Privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash (ZEC) has spiked by more than 70% over the past week as crypto traders have been paying closer attention to privacy-focused projects.

Zcash traded at about $346 on Friday, May 1, before hitting a seven-day peak of $593.86 on Wednesday. It has since settled at around $570 as of Friday, according to CoinGecko.

Pav Hundal, lead market analyst at crypto exchange Swyftx, told Cointelegraph that traders have begun paying closer attention to privacy projects “amid broader concerns about the impact of AI, quantum computing and financial surveillance on crypto.”

He added that ZEC was also boosted after Tushar Jain, the co-founder of the investment firm Multicoin Capital, said on Wednesday that it had “built a significant position” in ZEC since February.

Zcash is one of the more prominent privacy-focused cryptocurrencies, trailed by its significant rival Monero (XMR), and Jain said it is an attractive investment as “institutions will increasingly seek private assets to protect themselves” from what he claimed was a “political trend to seize private wealth.”

Several crypto firms have also recently released new privacy features. The Ethereum scaling solution Polygon launched private stablecoin payments on Sunday, while Aptos Labs’ privacy feature Confidential APT, which conceals token balances and transfer amounts, went live on the mainnet in April.

The market intelligence platform Santiment said in an X post on Wednesday that Zcash was “emphatically rebounding,” as fear of missing out and social media mentions of Zcash spiked along with its price.

Santiment pointed to a lack of government trust as a possible catalyst for the surge in interest from retail traders. 

Source: Santiment

“The crowd is increasingly viewing privacy-focused assets as a hedge against growing surveillance concerns, tighter exchange regulations and expanding AI-driven data tracking across financial platforms,” Santiment said.

Related: Dash Evolution chain integrates Zcash Orchard privacy pool

“At the same time, lower market caps across many privacy coins have traders eyeing them as high-upside momentum plays during this mild altcoin rally crypto has seen so far in May,” it added.

Zcash rally could be short-lived

Privacy was a significant investment theme for crypto in 2025, with privacy-focused tokens surging last year despite a broader downturn in the rest of the market.  

Zcash nearly crossed $700 in November, its highest price since 2018, while fellow privacy coin Monero reached a new all-time high of $797.73 in January.

However, neither held on to the gains, and Swyftx’s Hundal said that the recent rally could also be short-lived.

“Zcash’s move has some hallmarks of a narrative rotation into privacy coins,” Hundal said. “I’d be careful calling it a clean fundamental repricing just yet. We need more time to see how durable investor interest is.” 

Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs — Mid-2026 

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

Nearly half of US voters are willing to cross party lines to get clear crypto regulation off the ground, while public support for the CLARITY Act could bring an electoral benefit for politicians, according to a new survey from HarrisX.

The poll included responses from 2,008 registered voters from May 1-4. It found that 52% of respondents support the CLARITY Act, with just 11% opposed. 

About half, or 47%, said they would consider voting for a candidate outside their preferred party if that candidate backed the bill and their own party did not. Among crypto users, that number jumped to 72%.

“Passing the CLARITY Act is a bipartisan, winning issue,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said on X on Thursday. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev added: “There’s real momentum now to finally get CLARITY across the finish line. One more small push and we establish the legislative foundation to ensure American dominance in digital finance.”

Source: HarrisX

The crypto industry has been waiting for the CLARITY Act to move through the US legislative process. It is expected to provide long-awaited regulatory clarity for crypto and could help the country become a major hub for crypto and digital finance.

The HarrisX poll also highlighted strong bipartisan support for the bill, with 55% of Democrats, 58% of Republicans and 42% of independents supporting it. Public support for the bill could also give senators a 20-point electoral advantage, it said

Related: Bitmine’s Tom Lee says ‘crypto spring’ has already begun

Some predict the CLARITY Act will receive additional markups as soon as next week.

Speaking at the Consensus 2026 crypto industry conference in Miami on Wednesday, Coinbase’s vice president of US policy, Kara Calvert, said her “prediction is that we have a markup next week” from the Senate Banking Committee.

Calvert stressed that bipartisan support will get the bill across the line, saying it needs at least 60 votes to pass the Senate, but she is unsure how things will unfold in the coming days.

“That means you need Democrats. You need a bipartisan bill, and we have all been working really hard to make sure that bipartisanship holds. I think the big question is, how do these votes shape up over the next few days?”

The timeline for a vote may still be months away, however. US Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand recently suggested additional markups are required before the bill can progress, predicting a Senate vote in August.

Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs — Mid-2026 

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

Arbitrum delegates approved the release of $71 million in ether frozen after last month’s Lazarus-linked rsETH exploit, setting up a direct clash between decentralized governance and an active U.S. court fight over who owns the funds.

