The Agentic Future: Privacy coins rise as AI turns Confidential (10.14.25)

After crypto’s $19B flash crash, privacy coins rise as AI turns confidential, and TAO pumps 30% to lead the AI token rebound with renewed institutional traction.

I’ll use a decade of traditional finance/corporate experience to refine the chaos into bite-sized chunks for you to digest

This newsletter consists of three parts:

1. Snippet Partner (SURF AI Research Copilot)

2. Market Overview

3. Emerging Developments

Enjoy the journey and if you have any questions feel free to reach out to me on X

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The Black Swan Crypto Flash Crash

Before we get into the analysis on AI specific tokens its important to assess the macro impact on the broader crypto market; this had cascading effects on the altcoin market, including AI tokens.

The broader crypto market experienced one of the largest crashes this week as $19bn of leverage was flushed in 24 hours.

The catalyst? The Trump 100% China Tariff announcement and cascading liquidations with a 98% collapse in liquidity in minutes:

Source: YQ_acc

Altcoins were hit the hardest as some saw 99% drops in their price in a 5 minute window (before recovering) as the chaos ripped through the order books:

Source: Dexscreener via Newsy Johnson

But as the tied goes out we see the post mortem of what actually happened.

A combination of the failed oracle pricing/ API calls on certain assets on one of the largest centralized exchanges, and opportunistic sellers dumping large amounts of collateral through thin order books.

This Whale made $200m alone:

Source: mlmabc, via Hypurrscan

The positive is that main DeFi infra held strong with Aave, Ethena and many others revealing that the protocols operated as designed.

See “Additional Reading” section below for more useful links to resources.

Now that this crypto specific Black Swan event is behind us, what protocol tokens are recovering the strongest?

AI Roundup

Decentralized AI (“DeAI”) mindshare is leading following the crash; up 4.7% this week along side a rally in RWAs and Prediction Markets:

Source: Kaito, via Nairolf

DeAI Market Cap

The overall DeAI market cap has tanked by $4.6bn (-14%%) to $29bn this week largely as a result of the $19bn in cascading liquidations from overleverage on illiquid altcoins.

Source: Coin Gecko

However you can see there’s one clear standout performer:

• TAO: Grayscale filing SEC Form 10 for Bittensor Trust, potentially shortening private placement holds from 12 to 6 months; seen as legitimizing TAO for institutions.

• Bittensor’s first halving is scheduled for December 11-12, 2025, reducing daily TAO emissions from 7,200 to 3,600 tokens; a 50% cut designed to enhance scarcity.

The Falloff:

• ASI: Ocean announced its split from the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (ASI/FET) which has had a clear downward pressure on the token, where others saw some sort of recovery post leverage washout.

Robotics Market Cap

The Robotics segment is down $134m (-24%) to $419m, with Auki clearly bucking the trend as its AR tech drives interest from China’s largest Airport:

Source: Coin Gecko

Key Theme: Privacy Coins & AI Implications

This fusion of AI + ZK unlocks a new paradigm: confidential AI.

As AI becomes increasingly data-driven, privacy has become the missing layer of trust. Traditional blockchains expose all activity by default; great for transparency, terrible for confidentiality.

If you’ve been on X in the past few weeks you will likely have seen Zcash (ZEC) resurgence, as privacy maximalists push this ideology.

While there’s questions raised over ZEC specifically, it’s no denying that the Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) change that equation.

• Aleo’s zkML Transpiler bridges Python-based machine learning models with ZK proofs, allowing AI models to be trained and validated on private data. The result: verifiable, privacy-preserving intelligence.

• Railgun exploded out the gate and delivers on-chain privacy for DeFi with zkML potential, earning Ethereum Foundation backing.

• Mina Protocol’s 22KB blockchain enables lightweight zkML verification for mobile and edge devices.

Systems that can collaborate, learn, and make decisions without exposing proprietary or personal information. This is a segment that needs to be paid attention to.

More to come on privacy in AI, as the landscape evolves.

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Weekly Crypto AI Agent Analysis

a) Nansen Capital Flow Analysis

Smart capital net inflows continue on a selection of AI coins:

Source: Nansen

• Chainlink: Continues to become the Oracle of choice for many AI protocols with USDai and Mamo this week alone.

