年内漲15倍，ZEC還能繼續FOMO嗎？

Author: Ku Li, Shenzhen TechFlow

If you’ve been scrolling through English Crypto Twitter lately, you’ve likely seen ZEC flooding your feed again.

Big names like Naval, Arthur Hayes, Mert Mumtaz, Balaji, and Cobie are all appearing under the same topic, alongside Multicoin Capital publicly announcing a heavy position and multiple privacy-focused panels at Consensus Miami. ZEC’s social media buzz has hit its highest point since the late 2025 rally.

The price has already outpaced the narrative. As of press time, ZEC is trading at around $580, up over 110% in the past 30 days and over 1,500% year-to-date. Its market cap has surpassed $95 billion, overtaking the veteran privacy coin Monero (XMR) and climbing into the top 20 on CoinGecko.

On May 6, ZEC surged nearly 30% in a single day, triggering over $62 million in short liquidations, with shorts accounting for $46.7 million of that.

So, the question is: what’s driving this wave?

Multicoin Goes All In: "Bitcoin Can Resist Censorship, But Not Property Taxes"

The most direct catalyst came from Multicoin Capital.

On May 6, Tushar Jain, co-founder and managing partner of Multicoin, stated on a panel at Consensus Miami that the firm has built a "significant position" since February this year. He didn't disclose the exact size but laid out a clear investment logic framework.

In a subsequent long post on X, Jain wrote: "Bitcoin can resist censorship. No one can freeze your BTC or stop you from using it. But that doesn’t stop the government from seizing known holdings through property taxes."

His direct argument was California's Initiative 25-0024, which proposes a one-time 5% wealth tax (including unrealized gains) on residents with a net worth over $1 billion, projected to raise approximately $100 billion.

Jain's core judgment is: Bitcoin is insurance against fiat, but its on-chain balances are completely transparent. A tax agency with a blockchain explorer can see everything. ZEC's shielded pool uses zero-knowledge proofs to hide the sender, receiver, and amount, making on-chain assets invisible to external observers.

"We believe there is clear product-market fit for truly private, censorship-resistant, and confiscation-resistant assets, and demand is accelerating," Jain wrote. "Zcash is the cleanest way to express this thesis in the public markets."

This marks a clear shift in stance for Multicoin.

In 2019, the fund argued that "privacy is a feature of valuable cryptocurrencies, not an independent product," suggesting users shouldn't sell BTC or ETH to buy ZEC for privacy.

Seven years later, this public endorsement looks like they are betting real money to overturn their own past conclusions.

KOLs Unite, Arthur Hayes Calls for "10% of BTC's Price"

The seeds of this ZEC narrative were actually planted in the second half of 2025.

From last autumn, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant (also an early Zcash investor), Helius founder Mert Mumtaz, along with Balaji Srinivasan and Cobie, have been vocally supporting ZEC.

Naval tweeted in October last year: "Bitcoin is insurance against fiat. Zcash is insurance against Bitcoin."

Hayes' stance was more aggressive. At Consensus 2026, he stated ZEC's long-term target price should be "10% of Bitcoin's price." With BTC currently around $80,000, this implies a ZEC target of ~$8,000, over 13 times its current price. Tyler Winklevoss also endorsed a thesis this week that ZEC could capture offshore wealth, with a price target of $9,700.

These calls alone aren't necessarily investment advice, but their convergence signals one thing: Top-tier capital and influential voices in the English crypto sphere are simultaneously pivoting towards the privacy track.

The Post-Quantum Narrative at Consensus Miami

If Multicoin and KOLs provided the capital and narrative catalyst, the technical roadmap release at Consensus Miami gave the market a fundamental story.

Josh Swihart, founder and CEO of Zcash Open Development Lab, announced at the privacy track session on May 8 that quantum-recoverable wallets will go live within a month, and Zcash aims to achieve full post-quantum security within 12 to 18 months.

The logic here is: the ECDSA signature algorithm used by most cryptocurrencies today will become vulnerable once quantum computers mature. A more dangerous scenario is the "harvest now, decrypt later" strategy, where adversaries record encrypted data now and crack it later when quantum hardware is ready. For a privacy coin whose value proposition rests entirely on transaction data confidentiality, this is an existential threat.

Swihart also disclosed that since the ECC wallet integrated Near Intents cross-chain swap functionality last October, $600-700 million has flowed in and out through this channel, mainly swapping into USD and USDC. Zcash's shielded pool currently holds about 30% of the circulating ZEC, an all-time high.

Institutional Entry Signals: Grayscale ETF, Robinhood Listing, Foundry Mining

Beyond Multicoin's heavy position, ZEC is accumulating more institutional-grade catalysts.

Grayscale has filed for a ZEC spot ETF, currently awaiting an SEC decision. Grayscale has previously stated that ZEC's upside potential is closely related to "the repricing of financial privacy in an AI-driven world."

Robinhood recently listed ZEC trading, opening the door for retail investors. Foundry (a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group) announced the launch of a large-scale ZEC mining pool, the second asset it supports after Bitcoin, adding a layer of endorsement for ZEC's mining security and institutional credibility.

On-chain data from Santiment shows rising retail interest in privacy coins, driven by stricter exchange compliance rules and growing concerns over data tracking. A March report from CoinDesk Research stated that Zcash has reached a "encryption supremacy" tipping point, driven by three converging forces: AI tools that can de-anonymize users on transparent blockchains by tracking transaction patterns, the growing threat of quantum computing to current crypto wallet security, and quarterly transaction volumes exceeding $100 billion.

However, the Team That Built Zcash Is Entirely Gone

These catalysts paint a bullish picture, but one fact shouldn't be overlooked: the core team that built Zcash is no longer there.

In January, Electric Coin Company (ECC) CEO Josh Swihart and the entire ECC team resigned en masse, citing governance conflicts with the Bootstrap Project board and characterizing the departure as a "constructive discharge." ECC was the core organization creating and maintaining Zcash. Its departure means the chain operates without its original engineering team.

So, currently, ZEC's narrative heat is clearly far ahead of its fundamentals. KOL calls, fund heavy positions, consecutive Consensus panels — these are stories of capital and attention, but on-chain public transaction volume hasn't seen much growth.

Because transactions in the shielded pool are designed to be invisible, you can't use on-chain data to distinguish between "real adoption" and "speculative capital parking."

But lacking fundamentals is the norm for most coins anyway. In this wave of "old cap" coin revival, ZEC is arguably the most prominent, but probably not the last.