The revenge of the old cryptos and the news of altcoins

The revenge of the old cryptos. While the market holds its breath on Bitcoin, a handful of altcoins older than the DeFi fad are putting on a show.

Zcash explodes again and again, BNB climbs quietly and Litecoin takes the opposite path. Solana, for its part, discreetly changed its technical dimension that very day.

Zcash shatters its own record, irony included

ZEC is trading around $1,188 this Wednesday, after peaking at $1,249 the day before. Enough to make the $1,000 threshold crossed just a few days ago almost anecdotal.

The privacy token (zk-SNARKs, these zero-knowledge proofs which mask the sender, recipient and amount) continues its momentum since the listing of the Grayscale ZCSH ETF on August 25 on the NYSE Arca.

A cryptocurrency designed to escape surveillance which is becoming the most watched asset on the market. Irony cannot be commented on, it can be observed.

Flows to ZCSH have not stopped since its launch, and with each new level reached, the institutional appetite for on-chain confidentiality seems to be confirmed rather than falling.

Solana switches to Transaction v1, without noise or forced migration

While Zcash takes center stage, Solana activates its Transaction v1 update on the mainnet this Wednesday. The maximum transaction size increases from 1,232 to 4,096 bytes, or 3.3 times more space to accommodate zero-knowledge proofs, complex multisignatures or confidential transfers/

Old formats continue to work in parallel: no one needs to migrate anything in a hurry.

SOL is moving around $105, up slightly over 24 hours. The market did not react to the announcement. A technical upgrade that happens without drama or painful forks, it's barely noticeable.

BNB climbs, Litecoin falls: two veterans, two trajectories

Alongside these two stories, XRP is back at $1.43 after a double-digit rebound, and HYPE is trading around $84, less than 6% from its record high of $89.60 set on September 6. But it is two older cryptos which stand out today.

BNB climbs 0.7% over 24 hours and more than 9% over the week, driven by the rise of tokenized stocks: BNB Chain holds 32.7% market share on a capitalization of $3.1 billion, alongside Robinhood Chain and Solana. Litecoin fell 0.7% over 24 hours, with no identifiable catalyst. Same generation, same age, two curves which diverge sharply.

An old chip can fly away while another, just as veteran, stalls for no apparent reason. The rotation towards altcoins no longer follows a single cycle logic: it plays out narrative by narrative, token by token.

Solana already has a meeting in October with Alpenglow, the overhaul of its consensus supposed to reduce the finality of transactions to 150 milliseconds, compared to 12.8 seconds today.