Zcash hits highest price since 2016 as market cap tops $20B

JUST IN: $ZEC hits its highest price since 2016 as Zcash's market cap tops $20bn, up 45% over the past week following Grayscale's conversion of its Zcash Trust into an ETF.

Zcash just hit its highest price since 2016, and the market cap has crossed 20 billion dollars.

ZEC touched 1,249 before easing back to around 1,195, up 45 percent in a week and 138 percent in a month. What lit the fuse was Grayscale converting its old Zcash Trust into a proper ETF, ticker ZCSH, which started trading on the New York Stock Exchange on August 25. Suddenly anyone with a brokerage account can buy privacy coin exposure, and the fund already holds 463 million dollars.

Grayscale's research chief Zach Pandl argues AI will make it trivial to link public blockchain transactions to real identities, which turns shielded payments from a nerd feature into a must have. That's the whole thesis, privacy stops being optional.

For perspective, the all-time high was 3,191 dollars back in October 2016, when barely any coins existed. This rally still has a very old ghost to chase.

This is Liu Yang, reporting for HIT.