Author: Curry, TechFlow TechFlow
If you've been browsing English Crypto Twitter lately, you've probably seen a screen full of ZEC again.
Naval, Arthur Hayes, Mert Mumtaz, Balaji, Cobie and other big names appeared in the same topic in turn, coupled with Multicoin Capital's public announcement of a large investment and multiple privacy-related panels at Consensus Miami, ZEC's social media buzz reached its highest point since the rally at the end of 2025 in the past week.
Price has already outpaced the narrative. As of press time, ZEC is priced at approximately $580, with a more than 110% increase over the past 30 days and a year-to-date increase of over 1500%. Its market capitalization has surpassed $9.5 billion, exceeding that of the established privacy coin Monero (XMR), and it has risen into the top 20 on CoinGecko.
On May 6, ZEC surged nearly 30% in a single day, triggering more than $62 million in short selling liquidation, of which short sellers accounted for $46.7 million.
So the question is: what is driving this wave?
Multicoin heavily invests: "Bitcoin can resist censorship, but it can't stop property taxes."
The most direct catalyst came from Multicoin Capital.
On May 6, Tushar Jain, co-founder and managing partner of Multicoin, publicly stated on Consensus Miami's panel that the company had established a "significant position" since February of this year. He did not disclose the specific size, but provided a clear framework for the investment logic.
In a subsequent long post on the X platform, Jain wrote: "Bitcoin is censorship resistant; no one can freeze your BTC or prevent you from using it. But that doesn't stop governments from seizing known holdings through property taxes."
His direct argument is California's Initiative 25-0024, which proposes a one-time 5% wealth tax (including unrealized gains) on residents with a net worth exceeding $1 billion, and is expected to raise approximately $100 billion.
Jain's core argument is that Bitcoin acts as an insurance against fiat currency, but its on-chain balance is completely transparent; a tax agency with a blockchain explorer could see everything. ZEC's shielded pool uses zero-knowledge proof technology to hide the sender, receiver, and amount, making on-chain assets invisible to external observers.
"We believe that truly private, censorship-resistant, and forfeiture-resistant assets have a clear product-market fit, and demand is accelerating," Jain wrote. "Zcash is the cleanest way to express this argument in the open market."
This represents a clear shift in stance for Multicoin.
In 2019, the fund wrote an article arguing that "privacy is a valuable feature of cryptocurrencies, not an independent product," and that users should not sell their BTC or ETH to buy ZEC in order to gain privacy.
Seven years later, this public statement looks like a rebuttal of his previous conclusions with real money.
Key opinion leaders (KOLs) collectively endorsed the move, with Arthur Hayes predicting a 10% reduction in the price of Bitcoin.
The seeds of this ZEC narrative were actually sown in the second half of 2025.
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant (also an early investor in Zcash), Solana infrastructure company Helius founder Mert Mumtaz, and other leading crypto KOLs such as Balaji Srinivasan and Cobie have been speaking out in support of ZEC since last fall.
Naval tweeted last October: "Bitcoin is insurance against fiat currency, Zcash is insurance against Bitcoin."
Hayes's stance was even more aggressive. At Consensus 2026, he stated bluntly that ZEC's long-term target price should be "10% of Bitcoin's price." Based on BTC's current price of approximately $80,000, this corresponds to a ZEC target price of around $8,000, representing more than 13 times the current price. Tyler Winklevoss also endorsed a $9,700 target price for ZEC this week, suggesting it could capture offshore wealth.
These shill for investment advice may not be reliable investment advice in themselves, but their concentrated appearance illustrates one thing: the top funds and voices in the English-language crypto circle are simultaneously shifting towards the privacy sector.
Quantum-resistant narratives at Consensus Miami
If Multicoin and KOLs provide catalysts in terms of funding and narrative, the release of the technology roadmap at Consensus Miami gives the market a fundamental story.
Josh Swihart, founder and CEO of Zcash Open Development Lab, announced at the Privacy Track session on May 8 that quantum-recoverable wallets will be launched within a month, and Zcash plans to achieve full post-quantum security within 12 to 18 months.
The logic here is that the ECDSA signature algorithm currently used by most cryptocurrencies will become vulnerable once quantum computers mature. An even more dangerous scenario is the so-called "harvest now, decrypt later" strategy, where an adversary records encrypted data now and then decrypts it once quantum hardware is available. For a privacy coin whose value proposition is entirely based on the confidentiality of transaction data, this is a survival-level threat.
Swihart also disclosed that since the ECC wallet integrated the Near Intents cross-chain exchange function last October, $600 to $700 million has flowed in and out through this channel, primarily for the US dollar and USDC. Zcash's privacy pool currently holds approximately 30% of the circulating ZEC, a record high.
Institutional entry signals: Grayscale ETF, Robinhood launch, Foundry mining
In addition to its heavy investment in Multicoin, ZEC is accumulating more institutional-level catalysts.
Grayscale has submitted an application for a ZEC spot ETF and is currently awaiting the SEC's ruling. Grayscale has previously stated publicly that ZEC's upside potential is closely related to "the repricing of financial privacy in an AI-driven world."
Robinhood recently launched ZEC trading, opening up access to the retail market. Foundry (a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group) announced the launch of a large-scale ZEC mining pool, the company's second asset backed after Bitcoin, further endorsing ZEC's mining security and institutional recognition.
At the on-chain data level, Santiment's data shows that retail investors' interest in privacy coins is rising, driven by tightening exchange compliance rules and increasing concerns about data tracking. A CoinDesk Research report released in March stated that Zcash has reached a tipping point for "encryption supremacy," driven by three converging forces: AI tools can deanonymize users on transparent blockchains by tracking transaction patterns; quantum computing poses a growing threat to the security of current crypto wallets; and quarterly transaction volume has surpassed $100 billion.
However, the entire team that built Zcash has left.
The aforementioned catalysts paint a bullish picture, but one fact should not be overlooked: the core team that built Zcash is no longer around.
In January of this year, Electric Coin Company (ECC) CEO Josh Swihart and the entire ECC team resigned, citing governance conflicts with the Bootstrap Project board. This departure was characterized as a "constructive discharge." ECC is the core organization responsible for creating and maintaining Zcash, and its departure means the chain is operating without its original engineering team.
Therefore, what's more obvious right now with ZEC is that narrative hype far outpaces fundamentals. shill, heavy fund holdings, and Consensus's numerous panel discussions all contribute to stories of capital and attention, but there's been little growth in on-chain public transaction volume.
Because transactions in the privacy pool are not visible by design, you cannot use on-chain data to distinguish between "real adoption" and "speculative fund accumulation".
However, the lack of fundamentals is the norm for most cryptocurrencies. In this wave of recovery for older cryptocurrencies, ZEC is arguably the most outstanding, but it's unlikely to be the last.
