Today’s rally is back on the agenda, questioning why the value of the privacy-focused altcoin Zcash (ZEC) has risen this much.
ZEC price has increased by 33% in the past 24 hours and 433% in the last month. This is an unusual number for an altcoin with a market capitalization of $1 billion.
Listed on Binance, Coinbase, and many other centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, altcoins date back to the early days of the cryptocurrency market. Founded in 2016, ZEC is based on the Bitcoin codebase and its price reached an all-time high of around $3,000 due to limited supply at the time.
After Ethereum switched to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, Zcash became one of the most important representatives among altcoins with a proof-of-work consensus mechanism, along with Bitcoin.
Interestingly, the cryptocurrency, which had remained below $100 for many years, hit an all-time low of $15 in July 2024. Therefore, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, launched a delisting vote for ZEC in April last year, and as one of the winners of this vote, the altcoin was spared from being delisted by Binance.
A chart showing ZEC price changes over the past few months.
Binance and other crypto exchanges are under pressure to delist, especially in Europe, because ZEC and other privacy tokens are difficult to trace.
However, a similar privacy token, Monero (XMR), has not experienced the same surge as ZEC recently. XMR has also been delisted from many major cryptocurrency exchanges.
So what is the cause of Zcash’s recent surge? There are multiple factors that could account for this. Recently, there has been renewed interest in privacy infrastructure in the cryptocurrency market. Additionally, Electric Coin Company, the company behind ZEC, has recently implemented a number of technology updates. Analysts at Galaxy Digital also pointed out that ZEC is starting to be seen as a BTC alternative by some users because it uses Bitcoin’s codebase.
Zcash allows users to “hedge” transactions with zero-knowledge proofs, and the network’s ability to support anonymous activity has attracted the interest of some people who are concerned about Bitcoin becoming centralized with Wall Street adoption or wary of on-chain surveillance.
*This is not investment advice.
