Grayscale Points to Zcash Among Six Privacy Coins to Watch

TheNewsCryptoPublished on 2025-12-30Last updated on 2025-12-30

Abstract

Grayscale's Q4 2025 report highlights six top-performing privacy-focused cryptocurrencies: Zcash, Monero, Dash, Decred, Basic Attention Token, and Beldex. Zcash led not only the privacy segment but the entire Top 20 assets tracked. The Shield Pool, a core privacy feature of Zcash, reached a record high with over 5 million ZEC (30% of supply) locked, indicating strong holder confidence despite price volatility. ZEC’s price rebounded over 70% in December, reinforcing its privacy value proposition. Institutional interest is shifting toward privacy assets amid growing data breach scandals. Grayscale forecasts continued growth in 2026, driven by integration with DeFi and Web3 applications.

Grayscale has identified six privacy-focused cryptocurrencies as standout performers in its Q4 2025 report. The investment firm, one of the largest cryptocurrency asset managers globally, highlighted Zcash, Monero, Dash, Decred, Basic Attention Token, and Beldex as leading assets during the quarter.

Zcash led not only the privacy segment but the entire Top 20 universe tracked by Grayscale. The quarter was characterized as a consolidation phase following strong growth periods, yet privacy coins outperformed most other categories during this timeframe.

Zcash Shield Pool activity reaches record levels

Data from zkp.baby shows the amount of ZEC locked in the Shield Pool surpassed 5 million tokens, accounting for approximately 30% of circulating supply. This marks a new all-time high for the privacy feature.

The Shield Pool functions as a core component of Zcash’s architecture. Users convert ZEC from transparent addresses to shielded addresses through this mechanism, providing enhanced privacy for transactions.

The amount of ZEC in Shield Pools remained around 4.8 million throughout November. This stability persisted while ZEC’s price declined by nearly 60% at one point. The data suggests holders maintained positions through volatility rather than selling during downturns.

December brought a price rebound exceeding 70% for Zcash. Shield Pools simultaneously set new all-time highs. These developments appear to have reinforced investor confidence in the asset’s privacy value proposition.

Arthur Hayes, former CEO of BitMEX and prominent cryptocurrency investor, issued a bullish outlook on ZEC. “The tears of the bears shall be my sustenance. ZEC first stop $1,000,” Hayes stated.

Institutional focus shifts toward privacy assets

Grayscale’s Q4 report emphasized that institutional interest is shifting toward assets offering stronger privacy features. This trend intensifies as data breach scandals continue surfacing across technology platforms and traditional finance systems.

The investment firm reported that privacy-related tokens dominated the Top 20 performer list during Q4 2025. The six highlighted coins each delivered returns that exceeded most other cryptocurrency categories during the consolidation period.

Grayscale forecasts continued growth for the privacy coin segment throughout 2026. Integration with decentralized finance protocols and Web3 applications is expected to drive this expansion as developers build privacy features into mainstream blockchain applications.

From Gas Limit to 'Keyed Nonces', How to Understand the Next Step in Ethereum Scalability?

Ethereum’s scalability efforts are shifting toward a user-centric approach—focusing not only on higher TPS, but on translating technical upgrades into lower costs, smoother operations, and better wallet experiences. Two recent developments highlight this direction: - **Raising the Gas Limit to 200 million**: Following the Fusaka upgrade that increased it to 60 million, a consensus has formed around a potential future increase to 200 million. This would boost Ethereum’s execution capacity, but it is planned alongside other upgrades—such as ePBS, Block-Level Access Lists (BAL), and EIP-8037—to manage state growth and keep node operation viable for average participants. - **Keyed Nonces (EIP-8250)**: This proposal aims to improve how transactions are queued. Instead of a single linear nonce per account, it introduces multiple independent nonce domains. This prevents different types of transactions—such as private payments, session keys, or batch operations—from blocking each other. Vitalik Buterin views this as a foundational step toward better privacy support and more flexible state scalability. Together, these upgrades are part of a broader move to push complexity from wallets, DApps, and relays back into the protocol layer. For everyday users, this means future Ethereum interactions could become less congested, more intuitive, and safer—especially as core improvements in account abstraction, cross-L2 interoperability, and node decentralization continue to progress. Ultimately, Ethereum is evolving to handle not just more transactions, but more varied and complex on-chain use cases while preserving its decentralized foundation.

marsbit9m ago

From Gas Limit to 'Keyed Nonces', How to Understand the Next Step in Ethereum Scalability?

marsbit9m ago

Leaving OpenAI, How Much Has Their Net Worth Increased?

