around or above the $100 billion mark.
Related: Solana enters 2026 with last-minute boost in RWA momentum
BNB Chain’s roughly 3.89 billion transactions, per Nansen, coincided with the rise of its own memecoin scene.

Base ranked third by 2025 transaction count as it leveraged direct distribution from Coinbase’s user base. A 2026 outlook by Messari researcher AJC said that Base’s protocol revenue grew by about 30 times in 2025, capturing 62% of total L2 revenue. The same research noted that Base’s ecosystem now spans DEXs, AI‑linked apps and prediction platforms.
Related: Base’s creator coin experiment meets resistance after Nick Shirley launch
Tron and NEAR round out the top 5
Tron’s 3.22 billion transactions reflected its role as a backbone for the stablecoin economy. In June 2025, TRON DAO said that more than half of circulating USDt (USDT) is issued on its blockchain. Its stablecoin supply grew about 40% year‑to‑date with daily transfer volumes in the tens of billions of dollars.
NEAR Protocol rounded out the top five, with 1.89 billion transactions in 2025 according to Nansen’s ranking.
NEAR reported about 46 million users in May, placing it alongside Solana and Tron in activity metrics. Beyond numbers, a key part of NEAR’s 2025 story was its role in the privacy narrative via Zcash (ZEC), whose comeback was driven in part by the Electric Coin Company’s Zashi wallet integrating with NEAR’s Intents system. It allowed users to move in and out of ZEC’s shielded pool without going through centralized exchanges.
This integration helped push Zcash’s shielded supply to record levels and drove a spike in activity on NEAR Intents, including a day with over $17 million in Zcash-related volume.
Bitcoin Seeks $90,000 Resistance Flip Into 2026 Wall Street Open
Bitcoin (BTC) approached $90,000 into the first Wall Street open of 2026 with a new CME futures gap in focus.
Key points:
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Bitcoin attempts a breakthrough at $90,000 as markets brace for the first US trading session of the year.
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A new CME futures gap and long liquidations provide grounds for a BTC price dip.
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Gold bounces back after a correction from all-time highs ends on New Year’s Eve.
Bitcoin CME gap sets stage for “messy” week
Data from TradingView showed a BTC price breakout attempt gathering momentum during the Asia trading session.
As TradFi markets returned, Bitcoin produced a new “gap” to the downside on CME Group’s futures market, providing a potential near-term target.
“Good one to keep an eye on in the week ahead,” trading account Daan Crypto Trades commented on X.
“Obviously it’s also almost weekend so we might be getting a few gaps and a bit of a messy chart to start the year off.”

As Cointelegraph reported, price tends to rise or fall to “fill” newly formed gaps within days or even hours of futures reopening.
Amid new January highs, trading platform TheKingfisher warned that prices may dip to take out late BTC long positions around $88,000.
A long liquidation cluster in building up on the $BTC high leverage liquidation map
If your liq price falls around 88k, we’d suggest adjusting your leverage/position
There’s a high likelihood you’ll get picked up 🎣 pic.twitter.com/WwbDRhWlkM
— TheKingfisher (@kingfisher_btc) January 2, 2026
Data from monitoring resource CoinGlass showed liquidity on either side of the price building into the Wall Street open.
Cross-crypto liquidations for the 24 hours to the time of writing totaled more than $200 million as markets edged higher.

Gold creeps higher after new year cool-down
After dipping to end the year, gold rebounded to push toward a rematch with all-time highs on the day.
Related: Bitcoin RSI demands breakout as exec says ‘RIP’ to 4-year BTC price cycle
XAU/USD was being held in check by $4,400 after becoming the winning major asset of 2025.
“Gold (+64%) was the best performing major asset in 2025 while Bitcoin (-6%) was the worst. Something we haven’t seen before in any calendar year (the inverse of 2013),” Charlie Bilello, chief market strategist at wealth manager Creative Planning, noted.

This week, Cointelegraph included Bitcoin’s relationship with gold and silver in four key charts to watch next.
