Zcash breaks $1,000 — "Buying now is like buying Bitcoin in 2013"?

Original Author: Billy Bambrough, Forbes

Original Translation: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

Bitcoin has finally crawled out of this year's slump over the past month.

The price has climbed back above $80,000 per coin, up about 20% since mid-August. The market is simultaneously trading on the "possibility of the US resuming large-scale money printing" narrative while digesting sharper warnings: some have described the US fiscal trajectory as a "death spiral" of approximately $40 trillion. Macro narratives have reignited, and capital is crowding into hard assets and crypto assets.

Right at this juncture, US President Trump has once again opened fire on the Federal Reserve. Bitcoin is moving, but the asset that has truly posted extreme gains is an older and more niche play: Zcash, a privacy-focused Bitcoin competitor.

Within a few weeks, Zcash's price has more than doubled. From its 2024 low, the gain is approximately 7,300%. This week, it climbed back above $1,000 per coin for the first time since shortly after its launch in 2016. It has more than doubled over the past month and is up nearly 2,500% compared to the same period last year.

The most easily spread phrase in crypto circles has naturally followed.

Meme coin trader and NFT developer Nick O'Neill wrote on X: "I'm convinced that buying Zcash now is like buying Bitcoin in 2013."

That's a bold statement, and it hits the market sentiment right in the sweet spot. Bitcoin in 2013 was far from the institutional asset it later became; it was more like an experiment that had yet to be priced in. What Zcash is being compared to now isn't today's Bitcoin, but the Bitcoin that hadn't yet been fully co-opted by Wall Street.

It's Not a New Coin — It Has Simply Been Overlooked by the Market for Years

Zcash is what's known as a privacy coin. Technically forked from Bitcoin, it adds a critical layer of capability: making transaction sources, destinations, and amounts much harder to trace.

Bitcoin lays its ledger completely bare. Who sent what to whom, and how much — it's all visible on-chain. Analytics firms, exchanges, and regulators can all trace down addresses. Zcash takes a different path, using zero-knowledge cryptography to conceal transactions — the chain can prove a transaction is valid, but it can't necessarily reveal where the funds came from or where they're going.

In 2022, Forbes disclosed that the famous whistleblower Edward Snowden participated in the co-creation of Zcash. Early Bitcoin developers and crypto pioneers were also involved, led by cryptographer Zooko Wilcox.

This narrative thread has always existed — it's just that for a long time, no one was willing to price it. Privacy coins have long lived under regulatory shadows, with thin trading depth, and mainstream capital tends to view the narrative as "something best avoided." Near the 2024 low, Zcash was knocked down to around a dozen dollars. Two years later, it's back above $1,000 — and what the market remembers isn't the technical whitepaper, but the sheer contrast itself.

The More Bitcoin Becomes an Institutional Asset, The More Zcash Becomes Its Opposite

Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan told CoinDesk this week: "Zcash tells a very unique privacy story."

His next point is even more critical: "I think the more Bitcoin moves into the institutional market, it's going to spin off a portion of the market that wants something outside the institutional system. Zcash is filling that role."

This is the clearest logic in this market cycle.

Over the past few years, Bitcoin has undergone an identity shift: spot ETFs, Wall Street research coverage, pension funds, and asset management products entering the space. It increasingly resembles a macro asset that can be held in a compliant manner. But once an asset becomes institutionalized, ledger transparency ceases to be merely a "decentralization virtue" and becomes a trait some participants don't want — every flow can be seen, analyzed, and categorized.

So the market has begun to open a separate valuation box for "hard currency outside the public ledger."

This box didn't appear just this year. Last year, tech investor and AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant made it clear on X: Bitcoin is "insurance against fiat currency," and Zcash is "insurance against Bitcoin." Ravikant, an early backer of companies like Uber and Twitter, sparked a round of repricing for Zcash with that statement.

Over the past year, Zcash's gains have left Bitcoin far behind. Not because it's more mainstream than Bitcoin, but precisely because it has been re-understood as: the portion of demand that still wants to remain in the shadows after Bitcoin walks into the institutional living room.

Grayscale Brings the Privacy Narrative to US Stock Accounts

Narratives can light the fire, but it takes channels to spread the flames.

Last month, Grayscale, under Digital Currency Group, launched a spot Zcash ETF on NYSE Arca. For everyday traders and investors, this means something very concrete: no need to go to a crypto exchange or self-custody private keys — you can get direct price exposure to Zcash right in your US stock account.

This is the first time a privacy coin has entered mainstream US brokerage channels in the form of a spot ETF.

Ravikant's own role also makes this thread more compelling. He previously served on the Zcash Foundation's board and was an early investor in Zcash development company Electric Coin Company. According to Protos, the company raised approximately $3 million in seed and venture rounds. Early Bitcoin and crypto figures also participated, including Digital Currency Group's Barry Silbert and Bitcoin Cash founder Roger Ver.

Grayscale is under the Digital Currency Group umbrella. The Barry Silbert thread connects early investments, trust products, and the later ETF. What the market sees isn't just an old project suddenly surging, but an asset that has been dormant for years now having access to an institutional on-ramp comparable to Bitcoin's for the first time.

Some Are Already Working Backward to a $100 Billion Market Cap

Once the price hits $1,000, predictions get bolder.

Crypto trader and Meme coin developer Zion Thomas (known as Ansem on X) wrote: "The first time I bought cryptocurrency, Bitcoin was around $3,000, and a few months later it hit $20,000. It's entirely possible for Zcash to see a similar move over the next 12 to 18 months."

By his math, if a roughly 500% gain materializes, Zcash would surge to around $6,000 per coin, with a market cap of approximately $100 billion.

This is, of course, trader-style extrapolation, not an established fact. But in this market cycle, that statement spreads because it layers two things together: first, the memory of 2013 when assets were "not yet fully priced in"; and second, the fact that Zcash now simultaneously possesses the privacy narrative, a core holding base, and an ETF channel.

Ansem added an even bolder point: "The logic of hard currency combined with privacy preservation is stronger now than ever before. Over the past decade, a very core group of holders has formed, and they have no short-term selling targets at all."

This highlights the difference between Zcash and ordinary altcoins. This isn't an asset driven by a one-week narrative and two-week distribution. Many holders who survived near the lows treat this as long-term insurance, not short-term trading chips. When the circulating supply is locked up by such holders, price elasticity becomes particularly dramatic when external incremental capital comes in.

What the Market Is Really Betting On Now: The Next Layer of Pricing Power

Laying out all the threads in this article, Zcash's current surge isn't driven solely by the word "privacy."

On one side is the macro picture: dollar credit, fiscal expansion, and conflicts between Trump and the Fed are making "hard assets" sellable again.

On another side is structure: as Bitcoin gets absorbed by institutions, the transparent ledger no longer satisfies everyone.

On another side is product: Grayscale has transformed Zcash from a small coin on crypto exchanges into exposure that can be directly clicked and purchased in US stock accounts.

On yet another side is holdings: the core holders accumulated over a decade aren't in a hurry to sell in the short term.

Nick O'Neill says "it's like buying Bitcoin in 2013," and Ansem says another acceleration similar to 2013 could come in the next 12 to 18 months. Both statements are provocative, and both inadvertently reveal the risks — Bitcoin after 2013 still went through halving after halving, with multiple 50% drawdowns along the way.

Right now, Zcash has climbed back above $1,000. The real question the market needs to answer isn't whether it can tell the privacy story again, but whether — after this story has been picked up by ETFs and institutional capital — it can continue to be priced as "non-institutional Bitcoin."

If it can, the $6,000 price point and $100 billion market cap will be repeatedly pulled out for calculations.

If it can't, this rally of approximately 7,300% from the 2024 low will ultimately be viewed as an extreme rebound rather than the starting point of a new cycle.