TLDR:

• Bittensor has gained 140% in six weeks, with 105% of those gains recorded since March 8th alone
• Social dominance for $TAO hit 1.99%, marking a new one-year high and sitting 144% above its daily average
• Retail sentiment shows only 1.5 positive comments per negative one, suggesting no signs of a forming top yet
• Targon (SN4) trades at 3.6x revenue against a $10.5M ARR, well below the typical 8–15x SaaS industry benchmark

Bittensor ($TAO) has posted a price increase of 140% over six weeks, with 105% of those gains recorded since March 8th alone.

The token now sits at 26th by market capitalization. Analyst platforms Santiment and LunarCrush have each published separate findings on the rally.

Both reports point to rising social activity, though they approach the data from different angles.

Retail Sentiment Remains Cautious Despite Price Surge

Santiment flagged that social volume across X, Reddit, Telegram, and other platforms has reached its second-highest level on record for Bittensor.

The only period that exceeded it was the activity surrounding the token’s $529 price top on November 1st. That prior peak was driven largely by FOMO, making the current comparison worth noting.

Despite the strong price movement, the sentiment breakdown tells a more measured story. Santiment recorded only 1.5 positive comments for every 1.0 negative comment at this time.

That ratio is notably low for a token in the middle of a major rally, and it sets this surge apart from other altcoin pumps seen in recent cycles.

The absence of greedy optimism from retail traders is generally viewed as a healthy sign for a rally. When crowds pile in with excessive enthusiasm, it tends to mark a forming top. The current data does not show that pattern, which suggests the move may have room to continue.

Santiment also positioned Bittensor within the broader AI narrative driving capital rotation in the market. The token is described as a live marketplace for machine intelligence, where models compete and earn based on performance. This effectively turns AI output into a tradable commodity with measurable results.

The subnet architecture further sets Bittensor apart, according to Santiment’s framing. Hundreds of specialized AI markets operate independently across use cases like LLM training, compute, and prediction, yet remain economically tied to TAO. That structure creates real competition rather than a single centralized model driving all activity.

Engagement Data and Fundamentals Paint a Different Picture From November

LunarCrush approached the rally through social engagement metrics, reporting a 112% rise in $TAO engagements over the past 30 days.

In a single 24-hour window, the platform recorded 3.86 million engagements against a daily average of 1.56 million. That figure is approximately 2.5 times the baseline level of activity.

Social dominance for $TAO reached 1.99%, sitting 144% above its daily average and marking a new one-year high.

A total of 3,228 unique creators posted about the token within a 24-hour period, up 41% week-over-week. LunarCrush noted that price and engagement are rising together for the first time since the November 2025 local top.

However, LunarCrush drew a clear contrast between then and now. The current market cap stands at $2.9 billion, compared to $4.7 billion during the November peak.

Social volume is approaching that earlier level, but price has not caught up, which some read as a potential gap still to close.

Several catalysts appear behind the current wave of attention. Jensen Huang named Bittensor on the All-In Podcast alongside Chamath Palihapitiya.

Grayscale also opened a private placement for a $TAO trust, adding a layer of institutional interest to the conversation.

On the development side, Templar (SN3) completed Covenant-72B, a 72-billion-parameter model trained across 70 or more contributors with no central computing cluster.

Targon (SN4) is generating $10.5 million in annualized recurring revenue at a 3.6 times revenue multiple, compared to the 8 to 15 times multiple typical of traditional SaaS companies.

Zcash price extends a high-volume rally as fresh ZODL funding, rising shielded usage, and a renewed privacy narrative push ZEC higher against a constructive crypto market backdrop.

Zcash (ZEC) price, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency, is trading near $239 with a 24-hour gain of about 3% and a weekly advance of over 10%, putting its market capitalization around $3.95 billion and daily trading volume at approximately $485.6 million. The move has extended a multi-session rally that saw ZEC close at $221-$243 range through early March, supported by daily spot volumes regularly between $279 million and $425 million, according to historical price data. This acceleration comes as global crypto market capitalization hovers near $2.45 trillion, suggesting Zcash is outperforming many large-cap peers in a generally constructive market.

Zcash price climbs on rising volumes and renewed privacy focus

Zcash is a layer-1 privacy coin that uses zero-knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKs) to offer both transparent and shielded transactions, allowing users to choose between public and private transaction flows on the same network. In the shielded pool, sender, receiver, and amount data are encrypted while transactions remain verifiable, a design that aims to preserve fungibility by preventing coins from being “tainted” by prior history. That makes ZEC part of a small group of privacy assets, alongside names like Monero, competing for users and institutions seeking stronger financial confidentiality than fully transparent chains.

