Bitcoin holds above $81,000 as NEAR rises 23% on ZEC swap traffic

Asian stocks and U.S. equity futures rose after encouraging U.S.-China trade talks. Falling oil prices eased inflation concerns. Bitcoin traded just above $81,000 during Monday Asian morning hours and was up less than 1% over 24 hours. CoinDesk data showed the move added to Bitcoin's gains since the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission cleared a path on Thursday for onchain trading of tokenized U.S. stocks. NEAR was the standout among major tokens, rising roughly 23% to just above $4. The move was linked to NEAR Intents, a swap service built on the NEAR blockchain. The service lets a wallet exchange one token for another across different chains without first moving funds between them. Major consumer wallets, including ZODL and Vizor, have integrated the service to offer ZEC swaps. Daily ZEC volume routed through the service jumped sixfold in the past week. NEAR became the routing layer for one of the most heavily traded tokens on the market, and the article linked the increase in traffic to the rise in NEAR's token. ZEC gained 3% to just above $1,500. BNB rose 2% to nearly $777. Ether and HYPE each gained about 2%. XRP, DOGE, SOL and TRX rose 1% or less.