The on-chain vote, which closed Friday afternoon Hong Kong time with more than 90% support, authorizes the release of 30,765 ETH frozen by Arbitrum’s Security Council after the April 18 exploit, when attackers used unbacked rsETH tokens as collateral on Aave to borrow roughly $230 million in ETH from the protocol.

The funds are earmarked for a coordinated industry recovery effort led by Aave, KelpDAO, LayerZero, EtherFi and Compound, aimed at making affected users whole.

But the frozen ether is also at the center of an escalating legal dispute in Manhattan federal court.

Last week, attorney Charles Gerstein, representing families holding roughly $877 million in unpaid terrorism judgments against North Korea, served a restraining notice on Arbitrum DAO claiming the frozen ETH constitutes North Korean property because the exploit has been widely attributed to Pyongyang’s Lazarus Group.

That triggered an emergency legal fight.

Aave moved earlier this week to vacate the restraining notice, arguing the assets belong to innocent users, not North Korea, and warning that continued delays risk “cascading liquidations” and broader instability across decentralized finance markets.

Gerstein fired back Tuesday, arguing the exploit was not theft but fraud, meaning the attackers obtained legal title to the ETH by deceiving Aave’s lending markets with worthless collateral.

Friday’s governance vote does not mean the funds move immediately.

Because the measure was structured as a Constitutional AIP under Arbitrum’s governance framework, the transfer cannot be executed for at least eight days, giving the Manhattan court time to intervene before any ETH moves.

Arbitrum delegates were also not voting blindly to the legal risk. The proposal included indemnification protections for the Arbitrum Foundation, Offchain Labs, Security Council members, and governance delegates against certain claims arising from either freezing or releasing the ETH, underscoring how unusual the stakes around the vote had already become.

Speaking at Consensus Miami this week, Aave Labs Chief Legal and Policy Officer Linda Jeng said the exploit had already forced the protocol to rethink its risk framework, expanding collateral standards beyond financial metrics to include cybersecurity, interoperability, and technical architecture reviews.

Jeng, who worked as a regulator during the 2008 financial crisis, drew a contrast with traditional finance’s taxpayer-backed rescues.

“In the financial crisis, we had to bail out the banks,” she said. “Here, we came together as an ecosystem to bail ourselves out.”

Zcash will roll out quantum-recoverable wallets within a month and reach full post-quantum status within 12 to 18 months, Zcash Open Development Lab founder and CEO Josh Swihart told a Consensus Miami audience on Thursday in a session moderated by Solana infra firm Helius’s founder Mert Mumtaz.

A separate scaling track is targeting MasterCard- and Visa-scale throughput on a similar horizon.

The roadmap arrived during a ZEC rally that has lifted the token more than 110% over the past 30 days as prominent crypto fund Multicoin Capital disclosed a sizable ZEC investment and the privacy narrative caught on among investors, sentiment daata shows.

Swihart’s pitch was that Bitcoin no longer holds up as the cypherpunk-grade money it was meant to be. The asset works as an ETF wrapper and a store of value, he said, but as a peer-to-peer private payment system “it’s just fundamentally broken.”

Visible balances on a transparent ledger let governments seize what they can see, he argued, the same wealth-visibility critique Multicoin’s Tushar Jain leaned on this week when disclosing the fund’s purchases.

The user-side traction is running through the Electric Coin Company’s mobile wallet after an October integration with Near Intents opened cross-chain swaps from assets like BTC, SOL and USDC directly into shielded ZEC.

Near Intents lets a user state what they want, like turning USDC into ZEC, while specialized routers handle the multi-step trade across different blockchains in the background.

Roughly $600 million to $700 million has flowed through that route since launch, mostly to and from USD and USDC, Swihart said. Near’s broader intent-based system has processed close to $800 million in volume over the past 30 days alone, per Near Protocol data, with Ethereum, Solana and Zcash dominating the chain side.

A separate proposal to cut Zcash’s target block time from 75 seconds to 25 seconds is in active discussion on the project’s community forum, with bridges to Solana and Hyperliquid already live, Mumtaz noted.

Token-holder voting through Zashi is also slated, Swihart said, less as formal governance and more as an opinion layer feeding the project’s existing rough-consensus model.

For traders, the cleanest near-term test is whether quantum recoverability actually ships within Swihart’s stated month. The fail-safe is the shielded pool, which now sits at roughly 30% of circulating ZEC, an all-time high. If it keeps growing alongside price, the rally is being underwritten by adoption rather than speculation

The crypto market turned sharply lower on Friday, with total market capitalization falling nearly 3.8% to around $2.61 trillion as renewed military tensions between the United States and Iran triggered a broad risk-off move across global markets.

Bitcoin (BTC) dropped roughly 4.5% over the past 24 hours, slipping below the $77,000 mark before recovering slightly to trade near $77,400 at press time. Ethereum (ETH) fell more than 6% to around $1,980, while major altcoins such as Solana (SOL), XRP (XRP), BNB (BNB), and Dogecoin (DOGE) also recorded notable losses amid accelerating sell pressure.

