15x Surge This Year – Can ZEC Still FOMO On?
- Core Thesis: Privacy coin Zcash (ZEC) has recently surged over 110% in the past month, driven by heavy investment from Multicoin Capital, public endorsements from multiple prominent crypto KOLs, and institutional catalysts (such as ETF filings, Robinhood listing). However, the project’s core team has collectively resigned, revealing a clear divergence between its narrative hype and fundamental reality.
- Key Factors:
- Price & Market Performance: ZEC surged over 110% in the past 30 days and 1,500% year-to-date, with its market cap exceeding $9.5 billion, overtaking Monero. On May 6th, a single-day surge of nearly 30% led to over $62 million in short liquidations.
- Investment Thesis Support: Multicoin Capital publicly disclosed a large position, arguing that Zcash's privacy pool can conceal transactions using zero-knowledge proofs, positioning it as the cleanest hedge against the "risk of property taxes arising from Bitcoin's transparency."
- KOL-Driven Narrative: Influential figures like Arthur Hayes and Naval Ravikant have been vocal. Hayes suggested a ZEC price target could reach "10% of Bitcoin's price" (approximately $8,000), drawing significant market attention.
- Anticipated Tech Upgrades: The Zcash development team announced plans to launch a quantum-recoverable wallet and achieve comprehensive post-quantum security within 12-18 months to counter the "harvest now, decrypt later" threat.
- Signals of Institutional Entry: Grayscale filed for a ZEC spot ETF, Robinhood listed the asset for trading, and Foundry launched mining pool operations, providing the asset with institutional credibility and retail access.
- Risk of Core Team Departure: The core development team, Electric Coin Company, collectively resigned in January 2024, leaving Zcash's current operations without the support of its original engineering team. There is a mismatch between fundamental reality and narrative excitement.
Author: Kyle, Deep Tide TechFlow
If you've been scrolling through English Crypto Twitter recently, you've almost certainly seen ZEC plastered everywhere.
Big names like Naval, Arthur Hayes, Mert Mumtaz, Balaji, and Cobie are all popping up under the same topic. Coupled with Multicoin Capital publicly announcing a heavy position and multiple privacy-focused panels at Consensus Miami, ZEC's social media buzz has hit its highest point in the past week since the rally at the end of 2025.
The price has already run ahead of the narrative. As of writing, ZEC is trading at approximately $580, up over 110% in the last 30 days and over 1500% year-to-date. Its market cap has surpassed $95 billion, overtaking the veteran privacy coin Monero (XMR) and climbing into the top 20 on CoinGecko.
On May 6, ZEC surged nearly 30% in a single day, triggering over $62 million in short liquidations, with shorts accounting for $46.7 million of that total.
So the question is: what's driving this wave?
Multicoin's Heavy Bet: "Bitcoin is Censorship-Resistant, But It Can't Stop Property Tax"
The most direct catalyst came from Multicoin Capital.
On May 6, Tushar Jain, co-founder and managing partner of Multicoin Capital, publicly stated during a panel at Consensus Miami that the firm has built a "significant position" since February of this year. He didn't disclose the exact size but laid out a clear investment logic framework.
In a subsequent long post on X, Jain wrote: "Bitcoin is censorship-resistant. No one can freeze your BTC or prevent you from using it. But this doesn't stop the government from seizing known holdings via property taxes."
His direct evidence was California's Initiative 25-0024, a proposal to impose a one-time 5% wealth tax (including unrealized gains) on residents with a net worth exceeding $1 billion, expected to raise approximately $100 billion.
Jain's core thesis is: Bitcoin is insurance against fiat, but its on-chain balance is completely transparent. A tax authority with a blockchain explorer can see everything. ZEC's shielded pool, using zero-knowledge proof technology, hides the sender, receiver, and amount, making on-chain assets invisible to outside observers.
"We believe there is clear product-market fit for truly private, censorship-resistant, and seizure-resistant assets, and demand is accelerating," Jain wrote. "Zcash is the cleanest way to express this thesis in the public markets."
This marks a clear shift in stance for Multicoin.
In 2019, the fund argued in a post that "privacy is a feature of valuable cryptocurrencies, not a standalone product," suggesting users shouldn't sell BTC or ETH to buy ZEC just for privacy.
