Top Stories of The Week
Ripple rejects IPO plans despite SEC case victory: Here’s why
Ripple, the US blockchain company behind the XRP cryptocurrency, will not pursue an initial public offering following the conclusion of its years-long legal battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Ripple president Monica Long said the company has no plans or timeline for an IPO, according to a Bloomberg report on Wednesday.
“We’re in a fortunate position where we’ve been able to be very well capitalized and fund all of our organic growth, inorganic growth, strategic partnerships, anything we want to do,“ Long said.
Ripple’s decision to forgo an IPO ends years of speculation, after multiple executives had hinted at one. The company was hit with a $1.3 billion SEC lawsuit in late 2020.
Bitcoin bull run hasn’t started yet: Jan3’s Samson Mow
Samson Mow, the CEO and founder of Bitcoin technology infrastructure company Jan3, argues the Bitcoin bull run is yet to begin, as Bitcoin fell to just under $100,000 earlier this week.
“The Bitcoin bull run hasn’t started yet. We’re just marginally outperforming inflation at this price range,” he said on Wednesday.
Bitcoin and the broader cryptocurrency market continued to slump this week, with analysts attributing the decline to trade tensions between the US and China, as well as other macroeconomic factors. Bitcoin selling intensified on Tuesday, and CoinGecko data shows the price dipped to $99,607 on Wednesday.
However, Mow, in a series of bullish X posts, predicted the market still has plenty of upside on the horizon as Bitcoin continues to outperform the US inflation rate of 3%.
FBI can’t be blamed for wiping hard drive with $345M BTC, say judges
A man convicted of identity theft, who claims his hard drive with over 3,400 Bitcoin was seized and wiped by the FBI, has lost his lawsuit against the government in a US appeals court.
A three-judge panel at the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals found on Tuesday that Michael Prime can’t sue the government over the loss of a key to access around 3,443 Bitcoin, now worth $345 million, as he previously claimed he didn’t own that amount of crypto.
Prime asked a court after he was released from prison in July 2022 for a hard drive containing the Bitcoin to be returned, but the FBI had wiped it as part of its standard procedures, which Prime claimed was illegal; the judges said.
“For years, Prime denied that he had much bitcoin at all. And bitcoin was not on the list when he sought to recover missing assets after his release from prison,” the judges wrote. “Only later did Prime claim to be a bitcoin tycoon.”
Truth behind comeback of privacy-focused protocol Zcash in 2025
Privacy is in vogue, and there has been an outsized winner in the market. The Zcash protocol has been the talk of the crypto community on X, and the price of its native token, Zcash, has reflected that narrative.
Zcash’s token has been trading above $500 for the first time since 2018, driven by an intriguing trend of support from some of the industry’s most popular commentators.
The likes of Arthur Hayes, Naval Ravikant, Mert Mumtaz, Ansem, Threadguy and other notable accounts have been advocating for the privacy-first benefits of Zcash for months. Lofty price predictions interlaced with privacy-praising takes have played their part in ZEC’s outsized returns in comparison to the wider altcoin landscape.
Polymarket rife with ‘artificial trading,’ Columbia University researchers find
The rapid growth of the prediction market Polymarket may not be entirely organic but instead inflated by artificial trading activity, according to research published by Columbia University.
In an 80-page paper titled “Network-Based Detection of Wash-Trading,” which has not yet undergone peer review, Columbia researchers identified extensive wash-trading activity on Polymarket beginning in July 2024. That month, they found that wash trades accounted for nearly 60% of the platform’s total trading volume.
“This activity persisted through late April 2025 before subsiding substantially, and once again increased to about 20 percent of volume in early October 2025,” they wrote.
The researchers determined that 25% of Polymarket’s total trading volume over the past three years was attributable to artificial trading.
Winners and Losers
At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $102,289, Ether (ETH) at $3,385 and XRP at $2.30. The total market cap is at $3.44 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.
Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Internet Computer (ICP) at 163.79%, ZKsync (ZK) at 144.42% and Filecoin (FIL) at 135.77%.
The top three altcoin losers of the week are Bittensor (TAO) at 20.44%, Solana (SOL) at 13.15% and Aerodrome Finance (AERO) at 12.52%. For more…
cointelegraph.com