Although Zcash’s supply and on-chain activity are partially obscured by design, available market data paints a picture of renewed speculative engagement from larger traders. ZEC’s circulating supply is reported at around 16.6 million tokens, giving it a fully diluted valuation near $5.01 billion at current prices. Over recent sessions, daily trading volumes above $400 million imply meaningful participation from larger market participants, rather than purely retail-driven action. External pricing dashboards show ZEC trading in the $226-$245 band in late March with 24-hour dollar volumes in the $320-$430 million range and a market cap between roughly $3.7 billion and $4.1 billion, supporting the picture of a liquid, actively traded market.

Technical indicators align with this shift in positioning. One multi-metric dashboard places ZEC’s current price around $236 with a 14-day relative strength index near 53, signaling a neutral-to-bullish trend rather than an overbought spike, while also tracking high short-term volatility of around 7.3%. That combination of solid spot volume, rising price, and non-extreme momentum suggests the move has room to develop, but that traders should remain aware of sharp reversals typical for volatile privacy assets.

Beyond price, Zcash’s latest leg higher coincides with a notable organizational and funding shift in its core developer ecosystem. In early 2026, Zcash’s main engineering team exited the Electric Coin Company after a governance dispute with Bootstrap, the nonprofit that had overseen Zcash development, and re-formed as the Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL). ZODL subsequently raised about $25 million in seed funding led by major crypto venture firms, described as the largest funding round in the project’s history, with funds earmarked for hiring, protocol work, and expansion of its mobile wallet infrastructure. According to coverage of the deal, the Zodl wallet (formerly Zashi) has already driven a more than 400% increase in shielded pool adoption and processed over $600 million in ZEC swaps since October, underscoring practical demand for private transfers rather than purely speculative trading.

The move in ZEC also fits into a broader rotation back into privacy and regulatory-hedge narratives. Market commentary and data aggregators have highlighted growing interest in privacy coins like Zcash and Monero amid tighter European regulations and rising concerns about financial surveillance, with privacy names at times outperforming Bitcoin on a relative basis. That dynamic leaves Zcash positioned as a hybrid: its optional privacy model and ability to support both shielded and transparent flows gives it a different regulatory profile than fully private alternatives, even as it competes directly for the same users seeking stronger confidentiality.

Within this context, the latest price breakout in ZEC looks less like an isolated pump and more like the market repricing a funded, technically mature privacy chain as new capital and a refreshed development structure begin to translate into higher shielded usage and deeper liquidity.

Philip Rycroft, a former senior civil servant, recommended that the UK government impose a temporary moratorium on political donations made in crypto assets in an independent review published on Wednesday.

“The government should legislate in the Representation of the People Bill to introduce a moratorium on political donations made in cryptoassets,” Rycroft wrote in the report, which was commissioned by the government in December 2025.

The review said crypto assets could provide a route for foreign money to enter the UK political system because of incomplete regulation, the difficulty of tracing the “ultimate ownership” of some assets, and the possibility of breaking larger donations into smaller transfers. It noted that donations below 500 British pounds ($669) fall outside the normal permissibility test, while formal reporting thresholds for political parties are higher.

The review comes a week after a separate report by the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy called on the government to impose an immediate moratorium on crypto donations to political parties until the Electoral Commission produces statutory guidance ahead of the next general election.

Rycroft leaves room for future crypto donations

Rycroft wrote that the scale of crypto political donations is currently unknown because none have yet reached the reporting threshold that would require disclosure to the Electoral Commission.

Still, the report argued that political crypto donations could be allowed under “tight supervision” by the Electoral Commission and through UK-regulated cryptocurrency exchanges.

Rycroft added that the temporary pause in the political crypto donations should not be seen as a “prelude to an outright and permanent ban,” but rather an “interlude” allowing the regulatory environment to catch up to the reality of crypto.

Related: UK Lords launch stablecoin inquiry as Bank of England moves to finalize rules

The recommendation comes amid wider scrutiny of crypto and foreign-linked money in British politics. Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, received a record $12 million political donation from crypto investor Christopher Harborne in the third quarter of 2025 and another $4 million donation in the fourth quarter of 2025. Reform UK was the first political party to start accepting crypto donations in May 2025.

UK lawmakers reportedly started considering a ban on political cryptocurrency donations in December 2025. They are currently legal in the country, subject to permissible rules under the Electoral Commission guidance.

In January, seven senior UK Labour Party MPs urged Prime Minister Keir Starmer to ban crypto donations to political parties.

Magazine: How crypto laws changed in 2025 — and how they’ll change in 2026