Zcash Price Surge to $979 Drives Record Mining Profitability and Near-Peak Hashrate

Zcash Hits $979 as Network Mining Power Nears All-Time Highs

On Thursday, the price of zcash ($ZEC) climbed to a new high of $979, gaining nearly 17% over the past 24 hours. The rally extends across longer timeframes as well: $ZEC has risen 64.7% over the past two weeks, 88.1% over the past 30 days against the U.S. dollar, and roughly 353% over the past six months. This sustained climb in dollar value has fueled the Zcash network's hashrate, which Bitcoin.com News previously reported coasting along at 27.87 GSol/s.

Zcash is a privacy-oriented cryptocurrency that launched in 2016 as a fork of the Bitcoin codebase, adding shielded transactions that use zero-knowledge proofs to conceal sender, recipient, and amount information. Its dollar value has fluctuated sharply across its history, with its prior all-time price high dating back to the speculative period of late 2017 and early 2018, when $ZEC traded above $800 shortly after launch-era supply constraints had pushed prices even higher in 2016.

Zcash Hashrate Holds Near Record Levels

GSol/s stands for gigasolutions per second. Zcash's proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm is Equihash, meaning miners on the protocol solve individual computational puzzles, or solutions, as their work. One GSol/s equals 1,000,000,000 solutions per second (Sol/s). Equihash was chosen at Zcash's inception for its memory-hard design, which was intended to make GPU mining more competitive against specialized hardware at the time, although ASICs built for the algorithm later came to dominate the network.

Following the mining report published on Aug. 25, data from coinwarz.com shows the network's hashrate peaked on Aug. 28 at 27.9 GSol/s, reached at block height 3,463,689. As of press time on Sept. 3, the network's computational power is running at 91% of its all-time high.

The reason the Zcash network is posting peak hashrate levels is straightforward: $ZEC's price has recorded massive gains. That, in turn, has amplified mining profitability and placed zcash mining rigs among the most attractive hardware on the market. Data gathered Thursday evening shows the most profitable application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miner today is Bitmain's Z15 Pro, a $ZEC miner.

Bitmain's Z15 Pro Tops Mining Profitability Rankings

The Z15 Pro is an upgrade over the original Z15. The older unit produces around 420 KSol/s, while the new miner delivers 840 KSol/s. Neither model is currently purchasable through Bitmain's shop — the Z15 Pro is sold out, and the Z15 is likewise unavailable. Bitcoin.com News did, however, find resellers offering the Z15 Pro at a premium above Bitmain's $4,999 list price.

At current zcash ($ZEC) prices, asicminervalue.com estimates a Z15 Pro earns roughly $59.09 per day, while the Z15 generates around $29.25 in daily profit. The Z15 Pro ranks as the most profitable ASIC, and the Z15 stands as the fourth-highest-earning ASIC on the market.

Bitmain also offers a mid-range machine producing 525 KSol/s, the Antminer Z15K. At current $ZEC prices, the Z15K is estimated to earn about $35.14 per day. That unit is also unavailable for purchase on Bitmain's shop. Notably, the third most profitable ASIC mines monero ($XMR), another privacy token that has also seen a substantial price rise.

The profitability of $ZEC and $XMR mining appears driven less by a privacy vision and more by what generates returns. With $ZEC mining rewards highly profitable at current levels, it is natural for hashpower to flow into the network at a rapid rate. However, if $ZEC's price declines, much of that hashpower could disappear just as quickly.