ZEC jumped 18% in the past 24 hours to roughly $1,479. A month back, it traded near $485. A year ago, about $51. Using the figures TechFlowPost cited, that works out to roughly a 25x gain over the past year. Market cap has now hit $25 billion, pushing ZEC into ninth place across the wider crypto market.
TechFlowPost says the current run comes from at least three things hitting at once: Grayscale’s spot ETF, the NU7 upgrade vote, and a short squeeze driven by derivatives. Its basic read is blunt: leverage matters most right now, narrative matters over the medium term, and ETF inflows plus on-chain privacy use matter over a longer stretch.
Grayscale’s spot ETF opened ZEC to a broader investor base
On Aug. 25, Grayscale’s spot Zcash ETF, ticker ZCSH, started trading in the US. The article calls it the first regulated spot investment product linked to ZEC. Within two weeks, assets under management had gone past $400 million.
TechFlowPost argues the main issue is not the headline dollar amount. Against a $25 billion asset, $400 million by itself is not enough to explain the whole move. What changed, in its telling, is who can buy. Before the ETF launch, ZEC buyers were mostly crypto-native investors and miners. After the listing, traditional investors using brokerage accounts could get exposure too, without handling private keys or going anywhere near a crypto exchange.
The piece treats that as a lasting structural change. Once an asset stops being available to just one buyer group and becomes available to several, the demand curve gets lifted for good.
The NU7 vote strengthened the “Bitcoin-like scarcity” case
Results from the NU7 community vote, covering both ZCAP and token-holder voting, were released on Sept. 14. Roughly 2.4 million ZEC participated.
TechFlowPost points to four results:
- The halving model remains. About 96.5% of voters rejected a “smooth issuance curve” and chose to keep Bitcoin-style halvings every four years.
- NSM reissuance was delayed until February 2031. The article says 96.6% supported postponing the reissuance of ZEC collected through the Network Sustainability Mechanism until that date.
- Fee burning will be added to the protocol. The piece says 78% supported burning part of transaction fees through NSM, bringing in a deflationary mechanism similar to Ethereum’s EIP-1559.
- Faster block production under Project Tachyon got near-unanimous backing. Some 99.3% voted to ship as soon as possible and cut unfinished features, choosing speed over completeness.
In TechFlowPost’s view, those choices push ZEC’s economic design closer to a mix of capped supply, halvings, fee burning, and delayed reissuance. The article frames that as a shift toward becoming “Bitcoin with privacy features,” instead of “a privacy tool with blockchain functions.” And it argues this narrative turn may be one of the market’s most underpriced catalysts in the current rally.
$3.55 billion in open interest points to leverage as the short-term driver
As of Sept. 17, CoinGlass data cited in the article showed ZEC futures open interest at $3.55 billion, an all-time high. Twenty-four-hour futures volume was $14.45 billion, versus $1.61 billion in spot volume. Liquidations during the same period came to about $67.36 million.
TechFlowPost slices those figures a few ways. First, the futures-to-spot volume ratio sits around 9:1. In the article’s reading, that means leveraged traders, not spot buyers, are doing most of the price discovery. If funding flips positive or longs start taking profit, leverage can just as easily work the other way. Fast.
Second, open interest equals about 14.2% of market capitalization. The article says that is high for a major token. For comparison, it places BTC’s OI-to-market-cap ratio at roughly 2% to 4%, and ETH’s at about 3% to 5%. On that basis, leverage participation in ZEC is unusually heavy.
Third, liquidation flow has skewed sharply toward shorts. When ZEC moved above $1,000 on Sept. 6, one-day short liquidations hit $46 million, according to the article. Then on Sept. 11, a 5.6% hourly jump came with $28.9 million in liquidations, again mostly shorts. TechFlowPost says the last leg of the rally seems to have been driven higher largely by forced short covering, not broad fresh spot demand.
Chun Wang says the move is narrative-driven
F2Pool co-founder Chun Wang is quoted in the article as saying, “ZEC’s rise is narrative-driven, and the fundamentals do not match its current market ranking.”
TechFlowPost says he also pointed to long-running disputes over token distribution, governance, and security, adding that the Orchard privacy protocol vulnerability in June was one example.
The three forces do not carry equal weight
The article does not present these drivers as equally important.
It describes the ETF as a structural floor. It makes the asset easier to access and sets a lower bound for long-term demand, but the marginal effect of $400 million in AUM spread across daily buying is limited.
It labels the NU7 vote a medium-term narrative amplifier. Keeping halvings, burning fees, and delaying reissuance lock in the “Bitcoin-like scarcity” story for at least four years. That may support multiple expansion, the article says. But it does not explain the 176% gain over the past month.
For the short term, TechFlowPost says leverage is the main force. Record open interest, a 9:1 futures-to-spot ratio, and a rally pushed by short liquidations all point the same way. Once most shorts are flushed out, or once longs start taking profit, that force can reverse in hours.
Risk remains high at current levels
The article says ZEC’s daily RSI is near 70, which puts it in overbought territory. Its 200-day moving average is $586, leaving the current price more than 150% above that mark. A nine-year high means there is no overhead supply from previously trapped holders acting as resistance. But there is also no nearby support zone tested by history.
TechFlowPost adds a more pointed risk case: if the Grayscale ETF posts net outflows in the coming weeks while leveraged longs start unwinding and open interest shrinks quickly from $3.55 billion, the token could face a pullback as violent as the run up.
The article closes with a simple order of priorities for what to watch next: leverage in the short term, narrative in the medium term, and ETF inflows plus on-chain privacy usage over the long term.
It also carries a disclaimer saying the piece is not investment advice. ZEC is still highly volatile, and leverage participation is at a historical high, so investors should judge risk for themselves.