--- title: "Zcash's Bull Case Is Monetary. The Measured Print Said “Not Only ZEC”." published: 2026-09-11T19:36:34.489293+00:00 type: coin_deepdive scope: ZEC canonical: https://moonwire.org/insights/zcash-bull-case-monetary-not-only-zec.html tags: [zcash, privacy, altcoins, narrative, on-chain, coin-deepdive, weekly] --- # Zcash's Bull Case Is Monetary. The Measured Print Said “Not Only ZEC”. > Zcash drew renewed coverage in the window, and the case put on the record for it came overwhelmingly as an analogy to Bitcoin's price rather than as a claim about Zcash - the same comparison was restated at $800 and again at $948, unchanged. The one measurement in that set put the privacy sector 213% above the median altcoin's level “and not only because of $ZEC”, while the week's privacy-engineering posts came from Ethereum's side. ## Key takeaways - The Zcash argument in the window was a comparison restated at rising prices: "buying zcash at $948 is like buying bitcoin at $948" quotes the same author's earlier "buying zcash at $800 is like buying bitcoin at $800". [[1]](/s/h5idJCZMQ26apz6OcpMC0A) - The strongest version of the thesis is about the asset rather than the comparison - "hard money + private sov" plus a decade-long core holder base with no short-term selling intent. [[6]](/s/O5YhM7WBTyi4y6KkN7Ketg) - One post forecasts the narrative rather than the network: "many are not pricing in how viral the 'zcash is the next bitcoin' narrative is going to spread like wildfire once its cleanly trading > $1,000". [[7]](/s/WQ4L5Gt-RpyIJJ0LYyNWDw) - Glassnode's measurement put the privacy sector 213% above the median altcoin's level at the BTC high, "and not only because of $ZEC". [[10]](/s/KTlrfyeCTjG3fT9fXXUZZA) - The dissent came from inside the bull camp: CredibleCrypto noted ZEC is already 50x above its lows and that risk/reward for new entrants is "a fraction" of alts that have not yet run. [[11]](/s/T6lb2dV3RN-U2RLrgRPnEw) Zcash drew renewed coverage in the window, and the case put on the record for it came overwhelmingly as an analogy to Bitcoin's price rather than as a claim about Zcash. The one measurement in that set explicitly declined to make the move a Zcash story. ## The case, in the words it was made in The through-line is a comparison, restated repeatedly at rising prices. On 3 September Ansem [[1]](/s/h5idJCZMQ26apz6OcpMC0A) posted: "buying zcash at $948 is like buying bitcoin at $948". The post quotes **his own earlier one**, which reads: "buying zcash at $800 is like buying bitcoin at $800" [[1]](/s/h5idJCZMQ26apz6OcpMC0A). The sentence is identical apart from the number — the analogy does not depend on the price, so it survives the price moving. Three days later he restated a version borrowed from another account, quoting @gmoneyofficial: "$ZEC trading as if its bitcoin but better and 1.4% of the price" [[2]](/s/Rh2FuvYRStqfb5T-Vlt-5w). The same week he wrote simply, "hey guys i think this zcash token is good" [[3]](/s/L53TwYg0Tb2BIY0-GF7t3Q), and paired the asset with Hyperliquid: "zcash & hyperliquid both going parabolic is going to do wonders for the perception of crypto also" [[4]](/s/h4Uoq9zFQpOQxxMAI9BGXQ). He also named a floor. In a list of levels he did not expect to be broken during a September "flash crash... but from higher", he put ZEC at $750 alongside BTC at $74k [[5]](/s/3T245mrdTVG654FuulffBg). ## The substantive version of the thesis One post does argue the asset rather than the comparison, and it deserves to be quoted at length because it is the strongest form of the case in this set: > "first time i ever bought crypto bitcoin was like $3,000, it was trading at $20,000 a few months later, it's in the cards something similar happens with zcash over the next 12-18 months... thesis of hard money + private sov has never been stronger, & there is a very strong core holder base formed over the past decade that does not have any short term targets for selling this thing" [[6]](/s/O5YhM7WBTyi4y6KkN7Ketg) Two claims live in there that are about Zcash rather than about Bitcoin: a hard-money-plus-privacy demand argument, and a supply argument about a long-tenured holder base. Both are falsifiable, and neither is what the rest of the week's posts leaned on. ## A forecast about the narrative, not the network One post says out loud what is being traded. On 4 September: "many are not pricing in how viral the 'zcash is the next bitcoin' narrative is going to spread like wildfire once its cleanly trading > $1,000" [[7]](/s/WQ4L5Gt-RpyIJJ0LYyNWDw). That is a claim about the **spread of a comparison**, conditioned on a price level. It is a legitimate thing to have a view on, and it is a different variable from privacy demand. The trade also grew a derivative