Analysis argued that BTC’s relative underperformance was not a sign of a new bear market, but the “calm before the storm,” based on historical patterns.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision. While we strive to provide accurate and timely information, Cointelegraph does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information in this article. This article may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Cointelegraph will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from your reliance on this information.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision. While we strive to provide accurate and timely information, Cointelegraph does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information in this article. This article may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Cointelegraph will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from your reliance on this information.
Solana Has Institutional Momentum With RWAs Heading Into 2026
Solana appears poised to expand from its memecoin-focused, retail-dominant network this year, after posting record real-world asset tokenization activity in December.
Data from RWA.xyz shows the value of tokenized RWAs on Solana increased nearly 10% over the last month to a record-high $873.3 million, while the number of Solana RWA token holders rose over 18.4% to 126,236 over the same timeframe.
The majority of these RWAs back US Treasuries, such as the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund and the Ondo US Dollar Yield, which boast market caps of $255.4 million and $175.8 million, respectively.
New tokenized stocks like Tesla xStock and Nvidia xStock are also rising, at $48.3 million and $17.6 million, respectively, while institutional funds are also being tokenized on Solana.
Solana is poised to become the third blockchain to exceed $1 billion in tokenized RWAs, behind Ethereum at $12.3 billion and BNB Chain, which recently passed $2 billion.
SOL will set a new high in 2026 if one thing happens: Bitwise
Last month, crypto asset manager Bitwise predicted Solana would set a new all-time high should the US pass the market-structure-focused CLARITY Act in 2026.
Related: Can Solana shed its memecoin image in 2026?
If it passes, Bitwise expects crypto tokenization will take off, with Solana being one of the biggest winners from that upward trend: “We’re bullish on Ethereum and Solana. Really bullish. Primarily because we think stablecoins and tokenization are megatrends, and Ethereum and Solana are likely to be the biggest beneficiaries of that growth.”
SOL has some catching up to do on BTC, ETH
Solana (SOL) enters 2026 at a significantly lower price than it began 2025, trading around $125 versus roughly $190 this time last year.
SOL is also over 57% off the $293.3 all-time high it set on Jan. 19, 2025, while Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) set their all-time highs more recently — October and August — and are currently trading much closer to those prices.
ETFs, institutional payments also spurring SOL momentum
Solana’s legitimacy in the institutional space strengthened in late October when the US Securities and Exchange Commission approved the first lot of now six spot Solana exchange-traded funds.
Those Solana products have combined for $765 million in inflows, Farside Investors data shows.
Also in October, international remittance giant Western Union chose Solana to build its stablecoin settlements platform on for its more than 150 million customers, spread across over 200 countries and territories. It is expected to roll out in the first half of 2026.
Solana’s onchain metrics look solid
Solana is leading all blockchains in app revenue, proving it can generate high income even when memecoin activity slows.
Over the past 30 days, it raked in over $110 million, far ahead of second-place Hyperliquid at $61.1 million and nearly double Ethereum’s $47.2 million, DeFiLlama data shows.

Magazine: How crypto laws changed in 2025 — and how they’ll change in 2026
Bitcoin Options Are Not Capping BTC Price
Key takeaways:
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Covered calls gained traction as cash-and-carry returns collapsed, but data shows they are not structurally suppressing Bitcoin’s price.
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Stable put-to-call ratios and rising put demand suggest hedging and yield strategies coexist with bullish positioning.
As Bitcoin (BTC) price entered a downtrend in November, traders began forming theories about why institutional inflows and corporate accumulation failed to sustain price levels above $110,000.
One explanation frequently cited is the rising demand for Bitcoin options, particularly those linked to the BlackRock iShares spot Bitcoin (IBIT) exchange-traded fund.
The aggregate Bitcoin options open interest climbed to $49 billion in December 2025 from $39 billion in December 2024, putting the covered call strategy under closer scrutiny.
Critics argue that by “renting out” their upside for a fee, large investors have unintentionally created a ceiling that prevents Bitcoin from entering its next parabolic phase. To understand this argument, it helps to view a covered call as a trade-off between price appreciation and steady income.
In a covered call strategy, an investor who already owns Bitcoin sells a call (buy) option to another party. This gives the buyer the right to purchase that Bitcoin at a fixed price, such as $100,000 by a specified date. In return, the seller receives an upfront cash payment, similar to earning interest on a bond.
