Zcash is on the rise this year: Why the privacy-focused Bitcoin alternative is on the radar of crypto investors

Crypto investors are making a mad dash to Zcash.

Zcash (ZEC) has become something of a darling of crypto markets lately, with the token up more than 1,200% over the past year. As of Friday morning, it was trading at around $530.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, is down more than 21% over the past year, and Ethereum is down around 12%. Zcash has also gained more widespread adoption—Robinhood, for example, recently added it to its platform.

What’s behind the rise of Zcash?

It’s difficult to point to one specific factor for the recent rise in popularity. Zcash did see its initial large-scale push during the fall of 2025, even though it had been on the market since 2016.

Zcash’s value was more or less stagnant until September of last year, when it increased from roughly $50 and peaked at around $700 in November. It’s experienced volatility since then, but as of mid-May, has breached the $600 mark again.

That strong price action has likely attracted many traders, but Zcash’s main draw is that it’s a privacy-focused coin that was developed by researchers at MIT and Johns Hopkins University.

Like many other so-called altcoins, it’s also derived from Bitcoin, but Zcash utilizes “zero-knowledge proofs,” incorporating more encryption and protection for users.

Generally, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin detail transactions and coin usage on public ledgers—the blockchain.

But Zcash goes a bit further, shielding wallet addresses, making it more difficult to discern who or what is behind a given transaction. In other words, Zcash transactions are less transparent than Bitcoin’s, and that may be of interest to some crypto users.

The new cool kid on the blockchain?

Given its privacy-focused roots, Zcash may be benefiting from renewed concerns about surveillance and data harvesting efforts from both large tech companies (looking to suck up anything and everything to train AI models) or the federal government.

Add in more points of access (such as its availability on platforms like Robinhood), and more traders or investors can now get their hands on it—adding liquidity to the market.

Other analysts point to the “institutionalization” of Bitcoin as a factor. 

“Bitcoin is no longer rebellious. The vibes aren’t really cypherpunk anymore. Bitcoin is no longer for escaping government debasement, rather it’s for improving the sharpe ratio of boomers retirement portfolios,” writes David Hoffman, cofounder of crypto-focused media platform Bankless.

“Zcash has been on the frontier of applied cryptography, and Zcash culture has been privacy-first since inception,” he adds. “Today Zcash essentially has a monopoly on privacy.”

Matt Hougan, CIO at Bitwise, concurs. “As suitcoiners drag bitcoin into the mainstream, it makes space for things like ZEC. I suspect this narrative grows over time,” he recently wrote on X.

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