Former OpenAI employees have collectively accrued near-trillion dollar valuations through ventures and investments, charting AI's future. The article highlights two main paths: founding high-value companies like Anthropic and Perplexity, or applying insider insights as investors. Leopold Aschenbrenner exemplifies the investor path. After being fired from OpenAI, he leveraged firsthand knowledge of AI's massive energy demands to make hugely successful public market bets on nuclear and fuel cell companies, practicing "cross-industry cognitive arbitrage." Other alumni, like the Zero Shot VC fund founders, use their technical foresight for early-stage investing. Their key advantage lies not just in picking winners, but in knowing which technical approaches are likely dead ends—a "veto list" derived from internal OpenAI experience. Angel investing within the network, as seen with Mira Murati and Sam Altman, operates on deep, pre-existing understanding of a founder's capabilities, reducing due diligence to near zero. This creates an ecosystem bound by a shared belief in AGI's imminent arrival, differing from networks like the "PayPal Mafia" which were built on shared past struggles. The shift of these builders to investors signals a profound conviction: their situational awareness of the AI landscape is now so clear that deploying capital based on that judgment is more efficient than building themselves. They are allocating bets on the future they helped shape from the inside.

marsbit20m ago

Leaving OpenAI, How Much Has Their Net Worth Increased?

marsbit20m ago

BASIS.pro Is Live: Base58Labs Officially Launches Crypto Arbitrage Platform

Following successful private testing, BASE58 LABS has officially launched its crypto arbitrage platform, BASIS.pro. The platform is powered by the proprietary Base58 Hyper-Latency Engine (BHLE), designed for high-frequency execution with sub-50 microsecond latency. It identifies and captures pricing discrepancies across exchanges, distributing net profits to users through a staking model, while the company absorbs any losses. Extensive testing focused on the system's deterministic behavior and capital preservation under unstable market conditions like latency spikes and partial execution failures, prioritizing outcome consistency over forced execution. The platform operates under several compliance certifications (ISO/IEC 27001, SOC, GDPR) and currently supports BTC, ETH, SOL, and PAXG, converting them 1:1 into stTokens for reward accrual. BASIS positions itself as execution-layer infrastructure, addressing a structural gap for consistent, risk-managed arbitrage deployment in fragmented digital asset markets.

TheNewsCrypto47m ago

BASIS.pro Is Live: Base58Labs Officially Launches Crypto Arbitrage Platform

TheNewsCrypto47m ago

Countdown to the AI Bull Market? Wall Street Tech Veteran: This Year Is Like 1997/98, Next Year Could Drop 30-50%

"AI Bull Market Countdown? Wall Street Veteran: This Year Feels Like 1997/98, Next Year Could Drop 30-50%" In an interview, veteran tech analyst Dan Niles draws parallels between the current AI boom and the 1997-98 period of the internet boom, suggesting the bull run isn't over yet. The core new driver is identified as "Agentic AI," which performs multi-step tasks and consumes vastly more computing power than conversational AI. This shift is expected to boost demand for cloud infrastructure and benefit CPU makers like Intel and AMD, potentially pressuring GPU leader Nvidia. However, Niles warns of significant short-term overbought conditions in semiconductors. His central warning is for a potential major market correction of 30-50% starting in early 2027. Drivers include a slowdown from high growth comparables, the outsized capital demands of companies like OpenAI, and a wave of massive tech IPOs sucking liquidity from the market. A J.P. Morgan survey of 56 global investors aligns with this view, finding that 54% expect a >30% U.S. stock correction by 2027. Among mega-cap tech, Niles favors Google due to its full-stack AI capabilities and cash flow, expresses concern about Meta's user growth, and sees potential for Apple's AI Siri and foldable iPhone. Niles advises investors to be nimble, hold significant cash, and closely monitor the conflicting signals from equities, oil prices, and bond yields, which he believes cannot all be correct simultaneously.

marsbit53m ago

Countdown to the AI Bull Market? Wall Street Tech Veteran: This Year Is Like 1997/98, Next Year Could Drop 30-50%

marsbit53m ago

福布斯：美国39万亿美元债务「危机」或将引发比特币暴涨

Forbes: U.S. $39 Trillion Debt "Crisis" Could Trigger Bitcoin Surge The article discusses warnings from financial figures like Ray Dalio and analysts at JPMorgan about the potential collapse of the U.S. dollar due to unsustainable debt and deficits. This scenario is seen as potentially driving a massive shift of capital from traditional safe havens like gold into Bitcoin. Key points include the U.S. spending $7 trillion annually against $5 trillion in revenue, leading to a debt-to-income ratio of six times; net interest payments on the national debt reaching $628 billion this year; and predictions that the dollar may lose its reserve currency status within 50 years. The piece highlights Bitcoin's role as "digital gold" amid geopolitical tensions like the Iran conflict, noting its 30% surge and inflows into Bitcoin ETFs outpacing those for gold ETFs. Figures like Stanley Druckenmiller and Elon Musk are cited for their critical views on the dollar's future and their speculative support for cryptocurrencies.

marsbit1h ago

marsbit1h ago

Trading

Spot

Futures