Some top privacy coins are defying the gravity of the digital asset market, signaling growing investor demand for privacy-focused cryptocurrencies.
Zcash (ZEC) hit a more than eight-year high of $388 on Friday after rising 7.6% in the past 24 hours, according to data aggregator CoinMarketCap. With a market cap of $6.2 billion at the time of writing, ZEC toppled Monero (XMR) to become the most valuable privacy-focused cryptocurrency.
ZEC’s 45% weekly rise resisted the broader slowdown in the crypto market, which continued to consolidate after a highly anticipated tariff deal between the United States and China collapsed on Thursday.
The rally suggests renewed investor appetite for privacy-focused coins, designed to conceal details of users’ transactions.
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Privacy coins such as Zcash and Monero obscure sender, recipient and transaction details, providing greater anonymity than pseudonymous cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC). While Bitcoin transactions are traceable on-chain, privacy tokens are designed to hide wallet addresses and transaction histories.
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Arthur Hayes’ $10,000 ZEC Prediction
The surge toward the eight-year high came days after BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes predicted a ZEC token rally to $10,000, further building buzz around the token.
Zcash rose from $272 to a high of $355 in the hours following Hayes’ bullish prediction on Sunday, Cointelegraph reported.
As demand for the token steadily increases, whales – large cryptocurrency holders – have been dumping the Zcash token.
ZEC token holders increased 63% to 1,968 over the past week, but whale wallets sold a net total of $702,000 worth of ZEC tokens, according to crypto intelligence platform Nansen.
“It’s crazy how $ZEC grew 10x in just two months, completely dissociating itself from the market and ignoring general sentiment,” according to Simon Dedic, founder and managing partner of Moonrock Capital.
“I want to emphasize that this is not a shitcoin, but a multi-billion dollar asset. This makes this type of performance even more remarkable,” he wrote in a Friday X article.
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