Zcash became one of the most unexpected growth stories in the crypto market in 2025. Over a relatively short period, the price of ZEC increased more than eightfold, and the asset itself entered the top twenty digital currencies by market capitalization.
Despite the weak performance of the overall crypto market, Zcash reached a new high for the first time since 2021, climbing to $410 in early November 2025.
At the same time, Zcash’s market capitalization exceeded $6.3 billion for the first time. Thanks to this, the asset entered the top 20 largest cryptocurrencies and surpassed Litecoin (LTC), Monero (XMR), Dai (DAI), and the meme token (meme cryptocurrency) Shiba Inu (SHIB) in market capitalization.
How Zcash’s position in the market changed
Zcash (ZEC) belongs to the category of so-called privacy cryptocurrencies, along with Monero (XMR) and Dash (DASH). For a long time, Monero remained the leader of this segment, but after a sharp price surge, Zcash moved into first place by market capitalization among privacy coins.
At the same time, as recently as April 2025, Zcash’s position looked completely different. At that point, the asset was under threat of delisting from Binance, and before that, it had already been removed from the listings of several major exchanges. Against this backdrop, the price of ZEC fell by about 25% over the past month, from $40.5 to $30.7.
Later, the situation changed dramatically. Amid a surge of interest from traders and investors, Zcash not only recovered but was also added to the list of assets on Hyperliquid, the largest hybrid crypto derivatives* exchange.
* Crypto derivatives are derivative financial instruments whose value is tied to the price of an underlying crypto asset, such as Zcash, Bitcoin, or Ethereum. The main types of crypto derivatives include:
- futures — contracts for the purchase or sale of an asset at a predetermined price in the future;
- options — contracts that give the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an asset;
- perpetual swaps — a popular instrument in the crypto market, similar to a futures contract but without a settlement date.
According to CoinMarketCap, from the beginning to the end of 2025, Zcash delivered the best performance among the largest cryptocurrencies, with growth exceeding 620%. By comparison, DASH gained about 240% over the same period, while XMR rose by 76%.
Why Zcash is rising: key reasons
One of the most prominent supporters of Zcash is Arthur Hayes, co-founder and former head of the BitMEX exchange. He sees the potential for ZEC to reach $10,000 and explains his optimism with several factors.
1. Technological maturity of the project
According to Hayes, an important driver was Zcash’s technological progress. In particular, the latest protocol upgrade eliminated the “trusted setup”* issue, which had long raised questions within the crypto community. Combined with Zcash’s native wallet* feature, this makes the project a full-fledged privacy tool, which Hayes compares to an “industrial mixer*.”
* Trusted setup is a special cryptographic procedure required to launch certain zero-knowledge proof systems. During this procedure, the initial parameters are created on which the privacy protocol is then built. The problem is that if such a setup is carried out incorrectly and the secret intermediate data are not completely destroyed, an attacker could theoretically gain the ability to create fake proofs. In the case of a cryptocurrency, this is especially sensitive because, in extreme scenarios, it may create the risk of undetectable coin issuance that is not reflected in the transparent logic of the network.
* A native wallet is a wallet originally developed for a specific blockchain network and supporting its functions at a basic, “native” level. Unlike universal multi-currency solutions, a native wallet is usually more deeply integrated with the protocol.
* A crypto mixer is a service or mechanism designed to enhance the privacy of cryptocurrency transactions. Its purpose is to break, or make it as difficult as possible to establish, the direct connection between the sender’s address and the recipient’s address. Its operating principle is usually to combine the funds of multiple users, mix them, and then send them to different addresses in a different sequence. As a result, it becomes more difficult to determine exactly who transferred assets to whom.
2. Growing interest in privacy cryptocurrencies
Hayes also cites rising demand for privacy-focused assets as another reason for ZEC’s growth. Against this backdrop, additional difficulties faced by competing coins only increased interest in Zcash. In particular, Japanese authorities stated that they had partially deanonymized Monero by correlating individual data fragments. In the case of Zcash, obtaining reliable information about user activity is significantly more difficult because of its privacy architecture.
3. The approaching halving
The third factor Hayes points to is the upcoming halving*, which will lead to a further reduction in the issuance of new coins. In his view, the resulting supply shortage could become another strong catalyst for the price growth of ZEC.
* Halving is an algorithmically scheduled process in which the reward miners receive for finding a block is cut in half. This mechanism is used in blockchains with limited or controlled issuance and gradually reduces the rate at which new coins are released.
Not just fundamentals: the role of hype and FOMO
Some market participants take a less optimistic view. According to some well-known traders, Zcash’s sharp rise in September and October 2025 was largely triggered by Arthur Hayes’s public statements. They may have set off a FOMO* effect and pushed investors toward emotional buying.
* FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is a behavioral and psychological effect in which market participants are afraid of missing potential profits and begin buying an asset not because of a fundamental assessment, but under the influence of others’ success, news, or a rapid rise in price. From the point of view of market dynamics, fear of missing out manifests itself as follows:
- the asset rises sharply.
- the information environment becomes increasingly positive.
- new participants enter the market out of fear of “missing the moment”;
- demand begins to fuel itself.
As a result, the growth often accelerates and may detach from fundamental factors. In the crypto market, fear of missing out is especially pronounced due to high volatility, the strong influence of social media, and the rapid cycles of speculative capital.
Interestingly, even Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox admitted he could not precisely explain the reasons for the asset's explosive growth. In his opinion, what is happening may be related to a “coordinated pump*” by investors.
* A pump is a rapid and abnormal increase in the price of an asset, which may be caused either by coordinated buying or by aggressive informational market hype. It is usually accompanied by a sharp increase in trading volumes, a surge of media attention, and emotional buying by retail investors. A pump (price increase) may be:
- natural, if the price rises quickly against the backdrop of strong news or a shift in the market narrative;
- manipulative, if the rise is intentionally driven by large players for the sake of taking profits later.
What other factors are supporting ZEC’s growth
Experts also point to several additional reasons that may have strengthened demand for Zcash.
One of them is the possibility of exchange-traded funds (ETFs)* based on ZEC. Such instruments could open access to the asset for institutional investors. The reason for such expectations was Grayscale’s recent announcement of the launch of the Zcash Trust. Analysts believe this increases the likelihood of a full-fledged ZEC exchange-traded fund appearing in the future as well.
* An ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) is an exchange-traded investment fund whose shares or units are traded on a stock exchange just like ordinary securities. An ETF allows an investor to gain exposure to a specific asset or basket of assets without the need to purchase them directly.
Another factor is the growing interest in privacy within the Ethereum ecosystem. The team behind the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization had previously announced the creation of a separate cluster dedicated the developing privacy solutions. According to analysts, this trend also had a positive effect on the perception of Zcash.
The project may also have received additional support from integration with decentralized exchanges, including Shapeshift and THORSwap. Expansion onto such platforms can increase liquidity and broaden Zcash’s presence in the decentralized finance (DeFi) environment.
What risks remain
Despite the impressive growth, Zcash still faces serious risks. One of the main ones is regulatory uncertainty. In many countries, authorities seek to make cryptocurrency transactions as transparent as possible in order to monitor the movement of funds. Against this backdrop, privacy coins may face additional restrictions, bans, or delisting from regulated trading platforms.
At the same time, there is another side to this: increasing pressure from regulators may itself further fuel interest in privacy cryptocurrencies among users for whom anonymity remains fundamentally important.