This options strategy differs from fixed income products because the seller continues to hold a volatile asset, even though their potential upside is capped. If Bitcoin rallies to $120,000, the seller must sell at $100,000, effectively missing the additional gains.
Traders argue that this dynamic suppresses price action because professional dealers who purchase these options often sell Bitcoin in the spot market to hedge their exposure, creating a persistent “sell wall” around popular strike prices.
Options-based yield replaced the collapsed cash and carry trade
This shift toward options-based yield is a direct response to the collapse of the cash and carry trade, which involves selling BTC futures while holding an equivalent position in the spot market.

For much of late 2024, traders captured a steady 10% to 15% premium. By February 2025, however, that premium had fallen below 10%, and by November it struggled to remain above 5%.
In search of higher returns, funds rotated into covered calls, which offered more attractive annualized yields of 12% to 18%. This transition is evident in IBIT options, where open interest jumped to $40 billion from $12 billion in late 2024. Even so, the put-to-call ratio has stayed stable below 60%.

If widespread “suppressive” call selling were truly the dominant force, this ratio would likely have collapsed as the market became saturated with call sellers. Instead, the balance implies that for every yield-focused seller, there is still a buyer positioning for a breakout.
The put-to-call ratio suggests that while some participants are selling upside call options, a much larger group is purchasing put (sell) instruments as protection against a potential price decline.
The recent defensive stance is reflected in the skew metric. While IBIT put options traded at a 2% discount in late 2024, they now trade at a 5% premium. At the same time, implied volatility, the market’s measure of expected turbulence, declined to 45% or lower from May onward, down from 57% in late 2024.

Lower volatility reduces the premiums earned by sellers, meaning the incentive to deploy this so-called “suppressive” strategy has actually weakened, even as total open interest has increased.
Arguing that covered calls are holding prices down makes little sense when the sellers of those call options stand to benefit most if prices rise toward their target levels. Rather than acting as a constraint, the options market has become the primary venue where Bitcoin’s volatility is being monetized for yield.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as, legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph. While we strive to provide accurate and timely information, Cointelegraph does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information in this article. This article may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Cointelegraph will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from your reliance on this information.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision. While we strive to provide accurate and timely information, Cointelegraph does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information in this article. This article may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Cointelegraph will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from your reliance on this information.
Crypto Privacy in 2026: Compliance-Friendly Tools On The Rise
Crypto privacy entered the spotlight in 2025 as new technology clashed with regulators, a trend that is set to intensify in 2026 with developers pushing the envelope and legal battles approaching a conclusion.
In its early days, Bitcoin (BTC) was often viewed as an anonymous payment tool despite its transparency. Since then, the introduction of onchain analytics and surveillance has made it increasingly apparent that transparent blockchains are far from private.
This led to an arms race between pro-privacy developers, onchain surveillance organizations and regulators, culminating in high-profile legal cases. The developers of the decentralized Ether (ETH) mixer Tornado Cash are fighting over whether software development constitutes a financial service, and those behind the Bitcoin non-custodial mixer Samourai Wallet were recently sentenced to prison by a US court.
Despite this, privacy-focused development picked up this year. Industry experts suggest that while the privacy tool stack remained largely unchanged in 2025, those tools are expected to evolve in 2026 thanks to a new generation of “pragmatic privacy,” ensuring privacy and compliance with sanctions.
How we sleepwalked into traceable money
Payment processors being able to clearly determine the parties, products and services involved in transactions allows for censorship. This is far from a theoretical danger, with leading PC game distributor Steam and competitor Itch.io purging adult content in 2025 following pressure from payment processors. Before that, the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks was cut off by payment providers, despite the US Treasury stating in 2011 that it could not be sanctioned.
WikiLeaks turned to Bitcoin, cementing it as uncensorable money. Bitcoin was born from the same cypherpunk circles that saw the circulation of Timothy May’s — an engineer influential to Bitcoin development and co-founder of the cypherpunk mailing list — “Crypto Anarchist Manifesto.”
The document described encrypted exchanges that ensured total anonymity, freedom of speech and the freedom to trade, dating back to 1988. Most of the spotlight in crypto nowadays is on institutional adoption, regulatory breakthroughs and financial speculation, but the crypto community never stopped building for digital rights and privacy.
