Zcash surged past $1,200 to an intraday peak of $1,249, its highest level since Q4 2016, marking a weekly gain of over 45%.

Market Cap Reaches $20B as Derivatives Liquidations Spike

Zcash (ZEC) breached $1,200 Sunday, outperforming the rest of the cryptocurrency market after posting double-digit gains. Market data showed that the privacy coin surged to an intraday peak of $1,249, its highest level since late in the fourth quarter of 2016. Although an ensuing sell-off saw its price plunge below $1,200, it quickly reclaimed the mark, leaving the coin with a weekly gain of over 45%.

The latest surge lifted ZEC’s market capitalization to $20.44 billion, displacing HYPE as the ninth-largest digital asset by market cap. ZEC has now jumped 134%, making it one of the best-performing high-cap altcoins by far. Since sinking to $16.08 on July 4, 2024, the privacy coin has risen by a staggering 7,400%. However, despite this price growth, ZEC remains more than 62% below its Oct. 16, 2016, peak of $3,191.93.

On the derivatives front, Zcash’s price action in the last 24 hours saw slightly more than $24 million in leveraged positions liquidated — the third-most liquidations on a single asset behind ethereum and bitcoin. As expected with a rallying coin, wiped-out short bets accounted for the majority of liquidations at $17.5 million.

Echoing previous bull runs, ZEC’s explosive surge is being driven in part by high-profile endorsements across the crypto landscape, including bullish commentary from BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes and Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley.

Still, the launch of Grayscale’s Zcash ETF (ZCSH) introduces a new dynamic for the privacy coin. Regulatory pressure had previously forced several centralized exchanges to delist ZEC, effectively choking off exposure for mainstream investors, particularly in the U.S. By providing a mainstream vehicle for speculative appetite, the ETF gives traders a direct path to ride the token’s momentum, a trend clearly reflected in recent fund inflows.

However, supporters of the privacy coin, which has completely eclipsed rival Monero (XMR), believe ZEC is also riding high on so-called privacy primitives. According to one independent analyst, Predictivemoney, the move is part of a larger structural trade: front-running the expansion of artificial general intelligence (AGI). While bitcoin possesses a rock-solid monetary policy, its transparent transaction graph makes it trivial for an AGI to de-anonymize wallet histories and user relationships at scale.

From this perspective, the breakout in Zcash and zero-knowledge protocols represents a structural shift in which capital pays a premium for bulletproof zero-knowledge encryption and advanced proof architectures.

This renewed momentum has spilled over into the network’s underlying metrics. The price surge triggered a massive rush of mining power, briefly driving the Zcash network solrate past 30 gigasols per second (GSol/s) for the first time. The rapid influx of competition left individual miner revenue roughly 3% lower than when ZEC was trading under $900, illustrating that new mining hardware and hash power are joining the network faster than block rewards can keep pace.

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