Grayscale said on September 18 that it plans a 3-for-1 forward split of its Zcash ETF (ZCSH), the first U.S. fund tracking a privacy coin. The move will triple each holder's share count without changing what their stake is worth.

The plan was disclosed in a press release, and further fund information is published on the fund's official website.

What the split means for shareholders

Under the arrangement, anyone holding ZCSH at the market close on September 28 will receive two additional shares for each share they already own. The new shares are to be distributed after the market closes on September 29, and post-split trading is set to begin before the opening bell on September 30, the effective date.

Forward share splits are a routine corporate action: the per-share price is adjusted down in the same proportion as the share count rises, leaving a holder's total position value and the fund's overall assets unchanged. No new assets are created and the fund's structure does not change. Issuers generally carry out such splits to bring the per-share price down to a level more accessible to smaller buyers, while the fund's underlying economics stay exactly the same.

From trust to ETF

ZCSH originated as Grayscale's long-running Zcash Trust. Grayscale, a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, is best known for its Bitcoin Trust, which converted into a spot Bitcoin ETF in January 2024. The firm converted the Zcash Trust into an exchange-traded fund under the ticker ZCSH and listed it on NYSE Arca on August 25, according to Cryptopolitan. Coinbase Custody holds the coins, and the fund carries a 2.5% annual fee, roughly ten times what a spot Bitcoin ETF charges.

The first-of-its-kind listing carries added industry weight: privacy coins have drawn regulatory scrutiny in the United States and other jurisdictions, and several major exchanges have delisted tokens with built-in transaction shielding in recent years.

Grayscale said on September 8 that the fund's assets had passed $500 million following the debut, up from the roughly $260 million the fund listed with. In a September 17 Medium analysis of the fund, Austin Liu said that much of the total was money already sitting in the trust before conversion, with roughly $70 million in fresh outside inflows and a $100 million allocation from DCG International Investments, a unit of Grayscale parent Digital Currency Group.

By early September, the fund held more than 550,000 ZEC, close to 3% of the coin's total supply.

How ZCSH works

Zcash is a privacy-oriented cryptocurrency that launched in 2016, developed by Electric Coin Co. It lets users choose between transparent addresses, which are similar to Bitcoin, and shielded addresses, which hide the sender, receiver, and amount involved in the transaction.

Liu wrote in his Medium post, however, that the fund only holds coins in transparent Coinbase wallets, so every single one can be checked on the public blockchain.

ZEC price context

Cryptopolitan reported that ZEC was trading near $50 a year ago and crossed $1,000 on September 4. A separate Cryptopolitan report says the coin is now near $1,500 after a roughly 20% increase on Thursday.