$ZEC just hit $1,000. Six months ago, ZEC was trading around $200. Now it briefly crossed $1,000 and pushed its market cap toward $17B. That's roughly a 5x move. But the price is only part of the story. Grayscale's Zcash ETF began trading on August 25. Since launch, it has recorded roughly $34.4M in net inflows. And ZEC has continued pushing higher. There is also another factor worth watching: More than $34M in ZEC short positions were liquidated during the latest move, adding fuel to the rally. So what are we actually looking at here? A privacy-focused asset that spent years outside the institutional  spotlight is suddenly seeing: ETF access, institutional demand, major price appreciation, and renewed attention around privacy. That doesn't automatically mean ZEC's move is sustainable. The ETF flows are still relatively small compared with larger crypto products, and leverage clearly played a role in the latest leg higher. But the setup is interesting. Because the market may be starting to put a different value on assets that combine: A fixed supply, privacy, and regulated market access. The bigger question isn't whether Zcash can keep going up. It's whether the ETF era is creating a new pathway for capital to rotate into crypto assets that were previously overlooked. ZEC may be an early test of that thesis.