🚨 ZEC is increasing in price, but don't treat Zcash like cash. 📌On on-chain privacy is a real need. Crypto is often expected to bring financial sovereignty, but on-chain reality shows that transactions are far from invisible. Traces remain through public ledgers, network analytics, and exchange data. Therefore, on-chain privacy is increasingly important, especially as financial oversight, CBDCs, and stricter regulation intensify from 2026 onwards. As tools, solutions like Zcash and Monero have real utility: they help to cut traces and protect users. 📌“Private Bitcoin” is a misnomer. The problem stems from the narrative. In 2025, ZEC is projected to increase by approximately +661% year-to-date and be labeled the "privacy Bitcoin." This comparison is fundamentally flawed. Bitcoin's market Capital of over $1.7 trillion is not due to its functionality, but rather to its network effect and first-mover advantage, which have locked down the currency game. "Paying" is a collaborative game with a winner-take-most outcome; history has not seen any sustainable "second-rate currencies." Therefore, the most reasonable privacy solution is to layer it on top of BTC (L2/protocol/mixer), which cannot replace the established monetary foundation. 📌 Data shows that ZEC is the path, not the destination. on-chain data confirms this. In 2025, the shielded ZEC supply increased from approximately 11% to 30% (approximately 5 million ZEC), but most of the activity was shield/deshield (in/out of the pool) rather than z-to-z or long-term holding. Despite a price increase of over 900% from Dip, daily active wallets were only around 11,500, lacking a corresponding surge in new users. Monero also didn't experience a surge (≈ 20,000–30,000 transactions/day), suggesting this wasn't a general shift towards privacy, but rather a specific supply squeeze for ZEC as the coin was locked in pools and lacked liquidation. CoinDesk Research notes that traders are paying a large premium because network data doesn't explain pricing. 📌 Use ZEC for its intended Vai . Privacy is a vital need for the period 2026+, but ZEC is not money. ZEC is suitable for use as a privacy tool: shielding, trading, leaving a trail, and then exiting to BTC/stablecoin/fiat. ZEC should not be valued like Bitcoin. Confusing the instrument with the underlying currency can easily lead to sharp corrections when the narrative reverses. ✍️ According to Pine Analytics