ZEC Surges into Top 10 Crypto Market Cap, Rebranded as ‘Private Bitcoin’

Over the past few weeks, the most crowded old-coin trade on English-language crypto Twitter has certainly been ZEC.

As of September 17, ZEC’s market capitalization rose to approximately $23.2 billion, entering the top ten globally by cryptocurrency market capitalization.

According to CoinGecko data, ZEC was around $1,369 at the time of writing, up 20.4% over the past 24 hours, while Bitcoin rose less than 1% during the same period. A year ago, ZEC was ranked around 80th in cryptocurrency market capitalization, with a price under $50. Today, it has been rebranded by the English-speaking crypto community as the “private version of Bitcoin” and has increased more than twentyfold in price.

Several weeks ago, when ZEC was at 1000, some analysts discussed the risk of a peak; just a few weeks later, despite interest rate hikes and the failure of the Clarity bill to pass, it rose another 30% beyond the level at which analysts had warned of risk.

The price increase has naturally sparked intense debate, with more views emerging in favor of ZEC.

BoDoggos founder Nick O’Neill publicly claimed that failing to allocate 20% of crypto assets to ZEC is “irresponsible.” This is a personal opinion with a positional bias, yet it accurately reflects the sentiment currently prevalent on English-language crypto Twitter. Matt Huang, co-founder of Paradigm, expressed a more measured view, referring to ZEC as “a private complement to Bitcoin,” and confirmed that Paradigm holds ZEC.

ZEC has been written into the script of “private Bitcoin”

ZEC supporters no longer view it as a forgotten privacy coin waiting for a comeback. The new narrative starts with Bitcoin: Bitcoin has entered discussions around exchange-traded funds, corporate balance sheets, and government reserves, but its public ledger exposes addresses, balances, and fund relationships. Zcash retains Bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap, proof-of-work, and halving, while adding optional privacy to transactions.

This explains why this round of privacy coin momentum was led by ZEC, rather than simply spreading to all privacy coins.

ZEC has exchange-traded products listed in the U.S., allowing institutions to purchase through securities accounts; its privacy features can be optionally enabled, and transaction information can be disclosed to designated institutions by revealing keys. This design is more compatible with existing financial systems for compliant capital than defaulting to complete transaction concealment.

“The age of artificial intelligence demands financial privacy” has turned a feature from ten years ago into a hot asset narrative.

Renowned ZEC advocate Naval Ravikant previously described ZEC as insurance against Bitcoin risk, and established crypto investors such as Barry Silbert and the Winklevoss brothers have consistently voiced public support.

Over the past two weeks, English-language crypto Twitter has shifted from debating whether ZEC has value to arguing how much of a portfolio it should occupy.

Funds are also re-evaluating the entire sector according to this script. According to data aggregated by BIT, the total market capitalization of privacy coins has increased from approximately $7.1 billion to $33.6 billion over the past year, with the majority of the growth coming from ZEC.

It has become the asset with the highest price elasticity in the privacy narrative. The “privacy beta” referred to by English-speaking crypto Twitter describes exactly this effect: when privacy demand is repriced, ZEC often rises faster than Bitcoin but also falls more sharply.

Capital inflow and technological upgrades create catalysts.

The strongest buying pressure came from Grayscale. The Zcash exchange-traded product, ZCSH, launched on the NYSE Arca on August 25. Grayscale’s filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission showed that two weeks after the product’s launch, its assets under management exceeded $500 million, with cumulative net inflows surpassing $70 million and an additional $100 million in initial investment.

Asset size includes appreciation from ZEC’s price increase and cannot be entirely attributed to new institutional buying. The $70 million in cumulative net inflows represents actual capital entering the product. For ZEC, which has significantly lower liquidity than Bitcoin and Ethereum, this amount is sufficient to shift marginal pricing.

On September 8, ZCSH options also began trading on the NYSE Arca. Institutions can now hold ZEC exposure through familiar accounts, hedge risks, or sell options to generate income. For the first time, a privacy coin long reliant on native exchanges has access to a more complete set of trading tools in the U.S. securities market.

Additionally, token holder voting provided the market with a set of easily digestible numbers. Approximately 2.4 million ZEC participated in the NU7 vote, representing 66% of eligible tokens. Of these, 99.9% supported reducing the average block interval from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, and 98.9% voted to retain the Bitcoin-style halving.

A 25-second block time reduces the initial confirmation wait time by two-thirds. In testnet testing, the maximum throughput of the Orchard privacy transaction pool increased from approximately 2.9 transactions per second to 6.6, with an observed orphan block rate below 5%. Faster block times do not increase the daily supply of new coins; the block reward is proportionally reduced instead.

From a practical usage perspective, the chain is not empty. On September 17, approximately 4.92 million ZEC were held in the shielded pool, accounting for 29.1% of the circulating supply. Shielded transactions made up about 44% of on-chain activity that day.

NU7 voting is still a governance signal, and the mainnet block interval remains at 75 seconds. The vote requests the development team to prioritize features that can be completed by September 30. Code release, node adoption, and formal activation have not yet been completed, but a short-term catalyst has emerged: “privacy adoption will be technically better supported.”

$51 million in short positions are betting against the consensus

The more uniform the consensus, the more noticeable the contrarian positions become.

Lookonchain tracking shows that an address holds 37,760 ZEC short positions, with a notional value of approximately $51.5 million.

This address added another 5,000 short positions near $1,252.5 on September 16, with an average entry price of approximately $665.8, resulting in unrealized losses exceeding $26 million.

This short position may fuel market speculation about a short squeeze, but it’s not enough on its own to push up ZEC.

37,760 coins represent approximately 0.22% of the circulating supply and less than 2% of the volume in the past 24 hours. The liquidation price is approximately $2,631.53, about 92% away from the current price at the time of writing.

The enemy of this short position is now the growing ZEC consensus that has formed and continues to expand within the English-speaking crypto community. Supporters bet that ZEC will become a privacy reserve asset beyond Bitcoin, while short sellers bet that its claims are overstated.

Some voices in the market do indeed view ZEC as short-term speculation. For instance, as we previously reported, Wang Chun, co-founder of F2Pool, believes the surge in $ZEC is purely “narrative-driven hype,” considers the Zcash team highly unprofessional, and calls blacklisting the entire team one of the best decisions he has ever made.

Six years ago, when members of the Zcash team repeatedly confused EST (Eastern Standard Time) and EDT (Daylight Saving Time), he immediately decided to blacklist the entire Zcash company, believing that someone who couldn’t distinguish time zones would likely also confuse BTC and USD, let alone understand complex technologies like zero-knowledge proofs.

Finally, in a sea of rising prices, chasing the rally is naturally a “if you can’t beat them, join them” choice, but avoid taking on too large a position. Listening to sharp negative voices may help us stay grounded amid FOMO emotions.

Source: www.kucoin.com