Related: Crypto urges SEC to see the good in blockchain privacy tools
The three layers of crypto privacy in 2026
One can think of crypto privacy as operating in three layers. At the protocol layer, layer 2s (L2s) and privacy coins like Monero (XMR) use encryption, shielded pools and custom transaction formats to hide who’s paying whom and how much.
At the user layer, privacy depends on user prowess: wallet choice, address reuse, device fingerprints, network habits (VPN/Tor), privacy tools and general operational security (OpSec).
At the perimeter layer, fiat on- and off-ramps, such as crypto exchanges, banks, stablecoin issuers, and analytics firms that connect blockchain activity to real identities, can strip away protocol privacy earned on other layers.
Nathaniel Fried, the co-founder and CEO of 0xBow — the company behind Ethereum-based onchain privacy tool Privacy Pools — told Cointelegraph that the perimeter layer, and mostly fiat on- and off-ramps are a major privacy chokepoint. For compliance, such platforms test deposits using blockchain analytics services, which often exclude funds from most privacy-preserving services, he said.
Zachary Williamson, the co-founder and CEO of privacy-focused decentralized blockchain Aztec, told Cointelegraph that much of privacy protection should be handled for users. “It is not reasonable to expect users to have an advanced understanding of what information they are or aren’t broadcasting,” he said, adding that “this must be handled safely and automatically by the application layer.“
The new privacy tech stack
As explained above, acquiring privacy as a crypto user requires an approach that covers the protocol, user and perimeter layers. Williamson also recognized Privacy Pools as the only notable change in privacy tool availability in 2025.

He said that the team “has been doing excellent work designing safer ways of transacting privately.” Williamson chose anoncoin Zcash (ZEC) as his recommendation for the protocol layer until Aztec’s mainnet launch.
Privacy Pools, as recommended by Fried, are a shared pool where users deposit and later withdraw with a zero-knowledge proof that their funds originated from a “clean” subset of deposits. This allows for anonymity while proving sanction compliance.
Still, correct use is essential and keeping the assets in the pool for some time helps ensure stronger anonymity. Fried pointed out that withdrawing back to the depositing address does not improve one’s privacy, and provided another example of bad usage:
“Sometimes we also see a very specific deposit amount come in eg. 0.2439 ETH and then see an immediate withdrawal of 0.02439, which definitely casts strong suspicions, but isn’t 100% necessarily the same user.”
Williamson and Fried both recommended Nym for network anonymity. Nym is a decentralized mixnet that chops traffic into fixed-size, layered-encrypted packets and routes them through multiple nodes with random delays and cover traffic, aiming to defeat global traffic analysis rather than just hide the IP address.
A Nym representative told Cointelegraph that “while a centralized VPN might protect your IP address and connection from outside parties, you’re simply placing your trust in the VPN provider, who can see both.”
Their system instead aims to prevent any part of the network from linking the user’s IP address to their assigned external address. “There’s no need to trust Nym, because Nym never knows,“ they said.
Compared to a standard VPN, it offers much stronger metadata privacy and less reliance on a single company. Still, it’s slower and less mature than a well-established traditional VPN, with critical issues being uncovered as recently as 2024. The Nym spokesperson highlighted that the issues were discovered during a security audit and resolved, while another audit is coming in 2026.
Williamson’s recommended communication tool was Signal — a journalist favorite that stores almost no user data and was revealed in March to have been used by senior US national security officials to plan strikes on the Houthis.
For documents, Fried recommends Fileverse: a decentralized, privacy-first end-to-end-encrypted alternative to Google Workspace and Notion that lets you collaborate on documents, spreadsheets and files onchain using decentralized storage and wallet-based access control. It was also recently praised by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

Related: SEC commissioner says crypto is ‘helping to nudge reassessment’ on privacy
Development obstacles
Developing truly decentralized, trustless and private systems that no one can control is generally significantly harder than building centralized equivalents. Still, regulatory pressure, rather than technical difficulty, is likely the top current obstacle to the development of crypto privacy.
