Zcash gains 72% in a week and hits eight-year high above $880

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Zcash gains 72%

Grayscale application supports Zcash rally

The rally accelerated after Grayscale Investments filed its fifth amended registration statement on August 21 to convert the existing Zcash Trust into a spot ETF. The filing said the product would be named The Zcash ETF and carry an annual fee of 2.5%.

If approved, it would become the first U.S. exchange-traded fund to directly track the price of ZEC.

An earlier version of the filing also disclosed that a Digital Currency Group subsidiary was considering purchasing around 200,000 ZEC through the trust. The arrangement is not binding, and the transaction may not take place.

The rally had already begun before Grayscale’s latest filing but accelerated significantly after its publication. On August 22, ZEC surpassed $800 for the first time since 2018 and continued setting local highs over the weekend.

Activity was particularly strong in the derivatives market. At the height of the move, daily ZEC futures trading volume reached $9.54 billion, while open interest climbed to $1.76 billion.

By comparison, spot trading volume stood at around $1.06 billion at the time, indicating that derivatives played a significant role in the rally.

ZEC recovers from June crash

The latest rally has effectively erased Zcash’s losses following a major incident in June.

Developers disclosed a critical vulnerability in the protected Orchard pool that could theoretically have allowed counterfeit coins to be created. Following the disclosure, ZEC plunged around 60%, from $630 to $250.

Developers subsequently fixed the issue and reactivated Orchard as part of the NU6.2 upgrade. From its June low to the August 23 peak, ZEC more than tripled in value, while its current price of around $838 remains well above the levels seen immediately before the June sell-off.

Several days before the token’s rally accelerated, Cypherpunk Technologies announced the launch of what it described as the world’s largest operating Zcash mining fleet. Equipment deployed in the U.S. provides around 4.2 GSol/s of hashrate, equivalent to approximately 18% of the network’s computing power at the time of the announcement.

The project was launched as part of a $33.33 million deal with Winklevoss Capital. Cypherpunk, which is also building a corporate ZEC treasury, plans to use mined coins to further expand its business, acquire Zcash, and invest in privacy technologies.

Fortitude Mining previously acquired a 12.5 MW mining facility in Nebraska to expand its Zcash mining capacity. Following the deal, the company’s portfolio exceeded 60 MW across seven sites in the U.S.

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