of itself. Amplifying @cryptoklotz on the ZCAT token, the argument offered was that it "massively broadens the total addressable market for ZEC by giving onchain/memecoin guys a native vehicle to get their beaks wet on ZEC upside without leaving their home turf (memecoins)" [[8]](/s/Wt89zpMdQbiGH2qtioYd5Q). When a narrative sprouts a memecoin whose stated purpose is exposure to the narrative, that is information about the phase, whatever one concludes from it. ## The independent legs point somewhere else Two of the window's Zcash items came from outside the analyst tier, and neither is a view on Zcash's price. Coinbase put a wrapper on it [[9]](/s/foqcTHOKQD6krvEeope6iA). Its markets feed announced that "cbHYPE and cbZEC are now live on @base", as "B20 tokens backed 1:1 by Hyperliquid (HYPE) and Zcash (ZEC) held in custody by Coinbase" [[9]](/s/foqcTHOKQD6krvEeope6iA). That is plumbing — access, not demand. Glassnode [[10]](/s/KTlrfyeCTjG3fT9fXXUZZA) published the only measurement in this set, and it is worth reading exactly: "The median altcoin is 58% below its price at the BTC high. The privacy sector is 213% above it, **and not only because of $ZEC**" [[10]](/s/KTlrfyeCTjG3fT9fXXUZZA). The strength is real and it is sector-wide. The measured print declines to attribute it to Zcash alone, which is precisely the claim the analyst tier's posts were making. ## The dissent came from inside the bull camp CredibleCrypto [[11]](/s/T6lb2dV3RN-U2RLrgRPnEw) was asked about ZEC directly — the post is a reply to a reader who noted he had not covered it. His answer is more qualified than the coverage around it: > "I don't talk about it much because it's already literally 50x above it's lows and at new all time highs (which I said previously was expected). At this stage there isn't much to talk about — it's likely headed significantly higher but R/R for new entrants here will likely be a fraction of what it is for other bottomed-out alts that haven't yet begun to run much" [[11]](/s/T6lb2dV3RN-U2RLrgRPnEw) He is not bearish. He is saying the asymmetry that made the trade interesting has largely been spent — which weighs Zcash against the alternatives rather than against Bitcoin, a different comparison from the rest of the coverage here. ## Where the privacy engineering actually happened If the thesis is durable privacy demand, the builder-side evidence in this window sits on Ethereum [[12]](/s/k3wMFcF3QZi07YRDa6sPGQ), not Zcash. Vitalik Buterin [[12]](/s/k3wMFcF3QZi07YRDa6sPGQ) flagged that "a lot of important progress on Frames (EIP-8141) has been quietly happening over the last few months" [[12]](/s/k3wMFcF3QZi07YRDa6sPGQ). He wrote that the Poseidon hash family are "the reason why it's fast to generate a client-side SNARK for a modern privacy-protocol", and that "we have ultra-fast general-purpose STARKs... more amazing than anything that we had been hoping for in the early 2020s" [[13]](/s/axs0RYZMTiClkckdiCcD4g). And he put numbers on the cost curve: a "33% chance" that SNARKs, FHE and indistinguishability obfuscation reach near-zero overhead for average real-world computation, and a "60% chance that all three can be done with single-digit overhead", with SNARKs likely under 10x "by the end of this decade" [[14]](/s/Jf6ymdL3T62Wv3AHuHcI5w). That is a different bet from the one being priced. It says the cost of private computation is collapsing on a general-purpose platform. Whether that accrues to a dedicated privacy asset or erodes the premium on one is not a question the coverage here took up. ## What would settle it - **Does a measurement ever name Zcash?** Glassnode's print was explicit that the sector move was not only ZEC [[10]](/s/KTlrfyeCTjG3fT9fXXUZZA). A subsequent measured read — shielded-pool totals, holder distribution, transaction counts — that isolates Zcash specifically would convert the monetary story into a network story. Its absence keeps this a sector trade with one loud ticker. - **Does the holder-base claim hold?** [[6]](/s/O5YhM7WBTyi4y6KkN7Ketg) asserts a decade-long core holder base with no short-term selling intent. Distribution data is the direct test, and it is the one leg of the thesis that resolves on-chain rather than in the discourse. - **Does the comparison keep getting restated at higher prices?** The analogy moved from $800 to $948 unchanged [[1]](/s/h5idJCZMQ26apz6OcpMC0A). If it reappears at another level with the argument unchanged, the narrative-virality claim [[7]](/s/WQ4L5Gt-RpyIJJ0LYyNWDw) is describing itself. --- *MoonWire surfaces and summarizes public crypto news.* **General information only — not financial advice.** MoonWire Ltd. is not licensed by ASIC and holds no AFSL. 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