Fear still hangs over altcoin season, but the sharp edge of panic has softened. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index is now 25, a modest recovery from November’s plunge near 10, yet the mood remains unsettled, and traders continue to move with hesitation rather than conviction.

Bitcoin sits just above $91,000 after falling steadily from yesterday’s $92,000, marking a 2% decrease over 24 hours.

Altcoins move inside that same heavy climate. Most large names sit in the red today, liquidity stays present, but flows lean toward defense, and new money prefers short-dated trades instead of long commitments.

Against that background, Zcash is one of the few popular tokens in positive territory, while Ethereum, Solana and Hyperliquid track the downtrend, which gives a clean snapshot of where capital still experiments and where it pulls back.

Bitcoin And Sentiment After November’s Shock

Bitcoin continues to dictate the tone. Derivatives screens show a reduction in leverage across both long and short positions, while spot flows lean toward sellers who continue to trim exposure after several weeks of steady declines.

Price action carries the look of a market still searching for stability, not one ready for a quick reversal.

Bitcoin Price (Source: CoinMarketCap)

Ethereum, Solana, and Hyperliquid Track The Pullback

Major altcoins follow that direction. Ethereum is trading near $3,090 after falling by roughly 2.5% in 24 hours, with order book activity showing more supply than demand at current levels. Solana sits near $134 after a 5.5% drop, extending the cooling that began once traders reduced exposure to high beta assets.

Hyperliquid is trading around $31, down by about 8%, and activity on its perpetual pairs has slowed compared with the pace seen in early November. These moves together show how broad the retracement remains, even as volatility cools relative to last week.

Zcash Holds A Bounce After Its November Peak

Zcash breaks from the trend. ZEC is trading near $384, up by about 10% in 24 hours, marking one of the few gains across large liquid names. The token had fallen steadily from its November peak near $700, yet recent market data show more active positioning at current levels and enough liquidity across venues to support a modest rebound.

Zcash@Zcash shared a series of updates covering key developments across the ecosystem. Highlights include:

• @ZcashFoundation released its Q3 2025 report, highlighting engineering progress and the launch of the Shielded Aid Initiative to support privacy-preserving digital aid… pic.twitter.com/Nc06Yo759I

— House of ZK (@HouseofZK) December 2, 2025

The move does not form a new upward trend on its own, but it demonstrates the way privacy focused tokens can draw interest during quieter, defensive phases when traders search for assets with a historical pattern of occasional outperformance.

What This Phase Means For Altcoin Season

The current market still lacks the conditions for a broad altcoin season. Sentiment has improved from last week’s extreme lows, yet positioning remains conservative, and flows continue to concentrate in larger, more liquid assets.

Until Bitcoin can stabilize over a longer stretch and macro uncertainty eases, rotation is likely to stay narrow and sporadic. For now, the market sits in a phase where isolated tokens can rise on their own dynamics, but the overall environment still leans toward caution rather than a full risk recovery.

The post Crypto Winter Deepens As Altcoin Season Stalls And Only Zcash Manages A Lift appeared first on Cryptonews.

Yesterday, Bitcoin kicked off another strong uptrend, pulling several top-performing altcoins higher with it. Many are hoping this will be the end of a long downturn triggered shortly after the world’s favourite cryptocurrency set a new all-time high (ATH) of $126,080 on October 6. In the weeks that followed, BTC sank to a seven-month low of $82,000 on November 21.

Yesterday, the broader crypto market climbed 6%, lifting total market capitalization to roughly $3.24 trillion. Today, the rally is cooling off with a 0.7% intraday rise to $3.27 trillion, although crypto bulls hope this is a rest point rather than a retreat.

Additionally, in a bull market, Bitcoin is likely to lose dominance to strong altcoins. So, with that in mind, here’s why XRP, Pepe, and Zcash are the best crypto to buy now.

XRP ($XRP): Driving Innovation in Global Settlement Systems

Ripple’s XRP ($XRP) dominates the cross-border settlement arena thanks to its rapid transaction throughput and low fees. Ripple positions the XRP Ledger as an on-chain alternative to legacy banking rails like SWIFT.

Reports from institutions like the UN Capital Development Fund and the White House have drawn attention to Ripple’s XRPLedger, while a growing roster of fintech partners has helped XRP secure its place as the third-largest non-stablecoin, boasting a market cap exceeding $131 billion.

Ripple’s introduction of RLUSD, a USD-backed stablecoin, signals the company’s broader plan to lead the next era of international payments. Each transfer of RLUSD on the XRPL burns a small amount of XRP, gradually reducing supply and tightening the connection between XRP’s utility and long-term valuation.