On Nov. 19, the co-founders of the Bitcoin non-custodial wallet and mixer Samourai Wallet, Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill, were sentenced to four and five years in prison, respectively. They were found guilty of conspiring to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business and facilitating transactions involving proceeds from criminal activity.
The sentence came despite Samourai never having control over the assets. Prosecutors argued that coordinating the transactions constituted a money transmission service despite lacking control over the funds.
Other instances highlighted that prosecutors tend to use any form of control to attribute responsibility. In 2023, prosecutors argued that developers of previously-sanctioned Ethereum-based decentralized crypto mixer Tornado Cash “chose not to implement Know Your Customer or Anti-Money Laundering programs as required by law” for money transmitting businesses.
In October, Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm asked decentralized finance developers, “How can you be so sure you won’t be charged by the [Department of Justice] as a money service business for building a non-custodial protocol?” He said prosecutors could claim that any service should have been developed as a custodial service, since he was prosecuted for failing to implement centralized control measures.
Eric Hill, former head of legal at decentralized finance protocol Lido and current counsel of Ethereum privacy protocol Railgun, told Cointelegraph that in order to avoid prosecution, projects should build on open-source technologies in a non-custodial, decentralized fashion “that does not meet definitions of financial services.”
Hill suggested avoiding the implementation of central control, holding administrators for protocol updates, profiting from transactions, and promoting to sanctioned entities and users. The service should be offered as a public good, he said:
“Total decentralization and lack of control by the builder are essential design choices.”
Niko Demchuk, the head of legal at crypto forensics firm AMLBot, told Cointelegraph that a non-custodial wallet would “generally not be categorized as a money transmitter simply because the tool allows users to conduct transactions without the tool itself taking custody of funds.” Still, he said it is not as clear-cut:
“Recent cases indicate that non-custodial services may also be subject to inquiry if they facilitate anonymized fund transfers with some relation to interstate or foreign commerce.”
Crypto lawyer Cal Evans told Cointelegraph that “a decentralized body or group, regardless of the governance protocol or how it is built, needs to structure itself properly.”
“The level of decentralization required to protect builders from criminal liability depends on the amount of functional control an individual has over operations,” Demchuk added.
Proposing pragmatic privacy
A crypto privacy trend that emerged in response to the regulatory pressure and is expected to increase in 2026 is the anonymization of assets while proving sanction compliance. “The realistic future of privacy is a pragmatic one,” 0xBow’s Fried said.
“Privacy developers need to take the concerns governments have around privacy seriously and publicly demonstrate they’re abiding by the relevant laws and regulations,” he said. Still, Fried highlighted that “the collection of users’ personal data” is “the line we’re not willing to cross.”
Williamson said he also believes in the vision Privacy Pools is building toward, noting that Aztec is moving in a similar direction. “I think it is essential to enable applications that users can use with the confidence that their participation does not help bad actors,” he said.
Aztec is a network that is moving closer to mainnet deployment, which is shaping up to be one of the most decentralized Ethereum L2s and very likely the most private. Much like Privacy Pools, the network follows a pragmatic privacy design principle.
Aztec plans to offer privacy-by-default while also providing private sanctions checks via anonymous proofs and selective disclosure features for users who want to undergo audits.
Magazine: Proton Mail exposing activist’s info showed the limits of encryption
Crypto Privacy in 2026: Compliance-Friendly Tools On The Rise
Crypto privacy entered the spotlight in 2025 as new technology clashed with regulators, a trend that is set to intensify in 2026 with developers pushing the envelope and legal battles approaching a conclusion.
In its early days, Bitcoin (BTC) was often viewed as an anonymous payment tool despite its transparency. Since then, the introduction of onchain analytics and surveillance has made it increasingly apparent that transparent blockchains are far from private.
This led to an arms race between pro-privacy developers, onchain surveillance organizations and regulators, culminating in high-profile legal cases. The developers of the decentralized Ether (ETH) mixer Tornado Cash are fighting over whether software development constitutes a financial service, and those behind the Bitcoin non-custodial mixer Samourai Wallet were recently sentenced to prison by a US court.
Despite this, privacy-focused development picked up this year. Industry experts suggest that while the privacy tool stack remained largely unchanged in 2025, those tools are expected to evolve in 2026 thanks to a new generation of “pragmatic privacy,” ensuring privacy and compliance with sanctions.
