Zcash is breaking records: what is behind the ZEC rally
Despite the overall negative dynamics of the crypto market, Zcash set a new all-time high for the first time since 2021, reaching $410 in early November 2025. Over just the past two months, the price of Zcash has grown more than 8x.
At the same time, the market capitalization of Zcash for the first time exceeded $6.3 billion. By this metric, the coin entered the top twenty leading digital assets, overtaking Litecoin (LTC), Monero (XMR), Dai (DAI), and the meme token Shiba Inu (SHIB).
Zcash dynamics
Zcash (ZEC) is a digital asset that falls into the category of privacy/anonymity cryptocurrencies, along with Monero (XMR) and Dash (DASH). Until recently, XMR dominated this category, but after a sharp price jump, Zcash has become the leader in market capitalization among privacy coins. At the same time, Monero now lags by about $200 million.
Back in April 2025, Zcash faced the threat of delisting from the largest exchange, Binance, and earlier, ZEC had been excluded from the lists of several other major trading platforms. Against this background, the price of Zcash crashed by about a quarter in less than a month, from $40.5 to $30.7.
However, amid a strong spike in investor and trader interest in ZEC, the asset even entered the list of the largest hybrid crypto derivatives* exchange Hyperliquid.
* A crypto derivative is a financial derivative whose underlying asset is a cryptocurrency. These instruments include futures, swaps, and options on Zcash, for example.
In addition, Zcash has become the growth leader among the largest cryptocurrencies since the beginning of the year: according to CoinMarketCap, this figure exceeds 620%. For comparison, over the same period, other leading privacy cryptocurrencies, DASH and XMR, rose only 240% and 76%, respectively.
Reasons for growth and Zcash prospects
BitMEX co-founder and former CEO Arthur Hayes predicts ZEC's price will reach $10,000. According to Hayes, this bullish forecast is based on at least three aspects:
- Technological maturity of the project. According to Hayes, in the Zcash Halo 2 upgrade, developers eliminated the "trusted setup" problem that previously worried the community. Combined with Near Intents (a function of the native Zcash wallet), this turns Zcash into a privacy instrument or, in other words, an "industrial mixer"*.
- Positive changes in Zcash protocol network activity. Hayes explains this by the rising demand for privacy cryptocurrencies. In addition, problems with other anonymous cryptocurrencies strengthened this trend. For example, Japanese authorities stated they were "able to deanonymize Monero" by combining fragments of specific data. The anonymity of Zcash prevents the collection of reliable data on user activity.
- The upcoming halving, which will further reduce the emission (supply issuance) speed of Zcash. Hayes calls Zcash's supply scarcity the "third pillar" that will become the catalyst for a rapid rise in ZEC.
* A mixer is a tool that increases transaction privacy by mixing transactions into groups and distributing them to different unlinked addresses.
At the same time, some well-known traders believe that Zcash's explosive growth in September and October 2025 was explicitly driven by Hayes' statements, which triggered FOMO* in the market.
* FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) — a psychological effect arising amid the rapid growth of one or a group of assets that pushes investors into emotional buying.
Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox himself noted that he does not know why the altcoin is rising so rapidly. According to Wilcox, hype is caused by a "coordinated pump"* by investors.
* Pump — a fast, manipulative "price pumping" of an asset to extract profit. As a rule, after a pump follows an equally fast collapse or "dump".
Experts also note other growth factors, such as the potential launch of Zcash-based exchange-traded funds, which would open ZEC access to institutional investors. For example, the significant investment company Grayscale recently announced the creation of a new Zcash Trust based on the cryptocurrency. Analysts believe this step increases the probability of a ZEC ETF.
Analysts also believe that demand for privacy cryptocurrencies could have been boosted by new initiatives from the Ethereum team to enhance privacy. The team behind the second-largest cryptocurrency earlier announced the creation of a privacy-focused cluster. According to experts, this initiative had a positive effect on Zcash.
Another positive factor for Zcash growth could be integration of the protocol with well-known decentralized exchanges (DEX) such as Shapeshift and THORSwap. Integration of Zcash with trading platforms can attract additional liquidity to the ecosystem.
Despite positive trends, there are also risk factors that can negatively impact Zcash dynamics. One of them is legal uncertainty. Regulators aim to ensure transaction transparency in blockchain ecosystems to track and control financial flows in crypto effectively. This can lead to bans on privacy cryptocurrencies in certain jurisdictions and, accordingly, to delisting from regulated crypto exchanges.
However, it is exactly regulatory pressure that, on the other hand, stimulates even stronger demand for privacy cryptocurrencies among users.