Zcash (ZEC) Tests $1,176 Support as Derivatives Leverage Unwinds

COINOTAG Update — October 24, 2026, 13:41 UTC

Zcash (ZEC) was trading at $1,161.03 as of the 13:41 UTC reading on October 24, 2026, down 5.70% over the trailing 24 hours, according to COINOTAG market data. The decline was more than four times as steep as Bitcoin's 1.14% loss over the same span, although ZEC held its position as the ninth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

The pullback left the token trading below the $1,176 level, which the report's headline framed as a support test amid an unwind of derivatives leverage. Unwinds of this are a recurring mechanism in crypto trading: when leveraged positions are closed out or liquidated, the resulting forced selling can accelerate short-term price moves beyond what spot flows alone would produce. Traders commonly monitor indicators such as open interest and funding rates to gauge how much borrowed exposure is being cleared during these episodes, and a falling open-interest reading paired with funding rates drifting back toward neutral is generally treated as a sign that the liquidation phase is subsiding.

Background on Zcash

Zcash is a privacy-focused digital asset that launched in October 2016 as a fork of the Bitcoin protocol. Its defining feature is the use of zero-knowledge proofs, known as zk-SNARKs, which allow the network to verify transactions without disclosing the sender, recipient, or amount. ZEC holders can send "shielded" transactions that keep these details confidential, or "transparent" transactions that behave like those on conventional public blockchains. Privacy-focused assets form a small but closely watched segment of the industry, as their confidentiality features have kept them under recurring policy and compliance discussion across jurisdictions, while the zero-knowledge techniques Zcash helped popularize have since informed privacy and scaling designs across the broader market.

The asset's market-cap rank — currently ninth — is a standard gauge of relative size among digital assets, derived by multiplying circulating supply by the latest traded price. In this session, ZEC's 5.70% one-day drop against Bitcoin's comparatively modest 1.14% decline underscored the performance gap between the privacy-oriented token and the market's largest asset, with the $1,161.03 print serving as the latest reference point while the derivatives deleveraging process ran its course.

This article was first published on COINOTAG: https://en.coinotag.com/zcash-zec-tests-1176-support-as-derivatives-leverage-unwinds