Grayscale sees Zcash as potential Bitcoin challenger
Zcash (ZEC)
Editor:
Eugene Serbin
bitcoinethereumnews.com reports that Grayscale views Zcash as a potential challenger to Bitcoin due to rising AI surveillance concerns. Grayscale head of research Zach Pandl argues Zcash possesses "second mover advantages" that could help it overcome Bitcoin's entrenched network effects. The firm believes financial privacy is becoming increasingly valuable as AI systems improve at analyzing financial activity at scale.
Zcash can shield transaction information, a feature Grayscale sees as critical for future privacy needs. Despite a roughly 19-fold increase over the past year, Zcash remains valued at less than 1% of Bitcoin’s market capitalization. Grayscale suggests Zcash could reach a value above $4,000 if its market cap hits 5% of Bitcoin's. Pandl acknowledged that Bitcoin’s liquidity and network remain powerful defenses against Zcash's rise.
The firm warned that Zcash remains a high-risk investment with potentially volatile gains. Interest in the ecosystem is growing, with Nasdaq-listed Cypherpunk Technologies acquiring a mining fleet from Winklevoss Capital. This $33.33 million transaction makes Cypherpunk the network’s largest active fleet, producing 4.2 GSol/s of hashrate.
How the market reacted
Whalio's own Binance spot order flow for ZEC, measured when this story was written up on 28 August 2026. Not the outlet's figures.
Zcash is trading at $810.00 on Binance spot markets. The 24-hour buy ratio stands at 52.1%, indicating that buyers dominated the session, while the 1-hour ratio dropped to 45.3% and the 4-hour ratio fell further to 37.9%. This decline in short-term buy ratios suggests that immediate buying pressure is fading after the initial surge. The 24-hour volume delta is positive at $6,976,636, showing net accumulation over the day. However, the 1-hour volume delta is negative at -$676,681, indicating recent selling pressure. The cumulative volume delta closed at $9,251,586, confirming that net buying occurred for 15 of the 24 hours.
The latest daily buy ratio of 52.9% sits at the 82nd percentile of the last 322 days, against a median of 50.2% - stronger buying than most days.
Twenty-four hours later
What ZEC did over the 24 hours after the story broke. The market moves for its own reasons; this is what happened, not what the story caused.
Was that an ordinary day?
The same Binance spot measurements for ZEC, averaged over the days leading up to the story.
Over the preceding week, the average buy ratio was 50.2%, making today's 24-hour ratio of 52.1% slightly higher by 1.9 points. This indicates a marginally more bullish sentiment compared to the weekly average. Spot volume for the day was 0.63x the weekly average, showing lower participation relative to recent trends. The coin saw a 42.4% price increase over eight days, driven by a total volume delta of $31,641,985. Net buying occurred on five of the seven days in the preceding period.