Zcash Surges 20% to Reach $1,000 Milestone as Short Sellers Lose $34 Million
Key Takeaways
- •Zcash rose about 20% in 24 hours to around $1,023, bringing its market value to nearly $17 billion.
- •Approximately $34.5 million in short positions were liquidated as the price surge forced bearish leveraged traders to close their positions.
- •$ZEC has gained about 94% in the past 30 days and more than 2,300% over the past year, with futures open interest reaching roughly $2.3 billion.
- •Grayscale's spot Zcash ETF (ZCSH) began trading on NYSE Arca in late August, giving the privacy coin a regulated mainstream investment vehicle.
- •A Digital Currency Group subsidiary was in non-binding talks to purchase 200,000 $ZEC, and new Zakura node tools reduced private transaction build times on mobile to under 200 milliseconds.
Zcash ($ZEC) jumped roughly 20% over the past 24 hours to trade near $1,000 on Friday, extending a rally that has nearly doubled the privacy token's price over the past month.
According to CoinGecko, $ZEC climbed as high as approximately $1,023 after beginning the day around $828. Trading volume over 24 hours reached about $1.2 billion, while the token's market value rose toward $17 billion.
The move caught traders betting against the token off guard. Roughly $36.6 million in leveraged $ZEC positions were liquidated over the past 24 hours, with $34.5 million of that coming from shorts, according to liquidation data. A short liquidation occurs when a rising price forces an exchange to close a trader's bearish position because there is no longer enough collateral to keep it open. Such liquidations can add fuel to an already rising market, since closing a short requires buying the token back.
$ZEC has gained about 94% over the past 30 days and more than 2,300% over the past year, making it one of the strongest-performing large crypto assets over that period. Open interest in $ZEC futures climbed to roughly 2.3 million $ZEC, worth approximately $2.3 billion, as traders piled into derivatives alongside the spot rally.
Recent catalysts behind the move include both technical and institutional developments. Grayscale's spot Zcash ETF began trading on NYSE Arca in late August under the ticker ZCSH, converting a trust that had previously been open only to accredited investors into a fund that anyone with a brokerage account can buy. The listing is notable for a privacy coin: Zcash uses zero-knowledge cryptography to shield transaction details, a design that has historically kept privacy-focused tokens at arm's length from mainstream US financial products, and the ETF gives the asset a regulated on-ramp that did not previously exist.
Separately, Digital Currency Group, which owns Grayscale, was in non-binding talks through a subsidiary to purchase 200,000 $ZEC, as reported by CoinDesk.
The network itself has also been getting faster. Developers behind Zakura, a Zcash node launched in July, released cryptography tools earlier this month that cut the time a wallet spends building a private transaction from more than three seconds to under 200 milliseconds on mobile — part of a broader push to make the chain fast enough for everyday payments. Faster private transactions address one of the long-standing practical objections to shielded payments, where heavy proving computations have traditionally made privacy slower and costlier than transparent transfers.
With $ZEC now trading at levels last seen well before the broader crypto market drawdowns of recent years, attention turns to whether the combination of a listed ETF, prospective institutional purchases, and usability upgrades can sustain the token's momentum.
