Major crypto investors and institutions are quietly loading up on privacy and artificial intelligence tokens, signaling a long-term bet that these sectors could become the next pillars of blockchain adoption. According to recent data, top wallets affiliated with Grayscale, venture capital firms, and other whales have accumulated significant positions in coins like Zcash (ZEC), Horizen (ZEN), Bittensor (TAO), Render (RENDER), and NEAR Protocol (NEAR).
Whale accumulations revealed
Grayscale’s Zcash Trust now holds over 390,111 ZEC, representing more than 2.4% of the circulating supply, while Cypherpunk Technologies owns 1.78% and Multicoin Capital has disclosed a “significant position.” ZEC climbed 10.97% in a week to trade at $565.07, buoyed by the institutional interest. For Zen, Grayscale’s trust holds 961,450 tokens—5.3% of all ZEN in circulation—with parent company DCG an early investor since the 2019 seed round. In the AI camp, Grayscale’s portfolio is dominated by NEAR (32.56%), followed by TAO (26.49%), RENDER (22.18%), and Filecoin (18.77%). A single anonymous whale has held 17.01% of RENDER’s supply since 2023, while a16z and Tiger Global combined control 14.38% of NEAR’s total supply, accumulated gradually since 2019.
Privacy as the next ‘killer app’
Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan echoed this trend in a blog post quoted by CoinDesk, declaring that privacy could become crypto’s next “killer app.” He pointed to over $1 billion in funding flowing into privacy-first enterprise networks such as Circle’s Arc, Canton (CC), and Tempo. These projects aim to marry transaction confidentiality with built-in regulatory compliance—something public chains like Ethereum or Solana cannot easily offer. “Institutions are demanding speed, low cost, security, and privacy in a single compliant package,” Hougan wrote, noting that large financial players are unwilling to expose sensitive data on a public ledger. With KYC and AML requirements tightening, networks that offer “compliant privacy” are emerging as the preferred infrastructure for tokenized settlements, cross-border payments, and private credit markets.
Caveats and challenges
Despite the optimism, hurdles remain. Privacy coins like Monero still face regulatory hostility due to their full-anonymity features that conflict with anti-money-laundering rules. Some smaller privacy projects, such as KnoxNet, suffer from thin liquidity. On the AI side, analysts warn of a possible bubble reminiscent of the dot-com era, arguing that much of the current investment is driven by speculative hype rather than actual infrastructure build-out. A comparison of the Nasdaq’s AI-fueled rally to the dot-com bubble has drawn cautionary notes on social media.