How we sleepwalked into traceable money
Payment processors being able to clearly determine the parties, products and services involved in transactions allows for censorship. This is far from a theoretical danger, with leading PC game distributor Steam and competitor Itch.io purging adult content in 2025 following pressure from payment processors. Before that, the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks was cut off by payment providers, despite the US Treasury stating in 2011 that it could not be sanctioned.
WikiLeaks turned to Bitcoin, cementing it as uncensorable money. Bitcoin was born from the same cypherpunk circles that saw the circulation of Timothy May’s — an engineer influential to Bitcoin development and co-founder of the cypherpunk mailing list — “Crypto Anarchist Manifesto.”
The document described encrypted exchanges that ensured total anonymity, freedom of speech and the freedom to trade, dating back to 1988. Most of the spotlight in crypto nowadays is on institutional adoption, regulatory breakthroughs and financial speculation, but the crypto community never stopped building for digital rights and privacy.
Related: Crypto urges SEC to see the good in blockchain privacy tools
The three layers of crypto privacy in 2026
One can think of crypto privacy as operating in three layers. At the protocol layer, layer 2s (L2s) and privacy coins like Monero (XMR) use encryption, shielded pools and custom transaction formats to hide who’s paying whom and how much.
At the user layer, privacy depends on user prowess: wallet choice, address reuse, device fingerprints, network habits (VPN/Tor), privacy tools and general operational security (OpSec).
At the perimeter layer, fiat on- and off-ramps, such as crypto exchanges, banks, stablecoin issuers, and analytics firms that connect blockchain activity to real identities, can strip away protocol privacy earned on other layers.
Nathaniel Fried, the co-founder and CEO of 0xBow — the company behind Ethereum-based onchain privacy tool Privacy Pools — told Cointelegraph that the perimeter layer, and mostly fiat on- and off-ramps are a major privacy chokepoint. For compliance, such platforms test deposits using blockchain analytics services, which often exclude funds from most privacy-preserving services, he said.
Zachary Williamson, the co-founder and CEO of privacy-focused decentralized blockchain Aztec, told Cointelegraph that much of privacy protection should be handled for users. “It is not reasonable to expect users to have an advanced understanding of what information they are or aren’t broadcasting,” he said, adding that “this must be handled safely and automatically by the application layer.“
The new privacy tech stack
As explained above, acquiring privacy as a crypto user requires an approach that covers the protocol, user and perimeter layers. Williamson also recognized Privacy Pools as the only notable change in privacy tool availability in 2025.

He said that the team “has been doing excellent work designing safer ways of transacting privately.” Williamson chose anoncoin Zcash (ZEC) as his recommendation for the protocol layer until Aztec’s mainnet launch.
Privacy Pools, as recommended by Fried, are a shared pool where users deposit and later withdraw with a zero-knowledge proof that their funds originated from a “clean” subset of deposits. This allows for anonymity while proving sanction compliance.
Still, correct use is essential and keeping the assets in the pool for some time helps ensure stronger anonymity. Fried pointed out that withdrawing back to the depositing address does not improve one’s privacy, and provided another example of bad usage:
“Sometimes we also see a very specific deposit amount come in eg. 0.2439 ETH and then see an immediate withdrawal of 0.02439, which definitely casts strong suspicions, but isn’t 100% necessarily the same user.”
Williamson and Fried both recommended Nym for network anonymity. Nym is a decentralized mixnet that chops traffic into fixed-size, layered-encrypted packets and routes them through multiple nodes with random delays and cover traffic, aiming to defeat global traffic analysis rather than just hide the IP address.
A Nym representative told Cointelegraph that “while a centralized VPN might protect your IP address and connection from outside parties, you’re simply placing your trust in the VPN provider, who can see both.”
Their system instead aims to prevent any part of the network from linking the user’s IP address to their assigned external address. “There’s no need to trust Nym, because Nym never knows,“ they said.
Compared to a standard VPN, it offers much stronger metadata privacy and less reliance on a single company. Still, it’s slower and less mature than a well-established traditional VPN, with critical issues being uncovered as recently as 2024. The Nym spokesperson highlighted that the issues were discovered during a security audit and resolved, while another audit is coming in 2026.
