21Shares launched Europe's first Zcash exchange-traded product (ETP) on Euronext Paris and Amsterdam on Tuesday, carrying a 2.5% annual fee. The debut coincided with a strong session for the underlying token, with ZEC climbing above $1,600.

Dual Euronext listing, ETHFI product alongside

The Zcash ETP trades in euros on Euronext Paris and in US dollars on Euronext Amsterdam under the ticker ZCASH, with ISIN CH1608218801, according to a September 22 press release from 21Shares. The product is physically backed, meaning the issuer holds the underlying ZEC with third-party custodians. That structure gives investors exposure to ZEC through a standard brokerage account on a regulated exchange, without the need to hold the token in a crypto wallet.

The firm also launched a physically backed ETP tracking ETHFI, the governance and utility token of the restaking protocol ether.fi, at the same 2.5% annual fee.

"Zcash offers something truly distinct by combining Bitcoin's capped supply with optional privacy and future-proof cryptography," said Jasmin Muelhaupt, director of financial product development at 21Shares. The issuer is a subsidiary of prime broker FalconX.

Zcash, which launched in 2016, uses zero-knowledge proofs — cryptographic methods that can verify a transaction without revealing its contents — to make privacy optional rather than mandatory for users.

Market cap reaches $27.6 billion

ZEC traded at about $1,629 on Wednesday, up roughly 7% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. On September 23, the token's market capitalization reached about $27.6 billion, ranking ninth among all crypto assets. The advance cleared ZEC's year-to-date high of $1,590 set on September 18, after the token had pulled back to $1,429 and found support above $1,440.

Network adoption has also reached a milestone: more than 30% of all ZEC ever created, roughly 4.9 million coins, is now held in shielded pools — the highest share ever recorded for the network. Shielded pools are the protocol's confidential transaction layer, where zero-knowledge proofs conceal amounts and participants, so the record share reflects how of the supply is actually sitting in private, obscured addresses.

US counterpart and fund flows

The European listing follows the US debut of Zcash exposure. Grayscale's ZCSH, the first US spot Zcash ETF, launched on NYSE Arca on August 25, according to Cryptopolitan. ZCSH is executing a 3-for-1 share split, with a record date of September 28 and trading on a post-split basis from September 30. Earlier this month, the fund recorded a single-session inflow of $46.56 million, its second-highest daily inflow since inception, as net assets pushed close to $917 million.

Regulated access to privacy-focused tokens has been limited, with several exchanges having delisted privacy coins in certain jurisdictions amid tightening anti-money-laundering requirements — making the new US and European fund wrappers a comparatively recent channel for such exposure.

Leveraged positioning has accompanied the rally: a trader running a 50x long on Aster DEX was reportedly up 1,581% on a $224,000 position.