Leading privacy coins are overcoming challenges in the digital asset market, indicating a heightened interest from investors in privacy-centric cryptocurrencies.
Zcash (ZEC) reached an eight-year peak of $388 on Friday, experiencing a 7.6% increase in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. With a market cap of $6.2 billion at the time of writing, ZEC has surpassed Monero (XMR) as the most valuable privacy-focused cryptocurrency.
ZEC’s 45% weekly growth defied the ongoing crypto market downturn, which has persisted after the anticipated tariff agreement between the US and China did not materialize on Thursday.
This rally indicated a renewed investor interest in privacy coins that are specifically designed to obscure transaction details.
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Privacy coins like Zcash and Monero hide sender, receiver, and transaction information, providing greater anonymity compared to pseudonymous cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC). While Bitcoin transactions can be traced on the blockchain, privacy tokens are engineered to conceal wallet addresses and transaction histories.
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Arthur Hayes Predicts $10,000 ZEC
The surge to the eight-year high followed a prediction from BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes of a potential ZEC rally to $10,000, generating additional excitement around the token.
Zcash rallied from $272 to a peak of $355 shortly after Hayes’s optimistic forecast on Sunday, as reported by Cointelegraph.
As demand for the token continues to rise, whales—large cryptocurrency holders—have been selling off Zcash tokens.
The number of ZEC token holders increased by 63% to 1,968 over the past week, yet whale wallets recorded a net sale of $702,000 in ZEC tokens, according to the crypto intelligence platform Nansen.
“It’s astonishing to see how $ZEC has surged 10x in just two months, completely disconnecting from the market and disregarding overall sentiment,” remarked Simon Dedic, founder and managing partner at Moonrock Capital.
“I want to clarify that this isn’t some minor token; it’s a multibillion-dollar asset. This makes such performance even more extraordinary,” he expressed in a Friday X post.
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