Zcash: A Privacy Coin ETF Is Holding Up Crypto While Bitcoin Fights for $79K

Bitcoin trades near $78,900 on September 9, up half a percent after bouncing from $77,600, reclaiming $79,000, and promptly losing it again. It sits well below the $82,000 it tagged last week before a scorching jobs report yanked the rug.

Here's the strange part. The steadying force in crypto right now isn't a Bitcoin product or an Ethereum fund.

It's Grayscale's spot Zcash ETF, a wrapper around a privacy coin that major exchanges were delisting just a few years ago.

ZEC has blown past $500 million in assets barely two weeks after its NYSE Arca debut, and that demand is doing real work for sentiment while the macro tries to do damage.

What a Spot Zcash ETF Actually Changes

ZCSH is the first US exchange-traded product holding ZEC directly, actual tokens rather than futures, with Coinbase as custodian and BNY Mellon administering.

Anyone with a brokerage account can now own exposure to a shielded-transaction cryptocurrency without touching a wallet, an outcome unthinkable before the SEC closed its Zcash Foundation probe in January.

The timing met a mania. ZEC crossed $1,000 last week for the first time in nearly a decade, up more than 2,300% in a year, displacing Dogecoin as the tenth-largest crypto. Grayscale attributes the run to a hard-money repricing, and its research desk isn't shy about the ceiling: