A decade-old digital token is suddenly all the rage in crypto circles.
ZEC, a token launched in 2016 using the Zcash blockchain protocol, has seen its price surge 50% in a month, even as bitcoin struggles to break out of its slump. The apex crypto is up about 6% in the same time.
The token is relatively unknown outside of some prominent early adopters, who prized the crypto for its emphasis on privacy. It received little attention for years before unexpectedly surging late in 2025.
“People care about ZCash because it represents one of the few major crypto networks built around financial privacy as a core feature rather than an afterthought,” stated Daniel Reis Faria, CEO of AI-focused asset management firm Zerostack. “As surveillance across both traditional finance and blockchain increases, there’s renewed interest in assets that preserve optionality and confidentiality.”
Reis Faria told Business Insider that Zcash appeals not just to crypto traders but also to institutions because it protects the details of their transactions.
“What Zcash offers that bitcoin doesn’t is shielded transaction capability,” he noted. “Bitcoin is often misunderstood as anonymous, but in reality it’s highly transparent and traceable.”
Bobby Ong, CEO and Co-founder of CoinGecko, traces the surge in Zcash interest to an October 1 X post from tech entrepreneur Naval Ravikant who stated simply “Bitcoin is insurance against fiat. Zcash is insurance against Bitcoin.”
On the day of the post, Zcash was trading at $74 per coin. Since then, it has risen to a peak of more than $600 per token. Ong noted that several other catalysts have followed since Ravikant shared stoked fresh interest last year.
“That momentum was followed by major allocations from Multicoin Capital and Arthur Hayes, the launch of the first US spot Zcash ETF, and the emergence of digital asset treasury company (DATCo) Cypherpunk Technologies accumulating ZEC — all of which reinforced the view that privacy coins were moving back into the mainstream conversation,” he said.
The defining narrative seems to be that in a world increasingly driven by AI and powerful tools that could jeopardize the security offered by cryptography, the need for privacy is increasing.
In January, an analyst at Jefferies predicted that the rise of quantum computing will be a top threat to bitcoin in the future. Meanwhile, a man who had been locked out of his crypto wallet for 11 years claimed this week that he used Anthropic’s Claude to brute force his way back in, getting the AI bot to test 3.5 trillion passwords.
Heightened anonymity and privacy is the central part of what’s driving the appeal of Zcash right now, causing traders to embrace the crypto that, until recently, seemed largely forgotten.
Samantha Bohbot, chief growth officer at digital asset investment firm RockawayX, said she isn’t surprised by the recent Zcash rush.
“Privacy coins have become more interesting, especially with the rise of LLMs,” she said. “People are giving models more personal data than they’ve given any technology before, and over time they’ll want to protect their data privacy more. Money and LLM usage are where that demand lands first.”