Bitcoin extended a slow climb through the Asian session while regional equities and U.S. stock futures rose on progress in trade talks between Washington and Beijing.

  • Bitcoin traded just above $81,000 after the Securities and Exchange Commission cleared a path for onchain trading of tokenized U.S. stocks, helping spur a short squeeze.
  • NEAR surged about 23% as its cross-chain swap service attracted heavy ZEC trading, including a sixfold increase in daily ZEC volume routed through the platform.
  • Asian stocks and U.S. equity futures rose after encouraging U.S.-China trade talks, while falling oil prices eased inflation concerns.

Bitcoin traded just above $81,000 as of Monday Asian morning hours, up less than 1% over 24 hours and adding to the ground it has taken since the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission cleared a path for onchain trading of tokenized U.S. stocks on Thursday, CoinDesk data show.

NEAR was the standout among the major tokens, up roughly 23% to just above $4. The move traces to NEAR Intents, a swap service built on the NEAR blockchain that lets a wallet trade one token for another across different chains without the user having to move funds between them first.

Major consumer wallets, such as ZODL and Vizor, have plugged it in to offer ZEC swaps, and daily ZEC volume routed through the service jumped sixfold in a single in the past week. NEAR has become the routing layer for one of the most heavily traded tokens on the market, and its own token has followed the traffic.

Elsewhere, ZEC gained 3% to just above $1,500 and BNB 2% to nearly $777. Ether and HYPE each picked up about 2%, while XRP, DOGE, SOL and TRX rose 1% or less.

Equities set the tone through the Asian session. MSCI's Asia Pacific gauge climbed nearly 1%, led by technology shares in South Korea and Taiwan, after U.S. officials described talks with China as "very successful" ahead of a summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping this week.

S&P 500 futures rose less than 1% and Nasdaq 100 contracts a little more. Brent crude fell 2% to just above $101 a barrel, its fourth straight decline, easing inflation worries and lifting Treasury futures.

Jeff Mei, chief operating officer at exchange BTSE, put the weekend’s bitcoin spike down to the SEC clearing onchain trading of tokenized U.S. stocks and the short squeeze that followed. He sees little on the calendar this week beyond remarks from Federal Reserve officials.

"I'd expect more volatility in the last few weeks leading up to that event," Mei said of the Fed's late-October meeting, which leaves more than a month of speeches and a single inflation print to shift positioning before then.

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