Zcash has emerged as one of the standout performers in the sudden, broad-based cryptocurrency rally that shifted into high gear last week. The privacy-focused coin, launched in 2016, has surged 66% over the past seven days, reaching an eight-year high of $841 on Monday.

The rally gained momentum after investment manager Grayscale filed an amendment with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday to convert its existing Zcash Trust into an exchange-traded fund. If approved, the fund would trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ZCSH. The move follows a template Grayscale helped establish when it converted its flagship Bitcoin Trust into an ETF in January 2024, a shift that, together with the SEC's approval of spot bitcoin and ether ETFs, opened regulated brokerage access to crypto on a wide scale.

Zcash's strong performance comes against the backdrop of a wider market advance. Cryptocurrencies have risen sharply since Wednesday, posting gains not seen in nearly a year. The Treasury Department's bond-buyback announcement helped spark the move, while renewed political support for the industry and a wave of short-position liquidations pushed prices higher still. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market value, continued its climb and was trading just below $80,000 on Monday.

For Zcash, Grayscale's proposed ETF served as an additional catalyst. If approved, the fund would give investors a regulated way to gain exposure to ZEC, Zcash's native token, through their brokerage accounts, without having to buy or hold the token directly.

The outperformance has revived discussion over whether Zcash can emerge as a more prominent alternative to Bitcoin for investors seeking financial privacy. Unlike Bitcoin, Zcash allows users to shield transaction details — such as the sender, recipient, and transaction amount — using zero-knowledge cryptography. The zk-SNARK technology behind those shielded transfers, which Zcash was first to deploy at scale, has since spread across the industry, most prominently to Ethereum scaling networks known as zk-rollups.

Zcash supporters say the coin improves on Bitcoin by offering Bitcoin's fixed supply — Zcash also caps total issuance at 21 million coins — without the public ledger, and that as artificial intelligence grows, so will the risk of government surveillance. "Many are calling it 'perfect Bitcoin,'" Arjun Khemani, a cryptographer and engineer, wrote on X.

Influential crypto voices have also been speaking out about Zcash's use cases. During a meeting of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's Innovation Advisory Committee on Friday, Gemini co-founder Tyler Winklevoss pointed to Zcash as an example of how developers can use artificial intelligence to identify vulnerabilities in complex blockchain code and strengthen networks before malicious actors exploit them.

But Zcash's strongest feature is also its greatest limitation. Its privacy features make it harder for exchanges and law enforcement to trace illicit funds, potentially making Zcash a more attractive vehicle for money laundering or sanctions evasion. Privacy coins have drawn sustained regulatory scrutiny on that basis: exchanges in markets including Japan and South Korea have delisted ZEC and similar coins under anti-money-laundering pressure, and the global Financial Action Task Force has urged tighter oversight of so-called anonymity-enhancing cryptocurrencies. The SEC's pending review of the ZCSH conversion is the latest test of how regulators weigh financial privacy against traceability.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.