Using ZEC as a pawn: The "open conspiracy" of Bitcoin miners

Whenever ZEC comes up, people always sigh and call it a legendary coin.

At the end of September 2025, ZEC was still at $53. Back then, it was a privacy coin the market had forgotten for four years. It had been in a steady decline from $290 in 2021 to below $30, and no one mentioned it. Another privacy coin, Monero, had been delisted by dozens of exchanges in succession, and everyone silently assumed ZEC was next. Everyone was waiting for it to die.

Then, starting that month, ZEC pumped 12x.

Over 8 months, ZEC rose from $53 all the way to $600, briefly touching $740. Its market cap surged from under $1 billion to nearly $10 billion, pushing it back into the top 15 cryptocurrencies.

Everyone saw ZEC going up, but most attributed it to the "privacy narrative" or the public endorsements of heavyweights like Naval, Arthur Hayes, Mert Mumtaz, Balaji, and Cobie.

However, the author believes the more important backdrop and factor behind ZEC's rise is that Bitcoin miners are collectively manipulating the ZEC market.

Every Major ZEC Rally Marks a BTC Mid-Term Top

The first to notice that "every major ZEC rally coincides with a BTC mid-term top" were some old-school BTC traders on Twitter.

Every time ZEC has a significant surge, BTC tends to hit a mid-term high within the same period. Once or twice could be coincidence, but what about four times?

At the end of 2017, ZEC surged from $200 to $870. That same month, BTC peaked at $19,000. Both topped out almost simultaneously at the end of December, then entered a year-long bear market together.

From late 2020 to early 2021, ZEC went from $50 to $220. BTC simultaneously hit its first mid-term top around $64,000. When BTC corrected to $30,000, ZEC fell back to $100.

In Q4 2021, ZEC rose again from $100 to $290. BTC eventually peaked at $69,000 that run. Then both entered a three-year bear market together.

In the current cycle, ZEC has gone from $53 to over $600, while BTC is repeatedly testing resistance around the $125,000 to $127,000 level.

Technical analysis trader Killa (@KillaXBT) also identified and pointed out this pattern.

More notably, this pattern doesn't hold as strongly for other major coins. ETH's highs don't synchronize with BTC's as precisely. Let alone newer coins like SOL or AVAX. ZEC is almost unique in its ability to "time" BTC's cycle tops in this way.

ZEC's price pump seems orchestrated to match BTC's rhythm. As BTC approaches a top, ZEC launches. After BTC peaks, ZEC enters a correction phase.

Coming back to the present.

ZEC's daily trendline has broken. BTC is oscillating around the $75,000 level. If BTC breaks below $75,000, the market generally considers this cycle's mid-term top as basically confirmed.

If historical patterns continue to hold, we are now in the window for the fourth ZEC-BTC resonance top.

The question then becomes, why does this pattern exist? Why ZEC, and not another coin?

The answer might be hidden in the mining pool rankings.

ZEC Mining Pools: Another Game Set Up by BTC OGs

Open a ZEC block explorer and look at the hash rate distribution over the past 7 days: ViaBTC 34.2%. Foundry 27.74%. F2Pool 12.82%. 2Miners 7.58%. Antpool 6.8%.

The top 5 mining pools account for 89.14%. Among them, 4 pools – ViaBTC, Foundry, F2Pool, Antpool – control a combined 81.6% of the hash rate.

These 4 mining pools share a common identity: they are all veteran mining pools ranked in the top 10 of the BTC network's total hash rate. Let's introduce them one by one.

ViaBTC, which commands 34.2% of ZEC's hash rate, was founded in Shenzhen in May 2016 by Yang Haipo, an early employee of Bitmain.

After leaving Bitmain, Yang Haipo started his own venture. During the 2017 BCH fork, he was one of its staunchest supporters. ViaBTC mined the first BCH block. Following this battle, Yang Haipo, alongside Roger Ver, was seen as a representative figure of the BCH camp. ViaBTC has consistently been a top 5 global BTC mining pool. Besides the mining pool business, Yang Haipo founded the CoinEx exchange in 2017, and later the ViaWallet, ViaBTC Capital fund, and the CoinEx Smart Chain public chain, creating a complete crypto ecosystem.

Foundry, holding 27.74%, is the mining arm of the DCG empire and perhaps the most critical player in this whole story.

Foundry Digital is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Digital Currency Group (DCG). DCG is the crypto conglomerate founded by Barry Silbert, which also owns Grayscale, Genesis Trading, and CoinDesk.

