Bitcoin has recovered over the past month from this year’s earlier slide, climbing back above $80,000 per coin and rising about 20% since mid-August, according to the source article. That rebound has unfolded alongside a market narrative centered on the possibility of renewed U.S. money printing and harsher warnings about the country’s fiscal path, which one description in the piece framed as a roughly $40 trillion 「death spiral」. In that setup, capital has been moving back toward hard assets and crypto.
Yet the article says the most extreme move has come from a much older and more marginal corner of the market: privacy-focused Bitcoin alternative Zcash. In a matter of weeks, Zcash has more than doubled. From its 2024 low, the report puts the gain at about 7,300%. This week, it moved back above $1,000 for the first time since shortly after its 2016 launch. The token is up more than 100% over the past month and nearly 2,500% from a year earlier.
Zcash draws fresh comparisons to early Bitcoin
As the rally accelerated, one of the market’s most viral comparisons resurfaced as well. Meme coin trader and NFT developer Nick O’Neill wrote on X: 「I am convinced that buying Zcash now is like buying Bitcoin in 2013.」
The source article says that line landed because it matched the current mood. In 2013, Bitcoin was far from the institutionally held asset it later became. It looked more like an experiment that the market had not fully priced. In that sense, the comparison being made is not with today’s Bitcoin, but with an earlier version that had not yet been absorbed by Wall Street.
An older project returns through its privacy use case
Zcash is a privacy coin. Technically, the article describes it as branching off from Bitcoin while adding a crucial capability: making the origin, destination and amount of transactions harder to trace.
Bitcoin’s ledger is fully open. Who sent funds to whom, and how much was transferred, is visible on-chain. Analytics firms, exchanges and regulators can keep tracing addresses from there. Zcash follows a different path. It uses zero-knowledge cryptography to hide transaction details, allowing the chain to prove a payment is valid without necessarily revealing where the money came from or where it went.
Forbes reported in 2022 that whistleblower Edward Snowden took part in the co-creation of Zcash. The article also points to early Bitcoin developers and crypto pioneers among the project’s early contributors, led by cryptographer Zooko Wilcox.
This privacy thesis has existed for years. What changed, in the article’s framing, is pricing. Privacy coins spent a long period under a regulatory shadow, with thin trading depth and a narrative that much of mainstream capital preferred to avoid. Around its 2024 low, Zcash briefly fell into the teens in dollar terms. Two years later, with the token back above $1,000, the contrast itself has become part of the story.
As Bitcoin looks more institutional, Zcash is cast as its opposite
Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan told CoinDesk this week: 「Zcash has a very unique privacy story.」 He added: 「I think as Bitcoin moves further into institutional markets, a part of the market will split off wanting something outside the institutional system. Zcash is filling that role.」
The article presents that as one of the clearest explanations for the rally. Over the last few years, Bitcoin has gone through an identity shift: spot ETFs, Wall Street research coverage, and capital from pension and asset-management products. It increasingly resembles a macro asset that can be held inside a regulated framework. Once that happens, a transparent ledger stops being only a decentralization virtue. For some market participants, it also becomes an unwanted feature because every transfer can be seen, analyzed and classified.
That has opened a separate valuation bucket for what the article calls a 「hard currency outside the public ledger」. This did not start this year. Last year, technology investor and AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant summed up the distinction on X by calling Bitcoin 「insurance against fiat」 and Zcash 「insurance against Bitcoin」. Ravikant, an early backer of companies including Uber and Twitter, helped ignite another round of repricing debate around Zcash with that remark.
Over the past year, the article says Zcash has far outperformed Bitcoin. Not because it has become more mainstream, but because it is being reinterpreted as the asset serving the slice of demand that still wants to remain outside full ledger transparency after Bitcoin’s move into institutional portfolios.
Grayscale’s spot ETF opened a U.S. brokerage route
Narratives can attract attention. Access routes can turn that attention into real flows. The article says Grayscale, a Digital Currency Group subsidiary, launched a spot Zcash ETF on NYSE Arca last month.
For ordinary traders and investors, that changes something practical. They no longer need to use a crypto exchange or hold private keys themselves to get price exposure to Zcash. They can buy that exposure directly through a U.S. stock brokerage account. According to the source piece, this is the first time a privacy coin has entered mainstream U.S. brokerage channels in spot ETF form.
Ravikant’s own connection to the project adds another layer to the story. He previously served on the Zcash Foundation board and was also an early investor in Electric Coin Company, the developer behind Zcash. Citing Protos, the article says the company raised about $3 million across its seed and venture rounds. Early participants also included Digital Currency Group’s Barry Silbert and Bitcoin Cash founder Roger Ver.
Because Grayscale sits under Digital Currency Group, the Barry Silbert link ties together early investment, trust products and the later ETF structure. In the article’s view, what the market is seeing is not just an old token suddenly exploding higher, but an asset that spent years in the background and has now, for the first time, gained something close to Bitcoin’s institutional entry point.
Traders are already modeling $6,000 and a $100 billion market cap
Once the token moved back into four-digit territory, forecasts grew more aggressive. Crypto trader and meme coin developer Zion Thomas, known as Ansem on X, wrote: 「When I first bought crypto, Bitcoin was around $3,000 and got to $20,000 a few months later. It is entirely possible that Zcash sees a similar move over the next 12 to 18 months.」
Using his math, the article says, a roughly 500% gain would take Zcash to around $6,000 and imply a market capitalization near $100 billion.
The piece is explicit that this is trader-style extrapolation, not an established outcome. Still, it argues the idea spreads because it combines two things the market is already primed for: the memory of a still-undervalued 2013 Bitcoin and Zcash’s current mix of privacy narrative, committed holders and ETF access.
Ansem also added: 「The hard money plus privacy-preservation thesis is now stronger than ever. Over the past decade, a very core holder base has formed, and they have absolutely no short-term selling target.」
That comment points to another distinction the article makes between Zcash and a typical altcoin. It is not portrayed as a one-week narrative followed by a quick exit. Many of the holders who stayed through the lows appear to treat it as long-term insurance rather than a short-term trading chip. If that portion of supply remains locked while new capital comes in, price moves can become unusually sharp.
The market is now testing whether Zcash can win a new pricing regime
The article argues that this rally cannot be reduced to a single privacy slogan. It lays out four strands at once: macro pressure around the dollar, fiscal expansion and conflict between Donald Trump and the Federal Reserve; a structural shift as Bitcoin becomes more institutional and no longer satisfies every user with its transparent ledger; a product change as Grayscale turns Zcash from a niche exchange-listed token into something investors can click to buy in a U.S. brokerage account; and a holding structure shaped by a decade-long core base that is not eager to sell.
Nick O’Neill says buying Zcash now looks like buying Bitcoin in 2013. Ansem says the next 12 to 18 months could produce a similar acceleration. The article also notes what those comparisons leave out: Bitcoin itself went through repeated brutal drawdowns after 2013.
Zcash is now back above $1,000. The question the market has to answer, as framed by the source piece, is not simply whether privacy can become a compelling story again. It is whether that story can keep supporting 「non-institutional Bitcoin」 style pricing once ETF access and institutional capital start to absorb it.
If the answer is yes, the $6,000 and $100 billion market-cap math will keep resurfacing. If the answer is no, the roughly 7,300% rebound from the 2024 low may end up being treated as an extreme bounce rather than the start of a new cycle.