ZEC Surges 110% in 30 Days Amid Support from Multicoin Capital and KOLs

Author: Curry, Shenchao TechFlow

If you’ve been scrolling through English-language Crypto Twitter recently, you’ve likely seen screen after screen of ZEC.

Big names like Naval, Arthur Hayes, Mert Mumtaz, Balaji, and Cobie have been repeatedly mentioned in the same conversation, coupled with Multicoin Capital publicly announcing a major position and multiple consecutive panels on privacy-focused topics at Consensus Miami. As a result, ZEC’s social media volume has reached its highest level since the late 2025 market surge.

The price has already surged ahead of the narrative. As of press time, ZEC is trading at approximately $580, up over 110% in the past 30 days and more than 1,500% year-to-date. Its market capitalization has surpassed $9.5 billion, overtaking the established privacy coin Monero (XMR) and rising to within the top 20 on CoinGecko.

On May 6, ZEC surged nearly 30% in a single day, triggering over $62 million in short liquidations, including $46.7 million in short positions.

So the question is: What’s driving this wave?

The most direct catalyst comes from Multicoin Capital.

On May 6, Tushar Jain, co-founder and managing partner at Multicoin, publicly stated on a panel at Consensus Miami that the firm has established a "significant position" since February of this year. He did not disclose the exact size but provided a clear investment logic framework.

Jain wrote in a subsequent long post on X: "Bitcoin is censorship-resistant—no one can freeze your BTC or prevent you from using it. But that doesn’t stop governments from seizing known holdings through property taxes."

His direct argument is California Initiative 25-0024, a proposal to impose a one-time 5% wealth tax on residents with a net worth exceeding $10 billion (including unrealized gains), expected to raise approximately $100 billion.

Jain's core assessment is that Bitcoin serves as insurance against fiat currency, but its on-chain balances are completely transparent, allowing a tax authority with access to a blockchain explorer to see everything. ZEC’s shielded pool uses zero-knowledge proof technology to conceal the sender, recipient, and amount, making on-chain assets invisible to external observers.

“We believe there is clear product-market fit for truly private, censorship-resistant, and seizure-resistant assets, and demand is accelerating,” Jain wrote. “Zcash is the cleanest way to express this argument on an open market.”

This represents a clear shift in stance for Multicoin.

In 2019, the fund published an article arguing that "privacy is a feature of valuable cryptocurrencies, not a standalone product," and contended that users should not sell BTC or ETH to buy ZEC solely for privacy.

Seven years later, this public statement appeared to overturn his previous conclusions with real money.

The seeds of this ZEC narrative were actually planted in the second half of 2025.

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant (also an early investor in Zcash), Helius founder Mert Mumtaz (a Solana infrastructure company), and prominent crypto influencers such as Balaji Srinivasan and Cobie have been actively supporting ZEC since last fall.

In October last year, Naval tweeted: "Bitcoin is insurance against fiat currency; Zcash is insurance against Bitcoin."

Hayes made a more aggressive statement, asserting at Consensus 2026 that ZEC’s long-term price target should be “10% of Bitcoin’s price.” Based on Bitcoin’s current price of approximately $80,000, this implies a ZEC target of around $8,000—more than 13 times its current value. Tyler Winklevoss also endorsed this week a $9,700 price target for ZEC, based on its potential to capture offshore wealth.

These trade signals themselves may not serve as investment advice, but their collective appearance indicates one thing: the top capital and most influential voices in the English-speaking crypto community are simultaneously shifting toward the privacy sector.

While Multicoin and KOLs provided catalysts on the funding and narrative fronts, the technical roadmap unveiled at Consensus Miami gave the market a fundamental story.

Josh Swihart, founder and CEO of the Zcash Open Development Lab, announced on May 8 at the Privacy Track that quantum-recoverable wallets will be launched within one month, and Zcash plans to achieve full post-quantum security within 12 to 18 months.

The logic here is that the ECDSA signature algorithm currently used by most cryptocurrencies will become vulnerable once quantum computers mature. An even more dangerous scenario is the so-called "harvest now, decrypt later" strategy, in which adversaries record encrypted data today and decrypt it only after quantum hardware becomes advanced enough. For a privacy coin whose value proposition is entirely built on the confidentiality of transaction data, this poses an existential threat.

Swihart also disclosed that since the ECC wallet integrated Near Intents’ cross-chain swap functionality in October last year, $600 million to $700 million has flowed in and out through this channel, primarily involving USD and USDC. Zcash’s privacy pool currently holds approximately 30% of the circulating ZEC, the highest level in history.

In addition to Multicoin’s significant position, ZEC is accumulating more institutional-grade catalysts.

Grayscale has submitted an application for a ZEC spot ETF and is currently awaiting the SEC's decision. Grayscale previously stated that ZEC's upside potential is closely tied to the revaluation of financial privacy in an AI-driven world.

Robinhood recently launched ZEC trading, opening access to retail investors. Foundry (a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group) announced the launch of a large-scale ZEC mining pool, marking the company’s second asset support after Bitcoin and providing added credibility to ZEC’s mining security and institutional recognition.

On-chain data from Santiment shows that retail investor interest in privacy coins is rising, driven by stricter exchange compliance rules and growing concerns about data tracking. A March report by CoinDesk Research stated that Zcash has reached a tipping point toward "encryption supremacy," fueled by three converging forces: AI tools enabling de-anonymization of users on transparent blockchains by tracking transaction patterns, the increasing real-world threat of quantum computing to current wallet security, and quarterly transaction volumes surpassing $100 billion.

The above catalysts paint a bullish picture, but one fact must not be overlooked: the core team that built Zcash is no longer active.

In January, Josh Swihart, CEO of the Electric Coin Company (ECC), along with the entire ECC team, resigned, citing governance conflicts with the Bootstrap Project board, and characterized their departure as a "constructive discharge." ECC is the core organization responsible for creating and maintaining Zcash; its team's departure means the chain now operates without its original engineering team.

Therefore, currently, the narrative hype around ZEC is far outpacing its fundamentals. KOLs promoting it, funds accumulating it, and continuous panels at Consensus—all of these are stories of capital and attention—but there has been little growth in on-chain trading volume.

Because transactions in the privacy pool are intentionally invisible, you cannot use on-chain data to distinguish between "real adoption" and "speculative capital accumulation."

However, the absence of fundamentals is the norm for most cryptocurrencies. In this rally of “old-school coins,” ZEC has been the most standout, but it’s likely not the last one.