Foundry USA Pool is the world's largest Bitcoin mining pool, consistently accounting for 28% to 32% of BTC's total hash rate. Its clients are nearly all publicly traded mining companies in North America: Marathon, Riot, CleanSpark, Hut 8, Core Scientific. These companies, due to compliance requirements, cannot use Chinese mining pools, making Foundry their only option. It can be said Foundry doesn't just sell hash rate. It sells "compliance". SOC 1 Type 2 certification, institutional-grade reporting, SLA support. This is the mining infrastructure service that listed miners can buy.

Now, let's look at Foundry's move into ZEC. On March 11, 2026, Foundry announced it would launch a ZEC mining pool. It officially went live on April 13.

In one month, its hash rate share went from 0 to 27.74%. This is arguably the fastest hash rate migration in ZEC mining history.

Before Foundry entered, ViaBTC alone commanded 68% of the hash rate. After Foundry joined, ViaBTC's share dropped to 34%. Nearly all of the newly added 28% was captured by Foundry. This North American institutional capital formally took over a significant chunk of ZEC's mining infrastructure in just one month.

Next is F2Pool, holding 12.82%. Initially called "Yuchi" (Fish Pool), it was China's first Bitcoin mining pool, immensely influential in the domestic community. It was founded in April 2013 by Wang Chun and Shenyu (Godfish), making it the world's oldest continuously operating mining pool.

F2Pool remains a top 5 global BTC pool and was also one of the first pools to support ZEC mining when its mainnet launched in October 2016. If you trace ZEC's mining history, F2Pool is present throughout almost the entire timeline.

Then there's Antpool, holding 6.8%, Bitmain's proprietary mining pool.

Antpool was launched by Bitmain in 2014. It directly integrates "miner manufacturer + mining pool operator" vertically. Antpool is the 2nd or 3rd largest BTC pool globally. Its 6.8% share of the ZEC network may not be the highest, but it represents the direct interests of the mining hardware supplier.

This brings up a most overlooked fact about the ZEC mining ecosystem: the supply of ZEC mining rigs is almost completely monopolized by Bitmain.

ZEC uses the Equihash algorithm. Currently, the mainstream ASIC miner supporting this algorithm is essentially just one model: the Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro, offering about 860 kSol/s per unit. This means other manufacturers like MicroBT (Whatsminer) or Canaan (Avalon) have virtually no products for this ZEC route.

The entire ASIC miner supply for the ZEC network is almost entirely controlled by Bitmain.

The current network hash rate is 13 to 15 GSol/s. Based on the Z15 Pro's performance, this implies roughly 15,000 to 17,000 Z15 Pro units are running. The daily net profit per unit is approximately $55 to $56 (assuming $0.07/kWh electricity cost).

In a sense, the selling price of ZEC miners, the secondary market price for used machines, and the release schedule for new units are all effectively controlled by Bitmain.

If the mining pool rankings are just circumstantial evidence that "they are mining the coin," then the holder rankings tell a more direct story. Because those mining the most ZEC and those holding the most ZEC are not two different groups.

The most typical example is Foundry and Grayscale.

According to Arkham on-chain data, the Grayscale Zcash Trust holds approximately 390,298 ZEC, about 2.34% of the circulating supply. This trust is applying to the SEC to convert into a spot ETF, planning to list on NYSE Arca under the ticker ZCSH.

As mentioned, Foundry Digital, which controls 27.74% of ZEC's hash rate, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of DCG, and Grayscale Investments is also a wholly-owned subsidiary of DCG. The parent company of both is DCG.

Mining, holding, selling. One company, DCG, completes the entire pipeline for ZEC, from the mining end to the institutional compliance channel.

The largest holder of ZEC after DCG is Gemini, behind the Winklevoss twins, Tyler and Cameron.

As a custodian, most of the ZEC held by Gemini actually belongs to Cypherpunk Technologies, listed on Nasdaq as CYPH. This was originally a biotech company called Leap Therapeutics focused on cancer drug research. In 2025, it laid off 75% of its staff, and its main business essentially stalled.

On November 12, 2025, the company announced a pivot, renaming itself Cypherpunk Technologies and positioning itself as a "Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) company," with a single mission: buy ZEC, hoard ZEC.

The private placement on the day of the pivot raised $58.88 million, with the sole institutional investor being Winklevoss Capital. This is the VC firm founded by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss in 2012. The "majority of funds" for the entire private placement came from this single firm.