XRP finally broke out after the conclusion of a five-year legal battle with the SEC this year, hitting a new high of $3.65 in July. However, its current price of around $2.17 marks a retracement of 40% since then.

With its relative strength index (RSI) now at 54 and price action aligning with its 30-day moving average, XRP appears to be regaining strength. The recent rollout of nine XRP ETFs in the U.S. is expected to introduce a wave of institutional demand throughout the Christmas period.

Further ETF approvals are anticipated, and if Congress manages to pass comprehensive crypto legislation before the year closes, many analysts believe XRP could realistically pursue $10 or more by 2026.

Pepe (PEPE): The Internet’s Most Recognizable Frog Eyes Another Breakout

Pepe ($PEPE) debuted in April 2023 and rapidly climbed the meme coin ranks, drawing on the global popularity of Matt Furie’s well-loved Boy’s Club character of the same name.

The token now commands a market cap above $2 billion and enjoys widespread cultural recognition. Elon Musk even swapped his X profile image for a Pepe meme at one point, igniting speculation about his potential position in the coin. It is known that he holds Bitcoin and Dogecoin.

Currently priced around $0.0000048, PEPE sits nearly 83% below its late-2024 high of $0.00002803 after a slow summer and muted fourth quarter.

With the RSI climbing above 67, buying momentum appears to be building ahead of the weekend.

Currently hovering near its lowest valuation in nearly two years, Pepe’s current value poses a strategic entry point for those who want the high-upside potential meme coin experience on the next bull run.

Expectations for clearer U.S. regulatory guidance could revive investor appetite across crypto. Such an environment would provide PEPE with the momentum needed to revisit its previous all-time high before the end of the year.

Zcash (ZEC): Privacy Pioneer Rockets Over 1,400% in 12 Months

Zcash ($ZEC), introduced in 2016 as a confidentiality-focused fork of Bitcoin, remains one of the most advanced privacy coins on the market.

ZEC employs zk-SNARKs, or state-of-the-art zero-knowledge cryptography that validates transactions without exposing sender, recipient, or transaction details. Users can select transparent or shielded addresses, creating flexibility for both privacy and compliance advocates.

Zcash has surged 377% over the last year. Now trading near $362 with a market cap around $6 billion, ZEC accounts for just over a third of the privacy-coin sector’s roughly $16 billion valuation.

With its RSI near 48 and climbing, buying momentum could build over the weekend, pushing the price higher in a short time. If December proves to be bullish, Zcash could easily run toward $2,500 before year’s end.

Bitcoin Hyper (HYPER): Where Meme Culture Meets Advanced Bitcoin Layer-2 Scaling

Among the emerging projects drawing early attention ahead of 2026 is Bitcoin Hyper ($HYPER), a Bitcoin layer-2 network packaged in a meme-inspired brand. Beyond its playful exterior, HYPER aims to dramatically enhance Bitcoin’s performance with high-speed transactions, ultra-low fees, and full smart-contract support.

Built using the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), the project integrates decentralized governance and a Canonical Bridge that enables frictionless Bitcoin movement across multiple chains.

The presale has already attracted roughly $29 million in funding, and analyst Borch Crypto suggests the token could climb as much as 100× once publicly listed.

A recent Coinsult audit found zero smart-contract vulnerabilities, reinforcing investor trust. The HYPER token underpins network fees, staking, and governance, with early presale participants earning returns up to 40% APY.

With Bitcoin Hyper’s full launch planned for 2026, both Bitcoin veterans and newcomers have a rare opportunity to position themselves early in what may become a major extension of Bitcoin’s real-world utility.

Visit the official presale website or follow Bitcoin Hyper on X and Telegram for more information.

Visit the Official Website Here

The post Best Crypto to Buy Now 4 December – XRP, Pepe, Zcash appeared first on Cryptonews.

Canary Capital CEO Steven McClurg has thrown fuel on the long-running debate over privacy coins, branding Zcash’s latest rally a “pump and dump” which has been rug-pulled while promoting Litecoin as his preferred privacy asset for regulated markets.

Litecoin Better Than Zcash?

In a series of posts on X, McClurg said the Zcash surge that began roughly two months ago “triggered my curiosity.” After revisiting the project for the first time since 2016–2017, he wrote that he initially “bought into the Zcash narrative” but ultimately reached two conclusions.

