Zcash Hits 9-Year High As Mining Profitability Tops Bitcoin 4X Per MWh

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Zcash Is Leaving Bitcoin In The Dust As ZEC Surges To 9-Year High With Miners Cashing In

Grayscale’s Zcash ETP attracted $179 million in 11 trading days with its total asset under management reaching nearly $700 million, supporting Zcash’s surge.
Anushka Basu·Stocktwits
Published Sep 12, 2026   |   11:43 AM EDT

• Zcash gained 14% this week to a nine-year high of $1,155, outpacing Bitcoin’s one-week gain.
• Grayscale said Zcash mining is four-times more lucrative than Bitcoin per megawatt-hour, driving ZEC mining.
• ZEC has increased over 123% this year, outperforming Bitcoin’s 11% fall, while retail chatter about Zcash has surged over 870% in a month on Stocktwits.

Zcash (ZEC) hit a nine-year high near $1,155 on Saturday. It was up more than 14% for the week, while Bitcoin went down almost 3%. According to Grayscale mining ZEC became much more profitable than mining Bitcoin for the same electricity.

ZEC’s price was trading near $1,155 as of writing. The move left ZEC as the top performer among large-cap cryptocurrencies this week, on a market capitalization of about $19.5 billion. 

The rally marked a third consecutive weekly gain and roughly doubled Zcash’s price since mid-August 2025. The token’s previous peak, set in early 2018, was around $800. However, it remains 11% below the week’s intraday high of around $13,00 and was down 2.51% in the past 24 hours.

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around ZEC dropped to ‘bullish’ from the ‘extremely bullish’ zone, accompanied by ‘extremely high’ chatter levels over the past day. According to platform data, message volume on ZEC has risen over 870% in a month. 

Bitcoin’s price was trading at $77,295, up over 0.4% in the last 24 hours.  

In comparison, retail sentiment around BTC dropped to the ‘extremely bearish’ zone from the ‘bearish’ zone over the past day. Retail chatter around it remained in ‘low’ levels with platform data showing a rise in message volume up over 88% in a month. 

Why Is Zcash Rallying?

Grayscale said its Zcash fund (ZCSH) has raised some $179 million in 11 days of trading, lifting assets under management above $700 million and ZEC is up 59% since the launch of the ETP. 

The asset manager said its Zcash fund ranked in the top 1% of almost 4,000 exchange-traded products for net asset growth, and called it the fastest-growing altcoin ETP by net assets. The fund is sponsored by Grayscale and the numbers are the issuer’s own.

Zcash Mining Becomes More Profitable Than Bitcoin Per MWh

Grayscale also estimated that Zcash miner rewards were about twice as high as Bitcoin’s per mining rig per day and about four times higher per megawatt-hour, even though the machines are not interoperable. It said mining Zcash is currently more profitable per MWh than some AI and HPC cloud services.

Grayscale said that the total amount of Zcash mining has risen by more than 2.5 times this year. They explained that higher token prices encourage more mining, which makes the network safer and may help keep prices high.

Grayscale also said that Bitcoin’s daily miner rewards are around $35 million, while Zcash’s are around $2 million. The Zcash pot is small and set, so as more miners join, they all make less. This means that the current edge can only last for a certain amount of time.

Bitcoin has been down over 11% so far this year, while Zcash has been up over 123% so far this year. 

Read also:Tom Lee Says ‘Economists Are Fighting Last Year’s Wars’ As Fundstrat’s 2% Bitcoin Bet Swells To 85%

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Source: stocktwits.com