Крипторынок на грани: Безмолвие биткоина на фоне событий и волнения вокруг приватных монет Headline: Crypto Market on Edge: Bitcoins Silence Amidst Events and Turmoil Around Privacy Coins

The Federal Reserve has lowered interest rates for the second consecutive time, the U.S. has launched its first SOL-ETF, a new proposal to limit transaction sizes has divided the Bitcoin community, and Zcash has led the rally among privacy coins, along with other news from the past week.

The last seven days were not particularly favorable for cryptocurrencies, despite a number of positive developments.

On Monday, Bitcoin started with a rise to $116,000, but this optimism was short-lived. Until Wednesday, the asset fluctuated between $115,000 and $113,000 while awaiting the Federal Reserve’s meeting.

On October 29, the regulator reduced the key interest rate by 25 basis points for the second time in a row, bringing it to 3.75-4%. According to the Fed’s statement, existing metrics indicate moderate growth in economic activity alongside a still noticeable rise in inflation.

The Federal Reserve also announced the cessation of quantitative tightening starting December 1. Chairman Jerome Powell noted that the U.S. economy is currently being significantly affected by the government shutdown, which has also delayed the publication of several key indicators.

The decision to cut the rate aligned with market expectations, and thus, it seemingly failed to provide a positive impact on the leading cryptocurrency.

Almost immediately after the Fed’s meeting, Bitcoin fell below the $110,000 mark. By Thursday, the correction hit a low of around $106,000.

Subsequently, Bitcoin recovered to $110,000 following a «remarkable» meeting between the Presidents of the U.S. and China—Donald Trump and Xi Jinping—where both parties agreed to ease tariffs.

As of the time of writing, digital gold is trading around $110,700, having decreased by 5% over the week, with a market capitalization of $2.2 trillion.

Ethereum also struggled to stay above $4,000. Over the week, the coin plummeted from $4,200 to $3,800, a drop of 9.5%.

Other assets in the top ten by market capitalization also slipped into the «red zone», with SOL suffering the most (-6.1% for the week), followed by DOGE (-6.3%) and ADA (-7.8%).

The overall valuation of the cryptocurrency market has fallen to $3.8 trillion, with Bitcoin dominance at 58% and Ethereum at 12.3%.

The Cryptocurrency Fear and Greed Index is currently at 37 points, indicating «fear» in the market.

On Tuesday, October 28, the first spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) based on Solana debuted on the NYSE—BSOL from Bitwise, which features staking capabilities. The company locks 100% of assets in the protocol.

The following day, Grayscale launched the ETF under the ticker GSOL, converting it from a trust. 77% of the coins are directed towards staking.

The cumulative net inflow for this unfinished trading week reached $199.2 million, and the assets under management (AUM) climbed to $500 million.

The bulk of the inflows and AUM was focused on BSOL—$197 million and $400 million, respectively. The average daily trading volume stands at approximately $60 million.

According to Bloomberg exchange analyst Eric Balchunas, Bitwise’s ETF has shown the best starting performance among all products launched this year.

However, the price of SOL did not react positively to the success of the funds. At the time of writing, the asset trades around $185.

During the week, ETFs based on LTC and HBAR were also launched, but attracted significantly less interest. Over the week, the Hedera tool saw a net inflow of $44 million, while the Litecoin product attracted a mere $719,000.

Bitcoin ETFs experienced a «red week» with outflows totaling $607 million. Ethereum funds saw a net inflow of $114 million.

A new proposal, BIP-444, has caused a rift within the Bitcoin community, suggesting a temporary restriction on adding arbitrary data to the blockchain to reduce the risk of hosting illegal content.

«If a blockchain contains data that is prohibited for storage or distribution, node operators are forced to choose between breaking the law (or their moral principles) or disconnecting from the network. This unacceptable dilemma undermines validation incentives, leads to inevitable centralization, and poses an existential threat to Bitcoin’s security model,» the documentation states.

The proposal aims to limit the OP_RETURN function, as some believe it clutters the blockchain of the first cryptocurrency. Previously, the Bitcoin Core v30 upgrade increased the data transfer limit in outputs from 80 to 100,000 bytes.

In BIP-444, a developer pseudonymously known as dathonohm suggested limiting OP_RETURN outputs to 83 bytes and most other scriptPubKeys to 34 bytes.

This will block the addition of large scripts and data, including «inscriptions» on the Ordinals protocol, and limit the size of embedded Merkle trees in Taproot outputs while prohibiting OP_IF within Tapscripts.

Implementing this proposal would lead to a soft fork, rendering previously valid transactions invalid but only for a year. During this time, an evaluation of the situation and the implementation of alternative methods for storing arbitrary data on the blockchain is planned.

«This isn’t a perfect proposal, but it’s good enough and simple enough to buy time for the development of a long-term solution,» stated lead Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dash Jr.

However, critics of BIP-444 argue that data size restrictions contradict Bitcoin’s fundamental principle and amount to censorship, and carrying out a soft fork could have «legal or moral repercussions».

In the past week, the segment for anonymous tokens surged ahead in growth rates. Its total capitalization has risen to $24 billion, according to CoinGecko.

The main driver of this trend has been Zcash (ZEC). Over the last seven days, the asset’s price increased by 16%, and by 163% over the month.

As of the time of writing, the coin trades at $380.

Zcash’s market capitalization equaled that of Monero, and at one point even surpassed its rival.

On October 28, the project celebrated its ninth birthday, reporting that since September, the volume of shielded transactions in this anonymous cryptocurrency reached a record 4.9 million ZEC.

Among other successful privacy coins is DASH, which has increased by 90% over the week to $91.

During the Blockchain Life 2025 conference in Dubai, Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced the launch of Cocoon—a decentralized network for private AI query execution on the TON blockchain.

With this solution, app developers will be able to pay for computational resources to execute queries using Toncoin tokens, while GPU owners will earn rewards for providing power.

«All data is encrypted, so participants cannot see what queries are being processed. This can be described as ‘private AI on the TON blockchain,'» the project’s description states.

The Telegram messenger will be the first client of the network and will invest in its promotion globally. The launch of Cocoon is planned for November.

Durov noted that the platform would allow over one billion people to use AI functions confidentially, transparently, and efficiently.

Ahead of the 17th anniversary of Bitcoin’s white paper publication, we have examined how and why free money became digital gold.

Also, check out our monthly digest: the October downturn, awkward questions about CFA, and new developments in AI.