Winklevoss Capital also placed its principal, Will McEvoy, on Cypherpunk's board and appointed him as the company's CIO. The first purchase of 203,000 ZEC by Cypherpunk on the day of its pivot was also custodied by Gemini.

The Winklevoss twins' credentials in the Bitcoin space are as deep as DCG's. Both groups were early Wall Street entrants into the crypto space in 2013-2014. The names Gemini and Grayscale represent two core nodes of the Wall Street compliant crypto route over the past decade.

When the coin price rises, miner demand increases, miner prices go up, and new units sell out. When the coin price falls, miner production decreases, and second-hand machines are dumped. Mining pools coordinate the rhythm of the entire supply chain alongside the miner manufacturers.

It's a pretty good business.

After all, the most valuable part of a PoW coin is never the technology itself. It's the distribution of industrial benefits across the upstream and downstream of this chain.

Mining pools are the largest natural sellers in the ZEC spot market. The ZEC mined daily (currently 1.25 ZEC × 1150 blocks = 1437 ZEC/day) belongs directly to the pool. Annually, that's 520,000 ZEC. These coins aren't taken by miners immediately; typically, the pool receives them first and then distributes them to miners. This gives the pool complete discretion over timing. They can sell in bulk when the market has good liquidity at high prices, or they can hold and not sell when prices are low.

Mining pools have a complete "treasury." For example, ViaBTC owns the CoinEx exchange, allowing it to sell mined coins directly on its own platform. F2Pool has Stakefish under it. Antpool is backed by Bitmain's financial operations. Foundry is backed by DCG's entire financial system (Grayscale + Genesis Trading + Foundry). They are both the supply side on the mining end and the distribution side on the exchange end, controlling the entire industrial chain from mining to selling.

Mining pools have a decade of "coordination experience." On the BTC network, coordinated actions between mining pools at critical junctures (stopping block production, pushing forks, coordinating hash rate transfers) have occurred multiple times (most notably the 2017 BCH fork and the 2017 SegWit debate). For the same group of people to coordinate actions on ZEC is muscle memory.

The founders and parent companies of ViaBTC, Foundry, F2Pool, and Antpool – the four entities controlling 81.6% of ZEC's hash rate – are all individuals and organizations most familiar with Bitcoin's cycles over the past decade.

The Odaily editorial team also pulled the on-chain payout addresses of the four major mining pools. These addresses are publicly labeled by Zcashinfo (the official block explorer run by Foundry), so there is no speculation involved.

Foundry's main receiving address is t1SqwRAAdSig6dE4EBPLonAait219VmkUjP. Since going live in March 2026, this address has received a total of 22,696 ZEC – this represents Foundry's total mining revenue over just over a month. On-chain data shows these coins are almost entirely swept into the Orchard pool – ZEC's latest generation shielded pool, using Halo 2 zero-knowledge proofs, which makes them completely untraceable.

Meanwhile, ViaBTC's main receiving address, t1at7nVNsv6taLRrNRvnQdtfLNRDfsGc3Ak, has received a total of 1.73 million ZEC. At current prices, this is worth over $1 billion. The coins go directly into the Sapling shielded pool (Zcash's previous generation shielded pool). This address operates very consistently, transferring a batch to the Sapling pool every 5 to 8 blocks, holding very little inventory.

F2Pool's three main receiving addresses have received a total of 5.87 million ZEC. The current balance for two of these addresses is zero. Their distribution method is mixed, with some going to transparent addresses and some to the Sapling shielded pool.

Antpool has the lowest payout frequency, holding more coins in its own hands, with almost no distribution activity recently.

ZEC offers optional privacy, where users decide whether to use shielding features for each transaction. This very "optional" design is what allows ZEC to survive regulatory scrutiny. Of the four major mining pools, the core distribution actions for three are completed within shielded pools.

On the Bitcoin network, we can still count how many coins each mining pool deposits to Coinbase or Binance daily, track every large transfer, and piece together the inventory cycles of each pool – specialized analysts do this work. But on ZEC, on-chain data is largely invisible.

Once coins enter a shielded pool, how they are transferred within it, who they ultimately go to, which exchange they end up on, and at what price they are sold – all of this is largely unseen. The level of concealment mining pools enjoy on ZEC is an order of magnitude higher than in the BTC era.

The ZEC token is inherently more suitable for market manipulation than BTC. So, how could the top Bitcoin miners pass up the opportunity to manipulate this legendary coin, ZEC?