Zcash climbed almost 30% to $788 on Saturday, extending a seven-day gain of more than 60% and lifting ZEC to more than three times the sub-$250 levels touched during the April market selloff.

The privacy-focused cryptocurrency, launched in 2016 and built on zk-SNARK zero-knowledge proofs that let users shield transaction details, traded as high as $848.65 over the past 24 hours, while trading volume jumped 263% to $2.52 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. Its market capitalization climbed to roughly $13.3 billion, moving Zcash to No. 11 among cryptocurrencies by market value.

Grayscale Advances Zcash ETF Filing

Fresh institutional interest has landed directly on ZEC. Grayscale's fourth amended registration statement, filed August 18, keeps the Grayscale Zcash Trust moving toward an NYSE Arca listing under the ticker ZCSH, the SEC filing shows.

Grayscale has navigated this route before. The firm converted its flagship Bitcoin Trust into a spot ETF in January 2024 after a federal appeals court rejected the SEC's denial of the conversion, and U.S. issuers have since expanded spot crypto funds across a widening set of tokens. A ZCSH listing would carry that pattern into the privacy-coin segment.

The filing also discloses nonbinding talks with DCG International Investments over a potential contribution of approximately 200,000 ZEC in exchange for trust shares once the registration becomes effective. That amount represents close to 1.2% of Zcash's current circulating supply. The remaining steps are procedural: the registration must become effective before shares can list on NYSE Arca, and the DCG contribution remains nonbinding until completed.

ZEC had already shown similar strength earlier this year, when a 36% rally carried the token to a fresh 2026 high near $600. The latest advance has now cleared that entire May trading range.

Winklevoss-Backed Miner Adds Fresh ZEC Demand

A second institutional catalyst arrived the same day as the Grayscale filing. Cypherpunk Technologies launched 4.2 GSol/s of Zcash mining capacity through a $33.33 million transaction with Winklevoss Capital, according to a company announcement.

Winklevoss Capital is the investment firm of Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who also co-founded the Gemini exchange, tying the ZEC mining exposure to one of crypto's longest-standing institutional names.

The company estimates that its new fleet controls roughly 18% of the Zcash network's total hashrate, creating one of the largest publicly disclosed corporate exposures to ZEC mining. Zcash's hashrate is measured in Sol/s — solutions per second produced by the network's Equihash mining algorithm.

The investment follows months of renewed interest in Zcash's privacy architecture. The debate intensified in May as ZEC returned to the center of the crypto privacy trade, with institutional products and shielded transactions receiving fresh attention. That interest comes against a backdrop in which privacy coins have faced periodic delistings and heightened regulatory scrutiny in several jurisdictions in recent years.

Ironwood Upgrade Meets Broader Crypto Rally

Zcash also entered the breakout with a major network upgrade behind it. Ironwood NU6.3 activated on July 28, introducing a new shielded pool and completing the network's response to the Orchard soundness vulnerability. Orchard is the shielded pool secured by Halo 2 zero-knowledge proofs, and Zcash lets users choose between transparent and shielded transactions — the design at the heart of the privacy debate.

The upgrade followed an earlier coordinated fix that restored Orchard after the critical shielded-pool flaw, removing a security overhang that had followed Zcash into the summer.

Broader market conditions amplified the move. Bitcoin surged through $74,000 as more than $3 billion in crypto shorts were liquidated, while Ethereum and large-cap altcoins pushed higher alongside it.

ZEC reached $848.65 during Saturday's session, its strongest level of 2026, after trading below $250 in early April.

Source: Crypto Adventure