Zcash (ZEC) jumped about 20% on Friday to trade near $1,000, its first four-digit price since early 2018.
Key Points:
- ZEC touched roughly $1,023 intraday after opening near $828, lifting its market value toward $17 billion.
- Exchanges wiped out about $36.6 million in leveraged positions, with $34.5 million of that coming from short bets.
- The token has returned more than 2,300% over the past year and about 94% in the past 30 days.
Zcash Short Sellers Lose $34M
ZEC traded as high as roughly $1,023 after starting the day near $828, a move that dwarfed the gains posted by every other large token. Exchanges liquidated about $36.6 million of leveraged ZEC positions over 24 hours, and roughly $34.5 million of that total came from traders who had bet against the coin.
Trading volume ran near $1.2 billion while the token's market value climbed toward $17 billion.
Closing a short requires buying the token back, which can push an already rising price higher.
The rally landed on a broadly green day for digital assets, with Bitcoin (BTC) holding above $81,000 as traders trimmed bets on a Federal Reserve rate increase this month. Zcash has outpaced the field by a wide margin, returning more than 2,300% over the past year. That run has carried the privacy coin into the ranks of the ten largest cryptocurrencies by market value.
Also Read: Bitcoin Posts Best Month Since 2024, Yet Fidelity Won't Call The Bottom
Grayscale ETF Lifts ZEC Demand
Grayscale converted its nine-year-old Zcash trust into a spot exchange-traded fund on Aug. 25 and listed it on NYSE Arca under the ticker ZCSH, opening the asset to anyone with a brokerage account. The fund reached a record $80.17 in Friday's premarket session, roughly 25% above where it started trading.
On-chain demand for privacy has grown alongside the price. Shielded supply now stands at 4.86 million ZEC, or about 28.76% of all coins in circulation, while open interest in ZEC futures rose to roughly 2.3 million tokens worth $2.3 billion. Grayscale researchers have argued that the token remains underpriced because artificial intelligence will make blockchain surveillance cheap and routine.
Zcash Price Swings Since 2018
The move carries Zcash above its January 2018 peak near $900 and marks a nine-year high, though the coin remains far below the prices logged during its chaotic 2016 debut.
Regulators removed one long-standing weight earlier this year when the Securities and Exchange Commission closed a multi-year investigation into the Zcash Foundation without recommending enforcement.
The past 12 months have not been smooth. A researcher found a flaw in the Orchard shielded pool in May that could have allowed invisible counterfeiting of ZEC, and the price sank in June. Developers shipped an emergency patch that month and a permanent fix, the Ironwood upgrade, in July, and the coin has gained about 94% over the past 30 days.
Read Next: iPhone Ultra May Land At $2,550 Average, Helping Apple Redraw Foldable Market
