Privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash has jumped 30% in the past 24 hours after crypto entrepreneur Arthur Hayes forecasted the token could eventually hit $10,000.
Zcash rallied from $272 to a peak of $355 shortly after Hayes’s optimistic prediction in a “vibe check” post on X on Sunday, outperforming all other tokens in the top 50 by market cap during that period.
This is not the first instance of Hayes’ predictions affecting a token’s value. At the August WebX 2025 conference in Tokyo, he claimed Hyperliquid’s HYPE token could appreciate 126 times over the next three years, resulting in a 4% rise for HYPE.
Hayes’ endorsement triggered FOMO among traders
Crypto trader and Binance Square contributor, AB Kuai Dong, speculated in an X post on Sunday that the Zcash surge was likely spurred by Hayes.
He noted the endorsement from a “legendary Silicon Valley investor” led “everyone to follow the trend and join in, triggering a complete month’s FOMO market frenzy.”
Simultaneously, a user named Clemente, a crypto trader and board member of K9Strategy, admitted to participating in Zcash due to being overwhelmed with “so much fomo I couldn’t keep myself sidelined to this run.”
Privacy tokens gaining attention
Concurrently, a trader and investor known as JonnyJpegs speculated that the surge was largely driven by users seeking to invest in privacy-related tokens, as more governments tighten control over encryption and other privacy tools.
Zcash has achieved a remarkable 490% rally in the last 30 days and, according to CoinGecko, surpassed $5 billion in market capitalization for the first time on Sunday.
Related: ‘Dino coin’ season: Why are Zcash and Dash seeing biggest rebounds?
Launched in October 2016, the token employs an encrypted ledger with zero-knowledge proofs, enabling transactions to be either transparent and publicly viewable or entirely shielded, keeping the sender, receiver, and transaction amount private.
Fellow privacy coin Monero (XMR), the top privacy coin by market cap, also increased by 3.6% in the last 24 hours, trading at $346. However, it remains delisted or restricted on many major exchanges, such as Binance and OKX, as well as several European trading platforms.
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