Seven years later, this public declaration looks like they're using real money to overturn their own past conclusions.
KOLs Rally Behind ZEC, Arthur Hayes Targets "10% of Bitcoin's Price"
The seeds of this ZEC narrative were actually planted in the second half of 2025.
Since last fall, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant (also an early Zcash investor), Helius (a Solana infrastructure company) founder Mert Mumtaz, along with Balaji Srinivasan, Cobie, and other top crypto KOLs, have been vocally supporting ZEC.
Naval tweeted in October last year: "Bitcoin is insurance against fiat. Zcash is insurance against Bitcoin."
Hayes' 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 around $80,000, this implies a ZEC target of ~$8,000, representing over 13x upside from current levels. Tyler Winklevoss also endorsed a thesis this week valuing ZEC at $9,700 for capturing offshore wealth.
These call-outs can't necessarily be taken as investment advice on their own, but their concentrated appearance indicates one thing: Top-tier capital and influential voices in the English-language crypto space are simultaneously tilting towards the privacy sector.
The Post-Quantum Narrative at Consensus Miami
If Multicoin and the KOLs provided the capital and narrative catalysts, the technical roadmap unveiled at Consensus Miami gave the market a fundamental story.
Josh Swihart, CEO and founder of Zcash Open Development Lab, announced during a privacy track session on May 8 that quantum-recoverable wallets would go live within a month, and Zcash plans to achieve full post-quantum security within 12 to 18 months.
The logic here is: The ECDSA signature algorithm used by most current cryptocurrencies becomes vulnerable once quantum computers mature. A more dangerous scenario is the "harvest now, decrypt later" strategy, where adversaries record encrypted data now, waiting for quantum hardware to crack it later. For a privacy coin whose value proposition relies entirely on the confidentiality of transaction data, this is an existential threat.
Swihart also disclosed that since the ECC wallet integrated the Near Intents cross-chain swap feature last October, between $600 million and $700 million has flowed in and out through this channel, primarily swapped against the dollar and USDC. Zcash's shielded pool currently holds approximately 30% of circulating ZEC, the highest level in history.
Institutional Entry Signals: Grayscale ETF, Robinhood Listing, Foundry Mining
Beyond Multicoin's heavy position, ZEC is accumulating more institutional-level catalysts.
Grayscale has submitted an application for a ZEC spot ETF, currently awaiting SEC determination. Grayscale previously stated publicly that ZEC's upside potential is closely linked to "the repricing of financial privacy in an AI-driven world."
Robinhood recently listed ZEC for trading, opening up a retail on-ramp. Foundry (a Digital Currency Group subsidiary) announced the launch of a large-scale ZEC mining pool operation, the second asset it supports after Bitcoin, adding a layer of endorsement for ZEC's mining security and institutional acceptance.
On the on-chain data front, Santiment data shows that retail investor interest in privacy coins is rising, driven by tightening exchange compliance rules and growing concerns over data tracking. A report released by CoinDesk Research in March this year stated that Zcash has reached a critical point of "encryption supremacy," powered by three converging forces: AI tools capable of deanonymizing users on transparent blockchains by tracking transaction patterns, the increasingly tangible threat of quantum computing to current crypto wallet security, and quarterly transaction volume exceeding $100 billion.
However, The Team That Built Zcash Is All Gone
The catalysts above paint a bullish picture, but one fact shouldn't be ignored: The core team that built Zcash is no longer there.
In January this year, Electric Coin Company (ECC) CEO Josh Swihart and the entire ECC team resigned en masse, citing governance conflicts with the Bootstrap Project board, characterizing the departure as a "constructive discharge." ECC is the core organization that created and maintains Zcash. Its team's departure means this chain is operating without its original engineering team.
So currently, ZEC's narrative heat is clearly running far ahead of its fundamentals. KOL call-outs, fund heavy positions, consecutive Consensus panels – these are stories of capital and attention, but on-chain public transaction volume hasn't seen much growth.
Because transactions within the shielded pool are invisible by design, you can't use on-chain data to distinguish between "real adoption" and "speculative capital parking."
However, lacking solid fundamentals is the norm for most coins anyway. In this wave of "old guard coin" revival, ZEC is arguably the most prominent, but it's likely not the last.
