Author: Curry, Deep Tide TechFlow
If you've been browsing English Crypto Twitter lately, you've likely seen ZEC all over the screen.
Names like Naval, Arthur Hayes, Mert Mumtaz, Balaji, and Cobie are popping up repeatedly around the same topic. Coupled with Multicoin Capital's public announcement of a significant position and multiple privacy-focused panels at Consensus Miami, ZEC's social media buzz over the past week has reached its highest point since the rally at the end of 2025.
The price has already run ahead of the narrative. At the time of writing, ZEC is trading around $580, with gains exceeding 110% over the past 30 days and cumulative year-to-date gains surpassing 1500%. Its market cap has exceeded $9.5 billion, overtaking the veteran privacy coin Monero (XMR) and climbing into the top 20 on CoinGecko.
On May 6th, ZEC surged nearly 30% in a single day, triggering over $62 million in short liquidations, with shorts accounting for $46.7 million of that.
So the question is: What's driving this wave?
Multicoin's Heavy Position: "Bitcoin is Censorship-Resistant, But It Can't Stop a Wealth Tax"
The most direct catalyst came from Multicoin Capital.
On May 6th, Multicoin Capital co-founder and managing partner Tushar Jain publicly stated during a panel at Consensus Miami that the firm had built a "significant position" starting in February. He didn't disclose the specific size but provided a clear investment logic framework.
In a subsequent long post on X, Jain wrote: "Bitcoin is censorship-resistant; nobody can freeze your BTC or stop you from using it. But it does not stop governments from confiscating known holdings via a wealth tax."
His direct evidence is California's Initiative 25-0024 proposal, which aims to impose a one-time 5% wealth tax (including unrealized gains) on residents with a net worth exceeding $1 billion, expected to raise approximately $100 billion.
Jain's core thesis is: Bitcoin is insurance against fiat currency, but its on-chain balances are completely transparent; a tax agency with a blockchain explorer can see everything. ZEC's shielded pool, using zero-knowledge proof technology, hides the sender, receiver, and amount, making on-chain assets invisible to external observers.
"We think there is clear product-market fit for truly private, censorship- and seizure-resistant assets, and demand is accelerating," Jain wrote, "Zcash is the cleanest way to express this thesis in public markets."
This represents a clear shift in stance for Multicoin.
In 2019, the fund published an article arguing that "privacy is a feature of valuable cryptocurrencies, not a standalone product," suggesting users shouldn't sell BTC or ETH to buy ZEC just for privacy.
Seven years later, this public statement looks like they are betting real money to overturn their past conclusion.
KOLs Rally, Arthur Hayes Calls for "10% of BTC's Price"
The seeds for this ZEC narrative were actually planted in the second half of 2025.
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant (also an early Zcash investor), Helius founder Mert Mumtaz, along with other top crypto KOLs like Balaji Srinivasan and Cobie, began voicing strong support for ZEC intensively starting last fall.
Naval tweeted in October last year: "Bitcoin is insurance against fiat. Zcash is insurance against Bitcoin."
Hayes's stance was more aggressive. At Consensus 2026, he bluntly stated ZEC's long-term target price should be "10% of Bitcoin's price." Based on BTC's current price of around $80,000, this implies a target of approximately $8,000 for ZEC, representing over 13x upside from the current price. Tyler Winklevoss also endorsed a thesis this week targeting $9,700 for ZEC based on capturing offshore wealth.
These calls themselves might not be reliable investment advice, but their concentrated emergence indicates one thing: the top capital and top voices in the English-speaking crypto space are simultaneously tilting towards the privacy sector.
The Quantum-Resistant Narrative at Consensus Miami
If Multicoin and the KOLs provided catalysts on the capital and narrative fronts, the release of the technical roadmap at Consensus Miami gave the market a fundamental story.
At a dedicated privacy panel on May 8th, Zcash Open Development Lab founder and CEO Josh Swihart announced that quantum-recoverable wallets will launch within a month, and Zcash plans to achieve full post-quantum security within 12 to 18 months.
The logic here is: the ECDSA signature algorithm used by most cryptocurrencies today will become vulnerable once quantum computing matures. A more dangerous scenario is the "harvest now, decrypt later" strategy, where adversaries record encrypted data now and decrypt it later when quantum hardware is available. For a privacy coin whose entire value proposition is built on the confidentiality of transaction data, this is an existential threat.
Swihart also disclosed that since the ECC wallet integrated Near Intents cross-chain swap functionality last October, $6-7 billion has flowed in and out through this channel, primarily swapping for dollars and USDC. Zcash's shielded pool currently holds about 30% of the circulating ZEC supply, the highest level in history.
Institutional Entry Signals: Grayscale ETF, Robinhood Listing, Foundry Mining
Beyond Multicoin's heavy position, ZEC is accumulating more institutional-level catalysts.
Grayscale has filed for a ZEC spot ETF, still awaiting an SEC ruling. Grayscale has previously stated publicly that ZEC's upside potential is closely tied to the "repricing of financial privacy in an AI-driven world."
Robinhood recently listed ZEC for trading, opening up a retail gateway. Foundry (under Digital Currency Group) announced the launch of large-scale ZEC mining pool operations. This is the second asset supported by the company after Bitcoin, adding credibility to ZEC's mining security and institutional acceptance.
On the on-chain data front, Santiment data shows retail investor interest in privacy coins is rising, driven by tighter exchange compliance rules and growing data tracking concerns. In a March report, CoinDesk Research stated that Zcash has reached a "encryption supremacy" tipping point, driven by the convergence of three forces: AI tools can de-anonymize users on transparent blockchains by tracking transaction patterns, the threat of quantum computing to current crypto wallet security is becoming more real, and quarterly trading volume has surpassed $100 billion.
However, The Team That Built Zcash Has All Left
The catalysts above paint a bullish picture, but one fact shouldn't be ignored: the core team that built Zcash is gone.
In January of this year, Electric Coin Company (ECC) CEO Josh Swihart and the entire ECC team resigned collectively, citing governance conflicts with the Bootstrap Project board and characterizing the departure as "constructive discharge." ECC was the core organization that created and maintained Zcash. The team's departure means the chain is now operating without its original engineering team.
Therefore, what's more apparent with ZEC currently is that the narrative hype is far outpacing the fundamentals. KOL calls, fund heavy positions, consecutive Consensus panels—these are stories of capital and attention, but on-chain public transaction volume hasn't grown much.
Because transactions in the shielded pool are, by design, invisible, you can't use on-chain data to distinguish between "real adoption" and "speculative capital sitting idle."
But lacking fundamentals is the norm for most coins. In this wave of "old guard coin" revival, ZEC is undoubtedly one of the brightest stars, but it likely won't be the last.
