Zcash ($ZEC) has risen roughly 20% in the past 24 hours and traded around $1,000 on Friday, continuing a rally that has nearly doubled the price of this privacy token in the past month.
According to CoinGecko, $ZEC started the day around $828 before trading around $1,023. Trading volume reached about $1.2 billion in 24 hours, and the token's market value rose to $17 billion.
The move caught traders betting against the token off guard. Data shows that around $36.6 million in leveraged $ZEC positions were liquidated in the past 24 hours, with $34.5 million of that coming from short positions. 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.
Short sellers took on nearly all the pain from Zcash's jump. Source: Shaurya Malwa.
This could add fuel to an already rising market, as closing a short position requires buying back the token. $ZEC has gained about 94% over the past 30 days and over 2,300% over the past year, making it one of the best-performing major crypto assets over that period.
Open interest in $ZEC futures rose to around 2.3 million tokens worth roughly $2.3 billion, as traders piled into derivatives alongside the spot rally.
The catalyst for the move has been both technical and institutional developments in recent weeks.
In late August, Grayscale's spot Zcash ETF began trading on NYSE Arca under the ticker ZCSH, turning a trust that was previously only open to accredited investors into a fund that anyone with a brokerage account can buy.
Furthermore, Digital Currency Group, which owns Grayscale, has been in optional talks via a subsidiary to purchase 200,000 $ZEC.
The network itself has gotten faster. Earlier this month, developers for Zakura, a Zcash node launched in July, released encryption tools that cut the time a wallet takes to create a private transaction from over three seconds to less than 200 milliseconds on mobile devices, part of a push to make the blockchain fast enough for everyday payments.
