Gate Research Institute: Vitalik Releases Ethereum Privacy Framework Kohaku | Large Investors and Institutions Increase Holdings in Bitcoin

Crypto Market Overview

• BTC (+0.15% | Current Price 92,410 USDT): After initially finding support around 91,800 USD on November 18, BTC experienced a brief rebound in the early hours of the 19th, reaching a high of about 94,000 USD, but subsequently fell back to oscillate around 92,500 USD. The short-term moving average structure has slightly improved, with MA5 and MA10 returning above MA30, but the overall formation of a clear upward trend still needs to be observed. MACD showed slight enhancement during the rebound in the early hours, with the red bars momentarily expanding, but momentum then contracted, indicating limited capital inflow strength. If BTC can stabilize above 92,800 USD subsequently, it will help continue the short-term recovery; conversely, if it falls below the 91,800 USD support, the pressure for a pullback may increase again.
• ETH (+0.29% | Current price 3,109 USDT): After a stop at around 3,050 USD, ETH rebounded to around 3,160 USD in the early hours of the 19th, following the overall market. Short-term sentiment has slightly improved. In terms of moving averages, MA5 and MA10 remain above MA30, presenting a relatively stable short-term structure, but it still needs to be observed whether it can continue to maintain above it to confirm whether the recovery momentum is sustained. The MACD red bars have increased, but then tend to flatten, indicating that although there has been some short-term buying interest, the strength is limited. If ETH can hold above 3,120 USD, the short-term fluctuations will be relatively stable; if it falls below 3,050 USD, attention should be paid to the risk of the price testing the lower support area again.
• Altcoins: Market sentiment remains cautious, with a fear index of 15, staying in the extreme fear range, reflecting a continued decline in investor risk appetite. Despite the overall weak sentiment, mainstream altcoins have seen a mild rebound in the past 24 hours, with SOL leading the way up about 7.3%, while DOGE, XRP, ADA, and others recorded price increases ranging from 2% to 6%, indicating a temporary replenishment of funds under extreme sentiment.
• Macro: On November 18, the S&P 500 index fell by 0.83% to 6,617.32 points; the Dow Jones index dropped by 1.07% to 46,091.74 points; the Nasdaq index declined by 1.21% to 22,432.85 points. As of November 19, 10:15 AM ( UTC+8, the spot gold price is temporarily reported at 4,059 USD per ounce, with a 24H decline of 0.19%.

Hot Tokens on Juejin

XAN Anoma (+50.92%, circulating market value 117 million USD)

According to Gate market data, the current price of the XAN token is $0.04677, with an increase of approximately 50.92% in the last 24 hours. Anoma is a distributed operating system for next-generation decentralized applications, designed to bring programmable privacy, native intent, and cross-chain interoperability to the multi-chain ecosystem. Its core component, ARM, acts as a next-generation virtual machine, providing privacy computing, intent expression, and complex interaction abstraction for any chain, liberating developers from complex underlying logic and making dApp building more flexible and modular.

Recently, Anoma has officially launched on Ethereum, introducing ARM and initiating the deployment of protocol adapters, attracting significant attention from the market. The release of ARM is seen as an important milestone for privacy and intent-driven architecture in the Ethereum ecosystem, demonstrating the feasibility of its DOS model on existing mainstream chains. The network deployment, clarification of the technical roadmap, and the official intensive release of technical progress have accelerated the market's demand and expectations for XAN tokens.

GRASS Grass (+23.03%, circulating market cap 149 million USD)

According to Gate market data, the current price of the GRASS token is $0.3386, with a 23.03% increase over the past 24 hours. Grass is a decentralized data collection and computing network aimed at transforming the idle bandwidth, computing power, and data contributions of globally connected devices into shareable resources, providing infrastructure support for open AI model training, research dataset construction, and distributed computing tasks. Through the Grass node network, users can contribute data to open science and AI research and receive token incentives within the ecosystem, forming a “data → model → value” cycle.

Recently, Grass announced that it will hold its first Token Holder & Network Participant Call on November 24, where it will publicly share business progress, revenue scale, data growth, AI collaboration results, and the new role of tokens in the ecosystem, triggering a pre-positioning sentiment in the market. In addition, the important milestone achieved by Grass in collaboration with Inference.net and LAION—processing over 100 million scientific papers and constructing a structured open research dataset—further strengthens its narrative position in the AI data layer.

FF Falcon Finance (+17.69%, circulating market cap 347 million USD)

According to Gate market data, the FF token is currently priced at 0.14844 USD, having increased by approximately 17.69% in the last 24 hours. Falcon Finance is a decentralized stablecoin and yield protocol built on Ethereum, with its core product USDf being an over-collateralized stablecoin, positioned as a transparent, auditable, and scalable decentralized dollar asset. The protocol focuses on stablecoin minting, yield management, and cross-chain collateral expansion, attempting to rebuild a more trustworthy value anchoring system in the stablecoin sector through public on-chain data, real-time risk monitoring, and an open and transparent architecture.

Recently, the rise of FF has been mainly driven by multiple ecological events, with the circulation of its stablecoin USDf surpassing 2 billion dollars, growing over 300% since July, indicating a significant expansion in ecological usage; at the same time, the Perryverse NFT series has been fully unveiled, attracting community attention and increasing user engagement. Falcon also announced its participation in events related to Blockchain Week, enhancing its exposure in the open finance and stablecoin sectors.