Among the worst performers were high-beta altcoins and meme tokens, many of which posted double-digit intraday declines as traders rapidly reduced exposure to risk assets.

The latest downturn triggered a large wave of long liquidations across crypto derivatives markets. More than $344 million in bullish positions were wiped out over the past 24 hours as falling prices forced leveraged traders out of their positions, further intensifying downside momentum.

Investor sentiment also deteriorated sharply. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index fell by 9 points to 38, returning to fear territory as geopolitical uncertainty and rising volatility pushed traders toward a more defensive stance.

Crypto prices tanked after tensions in the Middle East escalated again despite earlier ceasefire expectations between Washington and Tehran.

Iran’s military accused U.S. forces of targeting an Iranian oil tanker near coastal waters and another vessel approaching the Strait of Hormuz, while also alleging U.S. air strikes on Bandar Khamir, Sirik, and Qeshm Island in southern Iran. Iranian air defenses were reportedly activated over western Tehran as local media described explosions and exchanges of fire near the Strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, U.S. Central Command said Iranian forces launched missiles, drones, and fast boats against American naval destroyers transiting the Strait of Hormuz. CENTCOM stated that U.S. forces eliminated inbound threats and struck Iranian military facilities tied to the attacks, including missile launch and surveillance infrastructure.

Despite the escalation, U.S. President Donald Trump insisted that the ceasefire agreement still remains in effect. He has described the strikes on Iranian targets as a “love tap” while warning Tehran that the United States would respond “a lot harder” if tensions continued.

The geopolitical flare-up pushed investors toward traditional safe-haven assets. Gold strengthened further during the session, while oil prices also moved higher on concerns that instability around the Strait of Hormuz could disrupt global energy supplies.

At the same time, capital continued rotating into traditional equities. The S&P 500 climbed to fresh record highs above the 7,300 level, supported by a strong technology rally driven by upbeat AI-related earnings from companies such as AMD. The move drew additional capital away from crypto markets as investors favored large-cap equities over speculative digital assets.

Looking ahead, traders are expected to closely monitor further developments surrounding U.S.-Iran negotiations and any potential disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, which remains one of the world’s most critical oil shipping routes.

Broader market focus also remains on upcoming U.S. macroeconomic data and Federal Reserve expectations, both of which continue to influence risk appetite across crypto and global financial markets.

A new HarrisX survey signals growing bipartisan momentum for the United States to settle crypto regulation under the CLARITY Act. The poll of 2,008 registered voters, conducted May 1–4, shows a modest majority in favor of the bill, with a notable willingness among voters to cross party lines for regulatory clarity that could shape the trajectory of the crypto sector in the U.S.

Key takeaways from the survey include strong cross-party support and a notable openness among cryptocurrency users. Specifically, 52% of respondents back the CLARITY Act, while 11% oppose it. Among those who identify as crypto users, 72% said they would consider voting for a candidate outside their preferred party if that candidate backed CLARITY while their own party did not. The poll also found bipartisan margins, underscoring a political imperative that could influence electoral dynamics in districts with crypto constituencies.

Key takeaways

• HarrisX data shows 52% overall support for the CLARITY Act, with 11% opposed; a plurality, not a landslide, but a clear majority.
• Crypto users exhibit especially strong alignment: 72% would consider crossing party lines for a CLARITY-backed candidate.
• Across party lines, support is bipartisan: 55% of Democrats, 58% of Republicans, and 42% of independents back the bill.
• The polling also suggests an electoral edge: supporters of CLARITY could carry a roughly 20-point advantage in Senate contests where the issue plays a role.

Momentum vs. timetable: what lawmakers are signaling

The industry has long urged regulatory clarity to attract investment, foster innovation, and reduce the legal ambiguity that many crypto firms contend with. In the wake of the polling results, industry figures have stressed that the moment could be pivotal. Coinbase’s chief executive, Brian Armstrong, wrote on X that “Passing the CLARITY Act is a bipartisan, winning issue.” Similarly, Vlad Tenev of Robinhood stated that there is “real momentum now to finally get CLARITY across the finish line,” arguing that a legislative foundation is essential to maintain American leadership in digital finance.

The political path, however, remains nuanced. During Consensus 2026 in Miami, Coinbase’s vice president of U.S. policy, Kara Calvert, indicated a potential markup next week on the CLARITY Act by the Senate Banking Committee. Calvert emphasized that bipartisanship will be crucial to delivering a final bill, noting that passage would require sufficient votes across party lines. Yet even with the anticipated markup, the timeline for a Senate vote remains uncertain, illustrating a broader pattern of early-stage progress accompanied by lingering questions about the pace of legislative action.

