Leading privacy coins are showing surprising strength amid the broader market slump, as investor interest in anonymity-focused assets gains fresh momentum.
Zcash (ZEC) jumped 7.6% over the past 24 hours to hit a new eight-year high of $388, according to data from CoinMarketCap. The surge pushed ZEC’s market capitalization to $6.2 billion, allowing it to overtake Monero (XMR) as the largest privacy-centric cryptocurrency.
Zcash’s 45% weekly gain comes in stark contrast to the wider crypto market, which remains in consolidation following the collapse of a long-anticipated U.S.–China tariff deal on Thursday.
The rally underscores a renewed wave of investor demand for privacy-preserving digital assets, which enable users to conceal transaction details and maintain greater financial anonymity.
Privacy coins like Zcash (ZEC) and Monero (XMR) are built to conceal transaction details — including sender, receiver, and amount — offering a level of anonymity far beyond pseudonymous cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. While Bitcoin transactions remain publicly traceable on-chain, privacy-focused tokens are specifically engineered to obscure wallet addresses and transaction histories.
Arthur Hayes’s $10,000 ZEC prediction
Zcash’s surge to an eight-year high follows a bold forecast from BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, who recently predicted that ZEC could climb to $10,000. The projection fueled renewed excitement around the token, driving a sharp rally from $272 to $355 within hours of his post on Sunday, according to Cointelegraph.
Despite rising demand, whale activity suggests profit-taking may already be underway.
According to data from Nansen, the number of ZEC holders has jumped 63% over the past week to 1,968, reflecting a surge in retail and smaller investor participation. However, whale wallets — large holders typically responsible for significant market moves — have offloaded roughly $702,000 worth of ZEC during the same period, signaling a possible near-term cooling in momentum even as overall interest in the token continues to climb.
“Crazy to see how $ZEC has pulled a 10x in just two months, completely decoupling from the market and ignoring overall sentiment,” said Simon Dedic, founder and managing partner at Moonrock Capital.
Dedic added that Zcash’s surge was particularly notable given its scale:
“I want to emphasize that this isn’t some shitcoin — it’s a multibillion-dollar asset. That makes this kind of performance even more remarkable,” he wrote in a Friday post on X.
