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  • While the Market Sold, This Protocol Added 25% More Capital. Is +176% Next?

While the Market Sold, This Protocol Added 25% More Capital. Is +176% Next?

Its assets grew 25% this month despite the price drop. Analysts see +176% upside.

It can be scary to buy when charts are painting red candles, but sometimes the market gets the valuation completely wrong.

We spotted a leading Zero-Knowledge network where the actual capital in the system swelled by nearly 25% this month, even while the token price took a nosedive.

If you want to capitalize on a market contradiction, this setup points toward a potential +176% rally.

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Starknet (STRK) is doing the heavy lifting to scale Ethereum, but its ambitions have grown to include becoming the primary execution layer for Bitcoin.

While traders have been dumping privacy-related tokens recently, this network is busy securing institutional partners and hitting critical decentralization goals.

Right now, the token trades for just $0.061, reflecting a sharp 21.8% decline over the last 30 days.

Yet, the on-chain activity tells a wildly different story, showing a protocol that is accumulating value much faster than the market is giving it credit for.

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Tokenomics, Strategic Positioning, and Use Cases

You can think of STRK as the oil that keeps this high-performance engine running, covering transaction costs and governance duties.

The utility just got a major upgrade with the launch of staking, backed by institutional heavyweights like Anchorage Digital who are now offering custody services for the asset.

The team is also leveraging their "ZK-STARK" tech to solve one of crypto's biggest problems: bringing smart contracts to Bitcoin.

By partnering with wallets like Xverse, they are building pipelines to let you use your Bitcoin in DeFi without ever leaving the secure environment of the main chain.

Action: You should monitor the flow of Bitcoin assets bridging onto the network.

If you see a spike in BTC-native liquidity entering their ecosystem, it serves as proof that their plan to unify Ethereum and Bitcoin is gaining traction

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Financial Outlook and Market Position

It is time to audit the books. STRK currently holds the #197 spot in the global crypto rankings and is the #4 largest Zero-Knowledge token, carrying a market cap of roughly $319 million.

Here is the anomaly: while the token's value eroded by 21.8% in the last month, the Total Value Locked (TVL) in the protocol surged by 24.92% to reach $303.23 million.

You rarely see a platform attract that much fresh capital during a period of such negative price action.

When you stack it up against the competition, Starknet is resilient; Zcash plummeted 36.7% and Midnight crashed 42.5%.

This relative strength in usage metrics suggests the protocol is building a sticky user base that isn't just there for the speculation.

Action: Pay close attention to the spread between the rising TVL and the falling market cap.

When a network becomes fundamentally more valuable while its price gets cheaper, it often sets the stage for a sharp correction to the upside.

Bear Case

There are some glitches in the system you can't ignore. The network went offline for four hours on January 5, 2026, and reliability issues like that can scare off the exact institutional clients they are trying to attract.

Additionally, building apps here means learning Cairo, a specialized programming language that is harder to master than the industry standard.

This high barrier to entry could slow down the ecosystem's growth if developers decide to build on easier, Ethereum-compatible chains instead.

Action: You shouldn't turn a blind eye to stability; check their uptime status regularly to ensure the technical gremlins are gone.

Also, watch the number of active developers to confirm that the steep learning curve isn't driving talent away.

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Outlook and Investment Thesis

Starknet has officially removed its "training wheels" by reaching Stage 1 decentralization, a major vote of confidence in its technology.

The jarring mismatch between a 25% increase in on-chain assets and a 21% price drop creates a classic value investing opportunity.

With a bold roadmap to unlock Bitcoin's trillions for DeFi, the token appears significantly oversold at these levels.

Analysts agree, projecting a potential move to $0.1697. Reaching that price would generate a massive +176.89% return by November 2026.

Action: If you are convinced that privacy and scaling are the next big narratives, this is a discounted infrastructure play worth researching.

Target the analyst forecast of $0.1697, using the network's stability and TVL growth as your green light.

That's all for today. Thank you for reading. If you have any feedback, please reply to this email.

Best Regards,

— Benjamin Vitaris
Crypto Intel