In recent days, Zcash’s ZEC has been one of the best performers on the market, with a 70% increase over seven days. Let’s take a look back at this significant surge.
Zcash’s ZEC soars
Over the last 24 hours, the price of Zcash’s ZEC has soared by 32%, propelling the cryptocurrency to the top of the top 100 rankings.
Zooming out a little, this increase is even more pronounced, at 67% over the last 7 days, 388% over a month, and even 680% over a year. At the time of writing, the asset is trading at $237 per unit:
There are several possible explanations for this increase. First, the start of this upward trend can be traced back to Grayscale’s new fund, the Zcash Trust, which was unveiled on October 1:
Zcash is similar to Bitcoin in its design. Zcash’s ZEC was created from Bitcoin’s original source code, but it uses privacy technology that encrypts transaction information and allows users to protect their assets.
Following this, other players spoke out in favor of ZEC, such as investor Naval Ravikant, who believed that where Bitcoin (BTC) was insurance against fiat currencies, Zcash was insurance against Bitcoin. For his part, Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius, highlighted the growing need for privacy in the face of the development of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), as well as the undervaluation of ZEC compared to its competitor, Monero’s XMR.
Despite this very strong short-term performance, ZEC remains down nearly 93% from its October 2016 high. While the asset has not managed to recover sustainably since then, it should be noted that regulators around the world have taken a firm stance against anonymous cryptocurrencies in recent years, and many exchanges have chosen to delist these tokens.