• REI: Rei network closed beta access being rolled out to a select few with examples of plugging it into Physical AI

• FET: Smart money appears to be buying the dip on FET despite the Ocean announcement to leave the alliance.

• SERV: The founder was interviewed at the NYSE this week to talk agentic applications following its platform V1 go live.

b) Cookie Mindshare Analysis

Source: Cookie

Most high mindshare tokens are down consistent with the broader altcoin market pullback. Despite this some developments driving attention:

• BANKR Telegram integration went live

• Covalent: This is a YZiLabs backed protocol

• Elsa AI:

• Cookie’s cSNAP campaigns pick up as social farmers compete for millions of dollars in rewards from VOOI, Almanak, Tria and Labs

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AI Agents Developments: Innovations and Market Developments

Here are some other interesting Crypto AI related developments this week — Link

News included in the above:

• Several protocols came out with statements that their agentic vaults operated as intended during this stress test; gizatechxyz positions can now be tracked on DeFi Llama and Almanak__ passes > $150m in AUM, both operating effectively through the liquidations

• API calls and Oracles buckled under the stress; AlloraNetwork

  highlights its self-improving ecosystem of ML models to deliver accurate price forecasts, volatility alerts, & dynamic risk assessments

• Grayscale filed SEC Form 10 for Bittensor Trust, potentially shortening private placement holds from 12 to 6 months - seen as legitimizing TAO for institutions. TAO up 29% this week

• openservai Founder interviewed at the NYSE to chat AI powered apps

• ERC-8004 garners attention, as it enables open agent economies w/o intermediaries

• “WDK by Tether will be released this week. Enabling trillions of self-custodial wallets.”

• Bee Maps, powered by Hivemapper, announced $32m in funding to provide real time geospatial data for fleets of autonomous vehicles

• USDai_Official has structured a $500M non-recourse financing facility to fund GPU-backed AI infrastructure for QumulusAI & partnered with Chainlink as its official Oracle provider

• gaib_ai Partners with Plume to broaden its AI RWA yield opportunities

• FractionAI_xyz partners with avax to bring Universal Liquidity Mgmt. Agents to its ecosystem

• Zero Stack (FLGC) is building the world’s first publicly listed 0G treasury, accumulating more 0G_labs token bringing it to $352m position

• recallnet TGE announced for Oct 15 (10B supply, 2% initial circulation) - decentralized AI agent marketplace; Binance listing announced

• sire_agent highlights profitability of 137% with its aVault; think of this as an agentic oddsmaker powered by Score on Subnet 44

• useTria hints at benefits to card holders. This Neo Bank uses AI in its “best path” token swapping solution, that optimizes for the best path when trading tokens. Partnered with Sentient and Talus Labs recently

• Surf_Copilot reveals it will be launching a mobile friendly version for its crypto focused Deep research tooling

• Ocean protocol announces a split from the ASI alliance (FET)

• mamo partners with Chainlink to ensure accurate price feeds

• bankrbot goes live in Telegram DMs

• flock_io announces the first Hong Kong Productive DAT for $FLOCK with MBV International Limited (HKEX: 1957)

• AukiNetwork is approached by one of China’s largest Airports abouts using its AR capabilities; token is up 12% this week, outperforming wider robotics segment

• xmaquina BOT-06 DAO proposals pass meaning further allocation into Aptronik and Skild AI

• Vader_AI_ reveals its smart glasses to develop a multimodal data set for robotics training, acquire and contribute for rewards

• Perp DEX policies around auto deleverage have been challenged as profitable positions were automatically closed on some locations, while remained open on others

• vooi_io is a YZiLabs backed Perp DEX aggregator that is flying under the radar, enabling you to select which which Perp DEX to deploy your strategies in a single UI.

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Additional Resources:

• Elon Trades: Explanation of events - Link

• SURF Copilot: Analysis of events - Link

• Hoseeb: Did Ethena really depeg? - Link

• 0xDoug: Auto-deleverage explainer - Link

• Defi0xJeff: Things I learned from Last Friday’s flash crash - Link

• markoggwp: Crypto Black Friday - What Broke, What Worked, What Next - Link

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That’s a wrap for issue 146 of S4mmy’s Snippets. I hope you enjoyed it.

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Disclaimer: The content covered in this newsletter is not to be considered investment or financial advice. It is for informational and educational purposes only.

I hold some of the assets and have partnerships with some of the projects mentioned in this newsletter.

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