Original author: Billy Bambrough, Forbes
AididiaoJP, Foresight News
Bitcoin has finally emerged from this year's prolonged decline over the past month.
The price has rebounded to $80,000 per coin, rising approximately 20% since mid-August. While the market is trading on the narrative of potential U.S. monetary expansion, it is also processing more alarming warnings: some have described the U.S. fiscal trajectory as a $40 trillion "death spiral." The macro narrative has reignited, prompting capital to flow into hard assets and crypto assets.
At this critical moment, U.S. President Trump once again targeted the Federal Reserve. While Bitcoin moved, the asset that surged to extreme gains was a longer-standing and more niche contender: Zcash, a privacy-focused alternative to Bitcoin.
Within weeks, Zcash's price more than doubled. Since its 2024 low, it has risen approximately 7,300%. This week, for the first time since shortly after its launch in 2016, it reclaimed a price of $1,000 per coin. Over the past month, it has more than doubled, nearing a 2,500% increase compared to the same period last year.
The most commonly spread phrase in the crypto world also came out.
Meme coin trader and NFT developer Nick O’Neill wrote on X: “I’m confident that buying Zcash now is like buying Bitcoin in 2013.”
This statement is sharp and perfectly captures market sentiment. In 2013, Bitcoin was far from the institutional asset it later became—it was more like an experiment that hadn’t yet been priced. Today, Zcash is being compared not to today’s Bitcoin, but to the version of Bitcoin that Wall Street had not yet fully co-opted.
It's not a new coin; it's just been overlooked by the market for many years.
Zcash is a so-called privacy coin. Technically forked from Bitcoin, it adds a crucial capability: making it harder to trace the source, destination, and amount of transactions.
Bitcoin makes the ledger completely transparent: who sent what to whom is clearly visible on the chain. Analysis firms, exchanges, and regulators can all trace transactions by following addresses. Zcash takes a different approach, using zero-knowledge cryptography to conceal transaction details—while the chain can verify that a transaction is valid, it does not reveal where the funds came from or where they went.
In 2022, Forbes revealed that renowned whistleblower Edward Snowden participated in the co-creation of Zcash. Early Bitcoin developers and crypto pioneers were also involved, led by cryptographer Zooko Wilcox.
This line has always existed, but for a long time, no one was willing to price it. Privacy coins have long lived under regulatory shadow, with thin trading depth and narratives easily dismissed by mainstream capital as “things to avoid.” Near the 2024 low, Zcash once dropped to just a few dollars. Two years later, it reclaimed the $1,000 mark—not because of its technical whitepaper, but because of this very contrast.
The more Bitcoin resembles an institutional asset, the more Zcash resembles its opposite.
Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan told CoinDesk this week: "Zcash tells a very unique privacy story."
His follow-up statement is even more critical: "I believe the more Bitcoin moves into institutional markets, the more it will create a segment of the market seeking things outside the institutional system. Zcash is filling that space."
This is the clearest logic in this market cycle.
Over the past few years, Bitcoin has undergone an identity shift: spot ETFs, Wall Street research coverage, and inflows from pension funds and asset management products have transformed it into an increasingly compliant, macro-worthy asset. But once an asset becomes institutionalized, ledger transparency ceases to be merely a "decentralized virtue"—it also becomes an unwanted trait for some, as every movement can be seen, analyzed, and categorized.
The market thus began to assign a separate valuation box to "hard currency outside the public ledger."
This concept isn't new this year. Last year, tech investor and AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant made it clear on X: Bitcoin is "insurance against fiat currency," and Zcash is "insurance against Bitcoin." Ravikant, an early supporter of companies like Uber and Twitter, sparked a wave of renewed valuation discussions around Zcash with this statement.
Over the past year, Zcash's price surge has far outpaced Bitcoin's—not because it became more mainstream, but precisely because it was reinterpreted as the portion of demand that still prefers to remain in the shadows after Bitcoin entered the institutional living room.
Grayscale has brought the privacy narrative into U.S. stock accounts.
Storytelling can spark the flame; only through channels can the fire grow.
Last month, Grayscale, a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, launched a Zcash spot ETF on NYSE Arca. For retail traders and investors, this means one specific thing: they can now gain exposure to Zcash’s price directly through their U.S. stock brokerage accounts, without needing to use a cryptocurrency exchange or manage their own private keys.
This is the first time a privacy coin has entered the U.S. mainstream brokerage channels in the form of a spot ETF.
Ravikant’s own role also adds depth to this story. He previously served on the board of the Zcash Foundation and was an early investor in Electric Coin Company, the developer of Zcash. According to Protos, the company raised approximately $3 million in its seed and venture rounds. Early figures from the Bitcoin and crypto space also participated, including Barry Silbert of Digital Currency Group and Roger Ver, the founder of Bitcoin Cash.
Grayscale is part of Digital Currency Group. Barry Silbert’s strategy connected early investments, trust products, and later the ETF. The market didn’t just see an old project suddenly surge—it saw a long-dormant asset gain its first institutional access point akin to Bitcoin.
Some people have already started backing out a $10 billion market cap.
When the price reaches $1,000, the predictions become more bold.
Crypto trader and Meme coin developer Zion Thomas (known as Ansem on X) wrote: "When I bought my first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin was around $3,000, and it reached $20,000 a few months later. It’s entirely possible that Zcash could follow a similar trajectory over the next 12 to 18 months."
According to his algorithm, if Zcash experiences a roughly 500% increase, its price could surge to around $6,000, with a market capitalization of approximately $100 billion.
This is certainly a trader-style extrapolation, not an established fact. But in this market cycle, this statement has gained traction because it overlays two ideas: the memory of 2013’s “underpriced” condition, and Zcash’s current combination of a privacy narrative, core holding positions, and an ETF pathway.
Ansem added one more point: “The logic of hard currency combined with privacy-preserving value retention is stronger now than ever before. Over the past decade, a very core group of holders has emerged, and they have no short-term selling intentions.”
This highlights the difference between Zcash and ordinary altcoins. It’s not an asset meant for weekly narratives and two-week dumps. Many holders who survived near the bottom treat it as a long-term insurance policy rather than a short-term trading instrument. Once this type of holder locks up the circulating supply, price elasticity becomes exceptionally pronounced when external incremental capital enters.
What the market is currently betting on is actually the next layer of pricing power.
Lay out the clues in this article: Zcash's recent surge isn't just due to a single phrase: "privacy."
On one side, macro factors—such as U.S. dollar credibility, fiscal expansion, and the conflict between Trump and the Federal Reserve—are making "hard assets" more attractive again.
On one side, after Bitcoin was adopted by institutions, the transparent ledger no longer satisfies everyone.
On one side, the product: Grayscale turned Zcash from a minor cryptocurrency on crypto exchanges into an accessible exposure that can be purchased directly through a U.S. stock account.
On one side are holders: core holders who have accumulated over a decade and are not in a hurry to sell in the short term.
Nick O'Neill said, "Buy Bitcoin like in 2013," and Ansem said a surge similar to 2013 could occur within the next 12 to 18 months. Both statements are compelling, yet they overlook the risk—that after 2013, Bitcoin still experienced multiple halvings in value.
Zcash has now reclaimed the $1,000 mark. The real question for the market is not whether it can tell its privacy story again, but whether that story can continue to be priced as "non-institutional Bitcoin" after being embraced by ETFs and institutional capital.
If possible, $6,000 and a $100 billion market cap would be repeatedly calculated.
If not, this rally of approximately 7,300% from the 2024 low will ultimately be viewed as an extreme rebound rather than the start of a new cycle.