Alpha Interpretation

Bitcoin whales and institutions are increasing their holdings, with the number of wallets holding over 1,000 BTC reaching a four-month high.

In the context of a continuous market pullback, there are significant long-term layout signals appearing on both the on-chain and institutional sides. The latest Glassnode data shows that Bitcoin whales (holding ≥1,000 BTC) have been accumulating against the trend during the downward cycle, with the number of wallets holding more than 1,000 BTC recently jumping 2.2% to 1,384, reaching a four-month high. This change indicates that leading capital is viewing the current range as a value trough and is accelerating the accumulation on dips; in contrast, small holders are accelerating their sell-offs during the price weakening phase, presenting a typical structure distribution of “retail clearing, whale accumulation.”

At the same time, the long-term allocation efforts of institutions and enterprises are being strengthened in tandem. Currently, various corporate entities have controlled approximately 14% of the total Bitcoin supply, indicating that institutional funds have not retreated due to short-term fluctuations, but instead continue to expand their exposure to digital assets. The stable growth of corporate holdings not only reinforces the long-term locking effect of Bitcoin but also signifies that deep-pocket investors are seizing cyclical lows to position themselves in advance. Overall, the dual increase in holdings by large players and institutions is driving funds from short-term speculators to long-term holders, laying a structural foundation for subsequent market stabilization and even trend reversals.

Vitalik released the Ethereum privacy framework Kohaku, promoting privacy as a first-class property on the chain.

Vitalik Buterin officially launched a privacy protection framework called Kohaku at Devcon. This open-source tool aims to enhance the privacy capabilities of the Ethereum ecosystem and provide developers with modular components that can be freely combined to build secure privacy wallets without relying on centralized third parties. Kohaku has integrated well-known privacy protocols such as Railgun and Privacy Pools, allowing users to hide fund flows while meeting regulatory requirements and providing verifiable “proof of innocence.” This tool not only strengthens the confidentiality of on-chain interactions but also enhances user security resilience in asset transfers and identity association.

At the same time, the Ethereum Foundation announced the establishment of a dedicated privacy team consisting of 47 researchers, engineers, and cryptographers, aiming to elevate privacy capabilities to a “first-class attribute” of Ethereum. Vitalik emphasized that privacy is equivalent to freedom, and Ethereum is on a continuous iterative path of privacy upgrades. In the future, it will provide practical, auditable, and compliant privacy protections for the real world through more mature privacy proofs, transaction obfuscation, and user protection mechanisms. This indicates that Ethereum is driving the next stage of privacy technology competition from the infrastructure level, strengthening its strategic position in on-chain security and compliant privacy.

Zama Fully Homomorphic Encryption Testnet v2 is online, the mainnet countdown has begun.

Zama founder Rand announced that the full homomorphic encryption (FHE) project Zama's testnet v2 has officially launched. As a candidate version for the mainnet, this version has all the core functions necessary for the future mainnet, and developers can now build and deploy applications in advance on the testnet. The team is currently conducting multiple rounds of stress tests on this version to verify the system's stability and throughput under high load; after testing is completed, a mainnet testing version aimed at a broader developer audience will be released. The official revealed that the initial Zama mainnet will be deployed based on Ethereum, prioritizing the improvement of core infrastructure to stabilize the ecosystem, and will gradually expand cross-chain compatibility thereafter.

According to the roadmap previously published in Zama's lightpaper, the testnet has been launched as scheduled, and the mainnet along with the TGE will be launched in the fourth quarter of 2025, with expansion to other EVM compatible chains in the first half of 2026, and deployment to Solana in the second half of 2026. The overall plan shows that Zama aims to ensure that encryption computing performance, developer toolchain, and ecological compatibility are fully mature through a phased cross-chain strategy before expanding multi-chain support, allowing its FHE technology to have a broader range of application scenarios, including privacy smart contracts, on-chain confidential computing, and high-sensitivity data applications. <br> Reference:

• Gate, https://www.gate.com/trade/BTC_USDT
• Farside Investors, https://farside.co.uk/btc/
• Gate, https://www.gate.com/trade/ETH_USDT
• Farside Investors, https://farside.co.uk/eth/
• Gate, https://www.gate.com/crypto-market-data
• Investing, https://investing.com/indices/usa-indices
• Investing, https://investing.com/currencies/xau-usd
• Glassnode, https://studio.glassnode.com/charts/entities.Min1KCount?a=BTC&chartStyle=column&mScl=lin&pScl=lin&s=1715906842&u=1763337600&zoom=
• The Block, https://www.theblock.co/post/379149/vitalik-buterin-unveils-kohaku-privacy-focused-framework-ethereum
• X, https://x.com/randhindi/status/1990446778068386252

<br> Gate Research Institute is a comprehensive blockchain and encryption research platform that provides readers with in-depth content, including technical analysis, hot insights, market reviews, industry research, trend forecasts, and macroeconomic policy analysis.

Disclaimer Investing in the crypto market involves high risks, and users are advised to conduct independent research and fully understand the nature of the assets and products they are purchasing before making any investment decisions. Gate is not responsible for any losses or damages resulting from such investment decisions.