Williamson’s recommended communication tool was Signal — a journalist favorite that stores almost no user data and was revealed in March to have been used by senior US national security officials to plan strikes on the Houthis.
For documents, Fried recommends Fileverse: a decentralized, privacy-first end-to-end-encrypted alternative to Google Workspace and Notion that lets you collaborate on documents, spreadsheets and files onchain using decentralized storage and wallet-based access control. It was also recently praised by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

Related: SEC commissioner says crypto is ‘helping to nudge reassessment’ on privacy
Development obstacles
Developing truly decentralized, trustless and private systems that no one can control is generally significantly harder than building centralized equivalents. Still, regulatory pressure, rather than technical difficulty, is likely the top current obstacle to the development of crypto privacy.
On Nov. 19, the co-founders of the Bitcoin non-custodial wallet and mixer Samourai Wallet, Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill, were sentenced to four and five years in prison, respectively. They were found guilty of conspiring to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business and facilitating transactions involving proceeds from criminal activity.
The sentence came despite Samourai never having control over the assets. Prosecutors argued that coordinating the transactions constituted a money transmission service despite lacking control over the funds.
Other instances highlighted that prosecutors tend to use any form of control to attribute responsibility. In 2023, prosecutors argued that developers of previously-sanctioned Ethereum-based decentralized crypto mixer Tornado Cash “chose not to implement Know Your Customer or Anti-Money Laundering programs as required by law” for money transmitting businesses.
In October, Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm asked decentralized finance developers, “How can you be so sure you won’t be charged by the [Department of Justice] as a money service business for building a non-custodial protocol?” He said prosecutors could claim that any service should have been developed as a custodial service, since he was prosecuted for failing to implement centralized control measures.
Eric Hill, former head of legal at decentralized finance protocol Lido and current counsel of Ethereum privacy protocol Railgun, told Cointelegraph that in order to avoid prosecution, projects should build on open-source technologies in a non-custodial, decentralized fashion “that does not meet definitions of financial services.”
Hill suggested avoiding the implementation of central control, holding administrators for protocol updates, profiting from transactions, and promoting to sanctioned entities and users. The service should be offered as a public good, he said:
“Total decentralization and lack of control by the builder are essential design choices.”
Niko Demchuk, the head of legal at crypto forensics firm AMLBot, told Cointelegraph that a non-custodial wallet would “generally not be categorized as a money transmitter simply because the tool allows users to conduct transactions without the tool itself taking custody of funds.” Still, he said it is not as clear-cut:
“Recent cases indicate that non-custodial services may also be subject to inquiry if they facilitate anonymized fund transfers with some relation to interstate or foreign commerce.”
Crypto lawyer Cal Evans told Cointelegraph that “a decentralized body or group, regardless of the governance protocol or how it is built, needs to structure itself properly.”
“The level of decentralization required to protect builders from criminal liability depends on the amount of functional control an individual has over operations,” Demchuk added.
Proposing pragmatic privacy
A crypto privacy trend that emerged in response to the regulatory pressure and is expected to increase in 2026 is the anonymization of assets while proving sanction compliance. “The realistic future of privacy is a pragmatic one,” 0xBow’s Fried said.
“Privacy developers need to take the concerns governments have around privacy seriously and publicly demonstrate they’re abiding by the relevant laws and regulations,” he said. Still, Fried highlighted that “the collection of users’ personal data” is “the line we’re not willing to cross.”
Williamson said he also believes in the vision Privacy Pools is building toward, noting that Aztec is moving in a similar direction. “I think it is essential to enable applications that users can use with the confidence that their participation does not help bad actors,” he said.
Aztec is a network that is moving closer to mainnet deployment, which is shaping up to be one of the most decentralized Ethereum L2s and very likely the most private. Much like Privacy Pools, the network follows a pragmatic privacy design principle.
Aztec plans to offer privacy-by-default while also providing private sanctions checks via anonymous proofs and selective disclosure features for users who want to undergo audits.
Magazine: Proton Mail exposing activist’s info showed the limits of encryption