Is It All Over?
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gm Bankless Nation,
Billions in liquidations followed a rapid drawdown for crypto prices and hodlers aren't feeling too cozy.
Today's Issue ⬇️
- ☀️ Need to Know: Markets Flail
BTC's plummet has everyone worried. - 🎧 Rollup: Is It All Over?
What markets are signaling for 2026. - 🗣️ Tactic: Hinkal's Private Transactions
This wallet can keep a secret.
p.s. Bankless Nation, do your part to improve the swapping experience, take the Uniswap Survey and earn a chance to win some fun prizes 👀
Sponsor: Bit Digital — ETH treasury that combines the two greatest assets of our time: ETH & AI.
- ☠️ Bitcoin Dips to $80K. $2.2 billion in liquidations rocked the crypto markets as BTC and ETH took 10% 24-hour hits.
- 💸 Strategy's MSTR Faces Index Delisting Panic with JPM Flagging $11B+ of Sell Pressure. JPMorgan substantiated the rumor, Saylor fired back, claiming he is building a new kind of business.
- 🃏 Kalshi Raises $1B at $11B Valuation. The major round is reportedly being led by returning Kalshi investors Sequoia and CapitalG.
| Prices as of 4pm ET | 24hr | 7d |
|
Crypto $2.88T | ↘ 3.4% | ↘ 11.7% |
|
BTC $84,770 | ↘ 2.9% | ↘ 10.6% |
|
ETH $2,761 | ↘ 4.0% | ↘ 12.6% |
It's been a truly brutal week for crypto markets as ETH and BTC enter free-fall amid a market suddenly skeptical that there are any more rate cuts on the way.
We analyze the crypto market's turbulence as Bitcoin sinks further, signaling potential bear market conditions. Also, it’s DevConnect! We discuss investor sentiment, and examine key updates like Vitalik Buterin's roadmap for Ethereum and Aave's new app. Tune in for essential market updates!
Listen to the full episode 👇
Our little industry has been having a much-needed privacy resurgence this year. And while there have been advances across the board, the app layer has been a particularly teeming hotbed of progress.
More projects are making it easier for regular users to conceal their onchain activities – projects like Aztec, Fluidkey, Veil, Zashi, 0xbow, RAILGUN, and beyond.
There are still new ones popping up! I recently came across the privacy wallet Hinkal, which seems to be another great resource in the privacy vertical. The wallet has a nice range of offerings that can prove useful for your onchain toolbox, so let's get you caught up on the basics about what's novel here. 👇
What's Hinkal?
Launched in 2023, Hinkal is a self-custodial browser wallet app that goes all-in on onchain privacy. In November 2025, the wallet opened to everyone with its debut in the Chrome Web Store.
Fundamentally, Hinkal is designed so that people can trade coins and NFTs and use onchain apps like DeFi platforms without exposing their addresses, balances, and trades.
At the heart of the project is a dual-account wallet system – here you get a public address and a private address, and you can switch between them in the extension depending on what you're doing onchain.
Your private account is where the magic happens: it routes everything through a privacy-preserving system built on zero-knowledge proofs, stealth addresses, and a UTXO model that hides your onchain activities.
From the outside, all that shows up onchain is the Hinkal smart contract and never your private address, your balances, or your specific interactions. You blend in with every other Hinkal user, and Tor routing is overlaid to obscure your IP traffic.
Additionally, Hinkal lets you interact privately with major apps across Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, OP Mainnet, and Polygon via WalletConnect. Most everything you’d normally do from a transparent wallet like MetaMask, you can now do from your private account, without leaving an onchain trail.
How to Use Hinkal
If you want to try Hinkal's private sends, receives, and swaps, you'll first need to set up an account and proceed from there. Here's a pathway to get started on:
1. Create Your Wallet
- After downloading Hinkal for the first time, you can use an existing wallet to onboard or create a brand new one.
- If you use an existing wallet, it will become your Hinkal recovery key. When prompted during onboarding, connect your desired wallet and sign the ensuing verification message. You can then optionally pick up to 5 tokens from your main wallet to deposit into Hinkal immediately.
- 🚨 A word of warning: don't onboard with MPC-based wallets like Fireblocks, as their rotating keys will make your Hinkal account unrecoverable!
- Alternatively, you can just create a new Hinkal wallet from scratch. When prompted, create a password, secure your 12-word recovery phrase somewhere safe, and then confirm three missing words to verify you've saved your phrase.
2. Privately Verify Your Identity
- If you're wanting to deposit more than $1,000 worth of crypto to Hinkal, you'll need to verify your identity for compliance purposes. Fortunately, thanks to zk proofs, you can do this perfectly privately with your existing CEX data.
- The zk proofs here are handled by the Reclaim protocol. When prompted to do your Integrity Check in Hinkal, select the "Reclaim" option and then select your preferred exchange account (e.g. Binance, Coinbase, Gate, OKX, etc.)
- Next, scan the provided QR code with your phone and follow the ensuing steps through the Reclaim app. You'll sign into your chosen CEX account, wait for verification, and then a zk proof will be generated to confirm to Hinkal that you're not a sanctioned user.
3. Shielding, Sending, Receiving, Swapping, & Connecting
- Once your wallet is prepped (and verified if needed), you can dive into the privacy features of Hinkal. For example...
- To shield your crypto:
- Head to your Public account and press "Shield." Pick the token and amount you want to move, confirm the gas token you want to use (ETH, USDC, USDT, or DAI), and submit. The funds enter your Private account and become indistinguishable from the rest of Hinkal's pool.
- For unshielding, do the reverse: in your Private account press "Unshield," select the token(s) you want to move, choose your gas token, and confirm the transaction.
- To send privately:
- Navigate to your Private account and click "Send." Choose your token, enter an amount, and paste a regular 0x… address. Because you’re sending from your private balance, the transfer executes through Hinkal’s shielded system and your onchain history stays hidden. The recipient address just receives funds like normal.
- To receive funds privately:
- In the Receive screen, copy and share the provided "Payment link" as needed. This link brings up an interface where the sender can connect their wallet and set up a transfer. Any assets sent through this link will arrive shielded in your Private account.
- To swap secretly:
- Open your Private account and hit "Swap." Pick your token pair, compare quotes from 1inch, Odos, or Uniswap, customize your slippage parameters if you'd like, and then confirm in Hinkal to finalize trades. Your route and transaction details all remain hidden.
- To connect to external apps:
- When signing into an onchain app, choose the "WalletConnect" option, and Hinkal will pop up with a connection request. Confirm it, and the site will treat your Hinkal identity like a normal wallet, even though all actions are routed privately under the hood.
- If your target app offers a dedicated Hinkal option, you can also copy the WalletConnect pairing link, open the Hinkal extension, click the WC icon at the top, and paste it in manually.
The $HINK Play
Hinkal has announced plans to launch a native token, which will be used to decentralize its relayer system.
Ahead of that rollout, the privacy wallet is running a points-based rewards platform that will presumably tie into $HINK airdrop eligibility later. Here you get points for swapping, interacting with DeFi apps, holding assets in Hinkal, completing special quests, and beyond.
It's an opportunity to keep an eye on, especially if you're on the hunt for interesting privacy plays lately. In the meantime, also be on the lookout for Hinkal's upcoming roadmap plans, like releasing the Hinkal Multisig resource and adding Solana support.
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*We’re being compensated by Bit Digital (NASDAQ: BTBT) for this ad promoting their company and BTBT. The compensation is paid in cash as a one-time payment. You can find additional information about Bit Digital and BTBT on their Investor page at bit-digital.com/investors. Not investment advice.