“Litecoin has broader reach in terms of users, and MWEB an easier tool for selecting private wallets/transactions. It is my choice for privacy in US or UK due to compliance,” he argued. By contrast, “ZEC is a pump and dump getting ready to rug-pull. Be careful out there,” he posted last week via X.

Via X, McClurg followed up by highlighting Zcash’s sharp reversal on Monday. “Zcash [is] down 50% since this post. I hope people saw the post survived the rug pull. There is still further down to go,” he wrote, attributing the move to “a stunt by bad actors.” He did not name specific counterparties, venues or structures, and his language focused on market behavior rather than protocol design.

Despite the harsh assessment of recent trading, McClurg stressed that his criticism is not a rejection of Zcash as a technology. “Btw, I have nothing against ZEC, as it was the first currency with private/public option,” he said. In the same thread he described himself as “longterm bullish on Litecoin, Monero, Dash, and Zcash in that order,” explicitly placing ZEC last in his personal privacy stack but still on the list.

The distinction he draws hinges on how privacy is implemented and how that interacts with compliance. Litecoin’s MimbleWimble Extension Block (MWEB) design adds an optional confidential layer alongside the transparent base chain, allowing users to move coins into a separate privacy domain while leaving total supply auditable. That structure, plus Litecoin’s broader distribution and exchange support, underpins McClurg’s claim that LTC is “my choice for privacy in the US or UK.”

Pressed on Monero’s role, McClurg said he has not researched it “in several years” but that, based on earlier work, he “always felt that it would be the winning currency for people in authoritarian regimes. Pure privacy.” At the same time, he added that Monero is “unfortunately likely not compliant for US citizens (not that it shouldn’t be),” capturing the tension between default privacy and current regulatory expectations.

Zcash, with its dual transparent and shielded address system, historically sat between those two poles. McClurg’s comments suggest that, in his view, the recent ZEC rally and crash reflect structural weaknesses in how the market around the asset is behaving, even if the underlying cryptography remains important.

He closed by warning that he hopes “this stunt by bad actors didn’t damage the importance of privacy chains and privacy features,” underscoring that his target is speculative excess rather than the broader push for on-chain financial privacy.

At press time, ZEC traded at $324.

Zcash price plunged 24%, breaking several support levels and its EMA200, with analysts warning of further downside but noting that long-term charts and the privacy thesis remain intact. Zcash (ZEC) price declined 24% in a one-day pullback at the start…

As the whole crypto market bled, Zcash (ZEC) started December with a massive one-day pullback, leading the losses among top cryptocurrencies. While some market observers suggest that the altcoin is positioned for a major move, others have warned that the price risks another major correction in the coming weeks.

Zcash Loses Key Support Levels Amid Crash

Following the late Sunday market correction, Zcash has lost crucial levels and fallen to one-month lows. Over the past three months, the cryptocurrency has seen a parabolic rally, surging over 1,775% to its all-time high (ATH) of $750 in early November.

Since its ATH rally, the altcoin has been trading within the $440-$720 levels, bouncing between the range’s upper and lower boundaries amid the recent market volatility. However, the end-of-November pullback saw ZEC’s price unsuccessfully retest its key support area, closing the day below this area for the first time in nearly a month.

After losing this zone, Zcash continued to drop below other key support levels, breaking down the $400 barrier and hitting a local low of $328 on Monday morning before bouncing to the $340 area.

Amid this performance, some market observers warned that the altcoin could be in trouble and further bleeding may occur in the coming weeks. Sjuul from AltCryptoGems highlighted that ZEC registers the biggest price drops in the weekly and daily timeframes, with declines of 40.2% and 24%, respectively.

The analyst previously pointed out that the cryptocurrency lost its uptrend after falling below the EMA200, recording “a perfect bearish retest followed by a strong rejection” last week. As a result, Sjuul suggested that if Zcash did not reclaim the key moving average, the cryptocurrency would be positioned for a breakdown to lower support levels.

Similarly, Altcoin Sherpa considers that ZEC could drop another 30%-40% to the $200 area after losing the crucial $440 support. Nonetheless, he added that the price will likely see short-term bounces during its retracement.

ZEC’s Correction: Nothing To Worry About?

Mert Mumtaz, Helius co-founder and CEO, affirmed that a correction after a 700% rally “is normal,” adding that the privacy token “looks great” on higher timeframes. Notably, the cryptocurrency still shows 700% and 485% increases on the three-month and one-year timeframes.

