Cardano's privacy-focused token, Midnight (NIGHT), experienced a dramatic 45% crash in its 24-hour trading volume, falling to approximately $110.89 million. This sharp decline follows an explosive start to the week where NIGHT's volume reportedly surpassed $9 billion, even eclipsing major assets like XRP. Analysts suggest the drop is not alarming, attributing it to typical holiday-season lulls where overall crypto market activity diminishes and trading becomes more defensive.
Despite the volume contraction, NIGHT's price performance remains robust. The token is up 6.35% in the last 24 hours, trading around $0.084, though it is down 15% over the past week. NIGHT recently cemented its position within the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, which now stands at over $1.4 billion. It has been listed by CoinGecko as a top-trending cryptocurrency, even ranking above Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).
The token's rapid ascent is part of a broader narrative around privacy coins. While the general market benchmark was down 1.3%, NIGHT and other privacy-focused assets like Zcash (ZEC) and Monero (XMR) posted significant gains, with ZEC surging 13.8%. This has sparked discussions of a potential 'privacy coin rally' in the final months of 2025.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has been a vocal proponent of Midnight, calling it a "Manhattan project" for crypto. He has outlined an ambitious vision for its integration, stating that adding Midnight to ecosystems like XRP DeFi and Bitcoin could revolutionize private finance and supercharge Cardano's own DeFi metrics. The Midnight Network, an EVM-compatible, privacy-centric blockchain launched on mainnet this December, aims to bridge Cardano's UTXO design with Ethereum's ecosystem to meet growing demand for private DeFi.