Senate timing could extend into late summer or beyond. For instance, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has suggested additional markups could be needed before progress accelerates, signaling a possible August vote window. The tug-of-war between momentum and procedural realities highlights a common dynamic in crypto regulation: broad public and industry support can collide with the complexities of parliamentary procedure and the need to secure a durable, bipartisan consensus.

What the CLARITY Act represents in practice is a path toward formalizing how crypto offerings, exchanges, and related services are treated under U.S. law. Supporters argue that clear, predictable rules will reduce compliance friction, attract legitimate U.S. crypto businesses, and set a benchmark for global best practices. Opponents, meanwhile, have urged caution to ensure that any framework carefully guards consumer protections and financial stability. The HarrisX data suggests that even with lingering political questions, the underlying public sentiment sympathy toward a regulated, predictable crypto framework has substantial resonance across the spectrum.

Implications for investors, users, and builders

From an investor and builder perspective, the poll’s takeaway is twofold. First, the prospect of regulatory clarity reduces uncertainty that can cloud funding and strategic planning in crypto ventures. Firms operating in the U.S. — or considering expansion there — often cite regulatory clarity as a prerequisite for long-term capital commitments and product development timelines. Second, the bipartisan expressed support signals that any regulatory framework may be less susceptible to abrupt shifts with changes in party control, potentially delivering a more stable operating environment for innovative crypto projects and digital asset platforms.

For users and traders, clearer rules can translate into more reliable protections and a clearer understanding of what is permissible, what is regulated, and how enforcement might unfold. In the broader market narrative, the CLARITY Act functions as a hinge point: its passage or deferment could influence where startups locate, how exchanges structure compliance programs, and how institutions view the feasibility of mainstream crypto adoption in the United States.

What comes next and what to watch

Investors and industry watchers should monitor the Senate Banking Committee’s docket in the coming days for signals about whether a markup materializes as anticipated. If a markup occurs, observers will weigh the kinds of amendments that surface and how negotiators bridge remaining differences across parties. The public polling underscores a political incentive to push forward, but it does not guarantee a swift conclusion. The timeline remains contingent on the maneuvering of lawmakers, committee dynamics, and the degree of consensus that can be forged around the precise regulatory approach.

Beyond procedural milestones, the broader question remains the content of the CLARITY Act itself. While the poll confirms popular support for clearer crypto rules, details about what constitutes regulatory clarity and how it will be implemented are still being refined. As the discussion moves from rhetoric to drafting and committee votes, market participants will be watching not only for a timetable but for the substance that would define compliance, oversight, and enforcement in the next phase of U.S. digital finance policy.

In the near term, observers should pay close attention to updates from the Senate Banking Committee, remarks from industry policymakers, and any new polling that gauges how living policy proposals translate into public approval. The convergence of public sentiment and legislative activity could be a meaningful inflection point for the domestic crypto ecosystem, potentially shaping investor confidence, project funding, and the location of future innovation in digital assets.

Readers should stay tuned to how the CLARITY Act evolves, as the coming weeks will likely clarify whether the United States can translate broad public support into actionable, durable regulation that supports responsible innovation in crypto and digital finance.

Coinbase Markets said it will suspend trading for 12 perpetual futures on May 21 at about 13:00 UTC. 

The affected contracts are KAITO-PERP, SENT-PERP, SAHARA-PERP, CAKE-PERP, TOSHI-PERP, AKT-PERP, VET-PERP, ANIME-PERP, THETA-PERP, ZK-PERP, KERNEL-PERP, and BARD-PERP.

The exchange said any open positions left at the time of suspension will be settled automatically. It also said the final settlement price will be based on the average index price during the 60 minutes before trading stops.

Open positions face automatic settlement

Coinbase said the funding rate will be set to zero for the final funding period before settlement. It also reserved the right to suspend trading at any point and adjust the final settlement price to a reasonable level.

The notice gives traders time to close or reduce exposure before the halt. However, users who keep positions open will move into automatic settlement. That makes timing, margin, and price movement important before May 21.

Moreover, Coinbase said the suspensions reflect its effort to maintain high-quality derivatives markets. The exchange said it is focusing on products that meet liquidity and market-quality standards, while seeking price integrity and deeper liquidity for users.

The affected tokens span several market areas, including AI, DeFi, gaming, infrastructure, and older layer-1 networks. Coinbase’s product page lists these markets as linear perpetual futures settled in USDC, with no expiry date.

Wider derivatives market keeps shifting

The suspension comes as competition in crypto derivatives grows. Related crypto.news coverage said Kalshi has explored crypto perpetual futures as U.S. derivatives rules shift and competition widens against Binance, Hyperliquid, Coinbase, and Kraken.

Coinbase has also been adjusting other listed markets. A recent crypto.news report said the exchange moved to disable DAI trading on Coinbase.com and its mobile app from May 4, while also suspending TIME trading and disabling TRU ahead of migration.