Chainfeeds Summary:
In a bear market where the crypto narrative is weak, they joined forces to bring ZEC back into the spotlight.
Article source:
https://www.odaily.news/post/5210899
Article Author:
Odaily
Opinion:
Odaily: In the past few years, ZEC has been delisted or restricted from trading on exchanges in many countries and placed on Binance's watch list. While not as completely detached from the mainstream as ZEC, it has long been on the fringes of regulatory and compliance systems. However, things have changed this year: the SEC ended its investigation, Grayscale is pushing forward with ETFs, Robinhood has launched trading, Foundry has launched its own mining pool, listed companies are openly accumulating ZEC, and Hyperliquid whale are long. ZEC is transitioning from a marginal anonymous asset back into an institutionally tradable asset. In mid-January of this year, the US SEC officially ended its investigation into the Zcash Foundation and explicitly stated that it would not take enforcement action. This is a landmark event for the privacy coin sector, which has long been under regulatory pressure. In the past few years, the market has questioned whether privacy coins can legally exist in the financial system, especially after privacy coins such as XMR have been continuously delisted. ZEC has also been regarded as a high-risk asset. The SEC's change of attitude is a major turning point. On May 8th, Grayscale officially submitted its first Zcash spot ETF application to the SEC, pushing ZEC's market capitalization into the top 15 of the crypto market, briefly surpassing Cardano. Tushar Jain, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, stated that this move reflects the market's expectation of increased demand for privacy assets under the proposed US wealth tax legislation. For ZEC, this may mean that Wall Street is beginning to consider privacy coins as a long-term asset allocation option. Against this backdrop, privacy tokens like ZEC are regaining attention and are even being viewed by some funds as alternative privacy assets to Bitcoin. In early May, US Bitcoin spot ETFs saw a net outflow of $268 million, with some of this capital shifting towards privacy and AI infrastructure tokens. Besides changes in market sentiment, what truly provides ZEC with sustained liquidity is the substantial financial backing from ZEC's treasury company, Cypherpunk Holdings. In March of this year, Cypherpunk Holdings, the Nasdaq-listed ZEC treasury company, released its fiscal year 2025 report. The report disclosed that as of March 12, 2026, the company held 294,743.1 ZEC tokens, representing approximately 1.78% of the total circulating supply, with an average purchase price of $335.89. The financial report showed that the company's net profit reached $4.8 million in fiscal year 2025, primarily due to approximately $50.4 million in unrealized gains from the fair value of ZEC tokens in the company's treasury. Meanwhile, Zcash Open Development Lab, founded by former Electric Coin Company CEO Josh Swihart, completed a funding round of over $25 million in early March.
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