Trakx Weekly Update: Crypto Consolidation

Key Crypto Market Figures

CTIs Weekly Performance

After the previous week’s solid gains, digital assets moved into consolidation mode, with large-cap token prices broadly flat over the past week, as reflected by a modest 0.7% decline in our flagship Top10 Crypto CTI. The AI CTI topped the weekly return table, advancing just over 7%, while last week’s best performer, the Meme CTI, fell to the bottom of the rankings after correcting by 8% over the seven-day period.

Fed’s Powell In The Cross Hairs

In a stunning development over the weekend, Chair Jerome Powell released a video message stating that the Department of Justice had served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas last Friday, threatening a criminal indictment related to his testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last June. While that testimony partly addressed a multi-year project to renovate historic Federal Reserve office buildings, Powell said the threat was unrelated to the renovation itself. Instead, he framed it as a challenge to the Fed’s independence: “whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions—or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.” This marks the most serious clash between the Federal Reserve and the US government since 1951, when central bankers secured an agreement to separate government debt management from monetary policy, formalized in the Fed–Treasury Accord. The return of such overt political pressure being applied to the central bank should be seen as another step toward fiscal dominance—a highly bullish environment for finite-supply assets such as gold and its digital equivalents.

Zcash Turmoil

Despite the notable absence of an altcoin season last year (as we pointed out in our recently published 2026 crypto outlook), there was one sector that outshone the others: privacy coins. Indeed, one of the best-performing tokens in 2025 was Zcash, a privacy-focused token that gained over 800%. Unfortunately, this bullish trend suffered a setback last week after the team at the Electric Coin Company (ECC) – the developer behind Zcash – resigned en masse, citing a governance clash with Bootstrap, a non-profit established to govern ECC. Explaining the decision, ECC CEO Swihart said the entire team left because “the terms of our employment were changed in ways that made it impossible for us to perform our duties effectively and with integrity.” Even though the Zcash protocol was unaffected by the mass personnel exodus, and despite Swihart confirming that the team is setting up a new company committed to Zcash’s ethos of developing “unstoppable private money,” the price of the Zcash token slumped by over 14% when the news broke.

Good News For Saylor

One of the clouds hanging over Strategy – the original digital asset treasury (DAT) – was whether it would be excluded from MSCI stock indices after the index provider announced in November plans to exclude companies with more than 50% of their assets held in digital currencies. This is in line with MSCI’s longstanding rule to exclude investment funds from its standard index products. Last week, Saylor’s company received a reprieve after MSCI said it would not exclude Strategy in the February 2026 review, allowing time for broader consultation on the treatment of all “non-operating” companies. Although a final decision has yet to be made, and despite MSCI stating it would not increase index weightings of DATs following new share issuance, the immediate threat of forced selling by passive equity funds tracking MSCI indices was removed. In response, Strategy’s share price gained almost 6%, taking its undiluted mNAV to 1.08 and implying a slight premium over the value of its Bitcoin holdings.

Institutional Crypto Adoption

Further evidence of rising institutional adoption emerged after Morgan Stanley filed an application with the SEC to launch exchange-traded funds linked to Bitcoin and Solana. This would make it the first major US bank to offer such products directly, coming just months after it first allowed clients access to crypto products offered by third parties, having previously restricted exposure to high-net-worth clients. Separately, JP Morgan announced it will begin issuing its stablecoin, JPM Coin – the first USD-backed deposit token – on the Canton Network, a privacy-focused, interoperable public blockchain. Having initially launched on Base, the Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain built by Coinbase, this move forms part of JP Morgan’s broader plan to issue its stablecoin across multiple public blockchains in support of its goal of providing “regulated, interoperable digital money.”

Sources: Trakx, Coingecko, Alphavantage

Market Trends

• Fed Chair Powell says he’s under criminal investigation, won’t bow to Trump intimidation: CNBC
• Top privacy token Zcash falls 14% after key developer team quits over governance clash: CoinDesk
• Strategy stock surges 6% after MSCI decides against excluding crypto firms: YahooFinance
• Wall Street Heavyweight Morgan Stanley Files for Bitcoin and Solana ETFs: Bitcoin.com
• JPMorgan Is Launching JPM Coin on the Rising Canton Network: Decrypt
• Bitcoin Core devs sound alarm over fund loss risk in wallet migration bug: Cryptopolitan
• Ethereum just solved a critical problem Bitcoin doesn’t want to fix on its own network – but why?: CryptoSlate

Trakx CTIs Performance

Sources: Coingecko and AlphaVantage

*Return of bitcoin is calculated since 01/05/2020, while CTIs performances were calculated since their respective launch date.
**Includes simulated performance.
***The risk signal is determined according to the historical volatility level, the higher the riskier.

Trakx is a global fintech company creating new standards for digital asset investments. Through our trading platform, we offer thematic Crypto Tradable Indices (CTIs) and customised solutions, providing sophisticated investors with a high degree of compliance, custody and liquidity.

TRAKX SAS,  10 rue de Penthièvre, Paris, 75008, FRANCE – French société par actions simplifiée Paris Trade and Companies Register number 850 626 078

Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) Registered with the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) under number E2021-020

Disclaimers: No Investment Advice. Index returns and statistics are for illustration only. Index returns do not reflect any transaction costs or expenses. Past performance does not guarantee future results. The information provided in this newsletter does not constitute investment advice, financial advice, trading advice, or any other sort of advice and you should not treat any of the newsletter content as such. Trakx.io does not recommend that any cryptocurrency should be bought, sold, or held by you. Readers shall conduct their own due diligence and consult their financial advisors before making any investment decisions.