Bitcoin rises above $81,000, while NEAR jumps 23% on Zcash swap traffic

Bitcoin hovered just above $81,000 in Asian morning trading, gaining under 1% over the prior 24 hours. Market participants linked the recent upward pressure to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s decision to clear a path for onchain trading of tokenized U.S. stocks, an outcome that CoinDesk reporting and market commentators say helped trigger a short squeeze.

NEAR was the session’s strongest major token, rising about 23% to slightly over $4. Traders and analysts attributed the move to NEAR Intents, a cross-chain swap service built on the NEAR blockchain that allows wallets to exchange tokens across different chains without pre-moving funds. Several consumer wallets, including ZODL and Vizor, integrated the service to offer ZEC swaps, and daily ZEC volume routed through NEAR Intents climbed roughly sixfold over the past week.

Other tokens saw smaller gains: ZEC rose about 3% to just above $1,500, BNB added roughly 2% to nearly $777, and Ether and HYPE each gained about 2%. XRP, DOGE, SOL and TRX were up 1% or less. Market observers noted that NEAR’s role as a routing layer for heavy ZEC flows corresponded with the spike in demand for its native token.

Equities and macro moves helped set the tone in Asia: MSCI’s Asia Pacific index climbed nearly 1%, led by technology stocks in South Korea and Taiwan, after U.S. officials described trade talks with China as "very successful" ahead of an upcoming summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures were higher, while Brent crude fell about 2% to just above $101 a barrel, easing some inflation concerns and lifting Treasury futures. Jeff Mei, chief operating officer at exchange BTSE, said the SEC’s tokenized-stock clearance and the ensuing short squeeze explained the weekend’s Bitcoin spike and flagged potential volatility ahead of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s late-October meeting.