Zcash Tops $1,000 as Arthur Hayes and Others Back the Privacy Trade

The Chart Arthur Hayes Could Not Stop Crying Over

At 22:18 UTC on Thursday, Arthur Hayes posted a one-hour chart showing ZEC at $1,021.69, adding:

“I was going to retire my bloodline, but then I was ‘zidelined’.”

The chart tells the story as zcash bottomed near $250 in early June, spent July between $400 and $580, then went vertical after Aug. 21. By Thursday night, it was printing four digits, a level the privacy coin has not seen since its launch spike in late 2016.

Where the Numbers Stand Now

At press time, ZEC is changing hands at about $1,010 after a 24-hour high of $1,046. The 30-day gain is 98%, the 12-month gain 2,296%, and the market cap sits at $17 billion, enough to rank 11th and edge past dogecoin’s $13.4 billion. For scale, bitcoin’s price slipped 1.4% over the same 24 hours to about $79,700, so this is not a beta trade on the broader market.

The move ran over leveraged bears as roughly $34.5 million in short positions were liquidated on Friday, as open interest peaked near $2.15 billion. One year ago, ZEC traded around $40, but by March it was at $200.

Bitcoin.com News has been tracking the run-up through August, as ZEC first climbed 82% from about $472 to a peak near $890 on Aug. 30. That was the month Grayscale converted its nine-year-old Zcash Trust into ZCSH, the first U.S. spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) holding the token.

ZCSH began trading on NYSE Arca on Aug. 25 with a 2.5% fee that Grayscale says it will route back into the Zcash ecosystem. By Sept. 3, the fund held $414.7 million in assets, up from $304 million at conversion.

Who Is Buying, and Why

Hayes is the loudest owner, but he was not the only one talking on Thursday.

• Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise, told media there are three crypto stories worth owning right now, namely bitcoin for currency debasement, zcash for privacy, and a decade-long tokenization super cycle running through ETH, SOL and UNI.
• Qiao Wang, Alliance DAO founding partner, said on the Steady Lads podcast on Aug. 29 that his personal crypto portfolio holds only bitcoin and zcash. Stocks make up 70% to 80% of his net worth and crypto 20% to 30%, yet on a risk-adjusted basis he says the zcash position rivals his entire equity book.

That said, a coin that has risen 2,300% in a year does not need a reason to drop, especially in a market like crypto. Moreover, open interest above $2 billion means the liquidation engine can swing either way. Lastly, ZCSH’s 2.5% fee is steep by ETF standards and could cap inflows once the novelty fades. Interesting few weeks ahead for zcash, to say the least.