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Good Morning,
Privacy tech is having a quiet resurgence. Zcash’s move past $1,000 shows that once a regulated ETF wrapper exists, capital will flow into corners of crypto that spent years sidelined by compliance concerns, not just the usual bitcoin and ether trade.
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In Today’s Email:
**What Matters:Zcash’s ETF Fueled Breakout Above $1,000 👀Product of the Week:Coinbase Pushes for Equity Perpetuals Approval 🔎Charts:**BTC ETFs Post Largest Inflow, Wall Street Firms Disclose HYPE Stakes 📊
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WHAT MATTERS
**State of play: **Zcash’s ZEC token topped $1,000 for the first time since its 2016 listing, driven by inflows into Grayscale’s new ETF and a surge in mining activity.
ZEC hit $1,023 on Friday, up about 94% for the month, pushing its market cap toward $17B after trading near $200 in March.
Grayscale’s ZCSH ETF has drawn roughly $34.4M in net inflows since its August 25 debut, with its best day pulling in $12.6M.
Zcash’s network computing power jumped from around 25 GSol/s in late August to briefly top 30 GSol/s as miners piled in.
The added mining competition squeezed profitability, with a top-tier Antminer Z15 Pro now generating about 3% less revenue per MWh than in late August.
Why it matters: A regulated US ETF wrapper is now visibly moving price for a privacy coin, showing institutional demand can flow into assets outside bitcoin and ether once a compliant on ramp exists.
**Our take: **The rally is being driven by two distinct forces at once, ETF inflows pulling in new holders and miners chasing rising rewards, which makes the move look more durable than a typical speculative spike but also more crowded.
For builders and investors: Watch miner profitability closely. Falling revenue per MWh even as price rises signals hashrate is growing faster than rewards, a dynamic that can pressure smaller miners out and eventually concentrate network security.
PRODUCT OF THE WEEK
Coinbase filed a notice registration with the SEC this week seeking approval to list equity perpetual contracts for US investors.
Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad said equity perps have proven international demand and called it a potential regulated path for US investors.
Coinbase will also need CFTC sign-off; it already runs non-US equity perpetuals launched in March on stocks like Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Amazon.
The CFTC greenlit bitcoin perpetual futures for Coinbase and KalshiEX in May, then opened comment on crude oil perpetuals and 24/7 trading in June.
Hyperliquid has drawn regulatory attention after President Trump said the CFTC was working to bring it into the US in a compliant fashion.
Hyperliquid Labs is reportedly in talks with Kraken parent Payward about a US market entry via a perpetual futures deal.
**Other cool products: **
Ethena𝕏launchesPay app on Avalanche.$SOFID stablecoin𝕏launchesSeptember 4.Binance𝕏launchesStock Options for US equities.Polymarket𝕏launchesPerps on Polygon, up to 20x.3Jane𝕏launchesLevered Callable Capital, +20% APY.Zest Protocol𝕏introducesLevered Bitcoin Staking on Stacks.
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CHARTS OF THE WEEK
**State of play: **US spot bitcoin ETFs saw $730.9M in net inflows Thursday, their largest single day since January 14, as dovish Fed comments lifted crypto markets.
BlackRock’s IBIT drove roughly $454M of the inflows, with analysts pointing to the concentration as a sign of institutional allocation rather than short term trading.
Fed Governor Christopher Waller’s comments on holding rates steady if inflation keeps cooling acted as the main catalyst, following a $3.5B inflow month in August.
Crypto-linked stocks rallied alongside the move, with Strategy up 17.6%, Coinbase up 10%, and Circle up 16.5% on Thursday.
Bitcoin traded around $80,950, with analysts flagging upcoming jobs and CPI data as the key tests for whether $81,000 holds as a floor.
Bitcoin’s 90-day correlation with gold rose to a six-year high above 50% while its correlation with the S&P 500 fell near zero.
**Our Take: **The IBIT concentration matters more than the headline number. Real allocation flow from institutions is harder to reverse than tactical trading, but Waller’s dovish read is conditional on inflation cooling, so a hot jobs or CPI print could just as quickly stall this momentum.
State of play: UBS, Bank of Montreal, and Jane Street are among 30 firms that disclosed a combined $74.9M in US Hyperliquid ETF holdings, per Bloomberg’s review of Q2 13F filings.
Brazil’s Wealth High Governance Asset Management led with nearly $24M in 21Shares’ HYPE fund, followed by OLP Capital Management at $10.5M.
UBS, Bank of Montreal, and Jane Street held $7.5M, $6.7M, and $4.4M respectively, rounding out the top five holders.
The top five reporting firms accounted for $53M, or 70.8%, of the total disclosed exposure across the three Hyperliquid ETFs.
Q2 filings only capture holdings through June 30 and exclude firms under the $100M 13F reporting threshold, so the true investor base is likely larger.
The three funds have drawn $356.58M in net inflows since launch and held $480.86M in net assets as of Friday.
Our take: These 13F disclosures are a lagging snapshot, not a live read, but the mix of banks, a market maker, and hedge funds appearing this early suggests institutional Hyperliquid exposure is broader than the ETF flow numbers alone would suggest.
QUICK BITES
STONKsurges250% to $140M market cap.Prediction marketsinch closerto the Supreme Court.Southeast Asia’s crypto fundingreboundsto $680M.FinCENties$13B in crypto scams to non-US operations.Liquid Networkpausesafter purported hackers withdraw $320M in BTC.Spot bitcoin ETFspull in$987M last week as institutional demand recovers.UBS, Jane Street and firmswith combined$75M in Hyperliquid ETF holdings.
NOTEWORTHY READS & MEME
David Hoffman’s𝕏readon Why I Sold My ETH.Emperor Osmo’s𝕏readon Onchain Investigation Tools Worth Using.Nic Carter’s𝕏readon A Second and Final Eulogy for Bitcoin Maximalism.
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