Zcash sees massive growth amid privacy demand and hacking reports

Zcash (ZEC) has experienced significant market growth, with its price rising from approximately $60 to $1,500 over a twelve-month period. Grayscale reports that Zcash's market capitalization has grown from 0.1% of Bitcoin's to roughly 1.5%, reaching an estimated value between $23 billion and $24 billion by late September 2026.

Grayscale identifies Zcash as having high growth potential due to increasing demand for financial privacy. The asset utilizes zero-knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKs) to allow for shielded transactions, which hide sender, receiver, and amount data. This privacy feature is seen as a key differentiator from other major assets like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and XRP.

In a separate development, on-chain investigators reported that attackers linked to North Korea have begun moving approximately 2,700 ZEC, valued at $3.8 million, stolen from the Bitget exchange into Zcash’s Ironwood shielded pool. Moving funds into this pool utilizes encryption to make it difficult for law enforcement and investigators to track the transaction details on the blockchain.