The CEO also highlighted Zcash’s strengths: “privacy is not a narrative, private money is the entire purpose of crypto,” suggesting that the altcoin is positioned to challenge other leading cryptocurrencies like XRP in the future.

Meanwhile, another pseudonym market watcher considers that Zcash is preparing for a big move despite the correction. According to X analyst Make Sense, the cryptocurrency is at a make-or-break level after falling to the $320 mark, its first major support area below the November range.

If ZEC holds the current range, the price could reclaim its recently lost range and bounce to its $500-$600 mid-range. On the contrary, if it loses its current levels, the cryptocurrency could retest the $280 and even $200 area, he affirmed, before a trend reversal.

“This is where market makers decide the next trend: bounce early → mid-range rally or deep sweep → full trend reversal. Either way, volatility is about to explode,” he explained.

As of this writing, Zcash is trading at $338, a 20% decline in the monthly timeframe.

Traders are aligning with key opinion leaders who are calling for quantum-secure assets, elevating Zcash price predictions with exposure to the emerging narrative.

The altcoin is gaining momentum as a hedge against future quantum vulnerabilities, a theme expected to underpin 2026 due to both technological urgency and investor sentiment.

Quantum-resistant tokens have reached a combined market cap of $8.75 billion, with daily trading volume consistently above $1 billion — a sign of strong activity and liquidity.

Speaking at the Devconnect conference in 2025, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned that quantum breakthroughs could threaten blockchain cryptography as soon as 2028.

His push for quantum-resistant protocols has accelerated research and shifted capital toward future-proof projects, with Zcash emerging as the current market leader.

Vitalik said quantum computers could crack Bitcoin’s keys by 2028.

Some called it FUD but the threat is real.

These projects are already building solutions :

→ $ZEC ( @Zcash )
→ $STRK ( @Starknet )
→ $CKB ( @NervosNetwork )
→ $QRL ( @QRLedger )
→ $ABEL ( @PQabelian )… pic.twitter.com/iYgT5SOXaj

— Our Crypto Talk (@ourcryptotalk) November 24, 2025

Zcash has found new relevance in this institution-led market cycle: Institutional use-cases require high-security rails that offer privacy, yet are compliant with selective disclosure.

This duality of leading narratives between privacy coins and quantum resistance could position ZEC for significant inflows.

Zcash Price Prediction: Massive Run Incoming?

While ZEC has seen a significant unwind over November, it could amount to a brief consolidation in a wider uptrend with the formation of a bullish pennant pattern.

The pattern currently faces a key test as its lower boundary is retested alongside supportive momentum indicators.

The RSI teeters on a cross above the 50 neutral line with several retests while the MACD closes in on a golden cross. Both show brewing buy pressure and the potential for a fresh uptrend.

The key threshold for a confirmed breakout is all-time highs around $760. Flipping this level to support would confirm the push into new price discovery.

Fully realised, the pennant pattern eyes a measured 265% move to $1,750.

However, as the bull market matures and the privacy coin and quantum resistance narrative grow in relevance, a 950% push to the $5,000 milestone could in focus.

SUBBD: Another Narrative To Watch

As regulation brings narratives based in real-world utility like privacy coins and quantum resistance to the forefront, platforms like SUBBD ($SUBBD) are gaining traction.

Positioned as an AI-powered content platform, SUBBD is redefining the $85 billion subscriber economy by giving creators true ownership and fans genuine access.

Never miss a sale again.

As a top creator, your audience is global. It's just not possible to cater to everyone – you can't be online 24/7

That's where your personal AI Assistant comes in, to handle requests and secure payments. Sleep peacefully knowing you're making money… pic.twitter.com/ju9VjLBmea

— SUBBD (@SUBBDofficial) March 26, 2025

By cutting out the middlemen, $SUBDD puts control back in the hands of those who create real value.

Creators can monetize directly, while fans gain access to exclusive content, early releases, and meaningful interactions through token-gated perks.

The concept is already gaining traction. $SUBBD has surpassed $1.3 million in presale, as investors back the shift toward a decentralized creator economy.

With SUBBD, both sides of the community win — creators earn more, and fans get closer while embracing the decentralization use cases crypto was built for.

Visit the Official SUBBD Website Here

The post Zcash Price Prediction: Quantum-Safe Coins Explode – Is This the Start of a Massive Run for ZEC? appeared first on Cryptonews.

Zcash price appears to be weakening despite the recent Grayscale ZEC ETF filing and rising corporate treasury interest on the privacy coin. Zcash was trading around $470 at press time, down 7.8% in the last 24 hours. The drop adds…