Zcash Co-Founder Predicts $5,000 ZEC Amid Historic Europe ETP Launch

Eli Ben-Sasson, Zcash co-founder and CEO of blockchain tech company Starkware, says he “feels on track” to a $5,000 end-of-year price target for Zcash (ZEC). His previous prediction of ZEC trading beyond $1,200 by September 25, 2026 is now a success, as it trades at around $1,549 at the time.

While the tripling valuation forecast is ambitious, several developments show why there is a chance it just might happen.

Zcash on the road to $5,000 

For one, investment firm 21Shares recently launched Europe’s first Zcash exchange-traded product (ETP). At around the same time, Grayscale’s Zcash ETF (ZCSH) officially surpassed $915 million in assets exactly a month after launch, signalling high institutional demand. 

Moreover, ZEC has rallied primarily due to its privacy architecture. As institutional uptake increases, so does the need for confidential but compliant blockchain transactions.

For these reasons, ZEC has outperformed Bitcoin (BTC) by 14x since the latter’s all-time high. The next best-performing altcoins after it are HYPE, XMR, and NEAR, which outdid BTC by 2-3x. According to Glassnode, this performance makes ZEC the best of the 9 altcoins (in the top 50 by market cap) that have outperformed BTC.