The company had $7.6 million in cash as its biotech subsidiary began seeking resources for Phase 3.
The post Cypherpunk secures a $46M Zcash gain and turns a $4.7M operating loss into $39.4M profit appeared first on CryptoSlate.
The long-awaited network upgrade retires Zcash's vulnerable Orchard shielded pool and introduces new safeguards to protect the cryptocurrency's supply.
The Digital Currency Group-owned Zcash miner brought its first greenfield site online as it looks to lower mining costs and advance plans to become a public company.
Developers say security testing has uncovered no new serious bugs as Zcash's Ironwood upgrade moves toward testnet activation.
The all-stock deal gives Fortitude a Nasdaq listing while HeartSciences retains its healthcare business and existing shareholders keep a minority stake.
A reported $120.2 million USDT routing through Monero left about $72 million frozen, but the market impact showed how quickly traceable liquidity can move toward harder-to-follow rails.
The post Did Tether just freeze $72M in USDT with no link to a hack in Monero money laundering sting? appeared first on CryptoSlate.
The Philippines' central bank has tightened crypto oversight with new rules governing how exchanges assess and monitor digital assets.
Zcash has completed a two-phase emergency network upgrade to fix a critical vulnerability in its Orchard shielded pool — a flaw that sat undetected for four years, could theoretically have allowed unlimited undetectable counterfeit ZEC creation, and triggered a 50% price collapse before the network’s swift response began restoring confidence and driving a recovery in ZEC’s price. Related Reading: Analyst Charts Ethereum Long-Term Roadmap To $16,000 – There’s No Need To Panic Josh Swihart, CEO of Electric Coin Company — the primary developer of Zcash — posted on X on June 7 confirming the fix was complete and the network secure, as ZEC began its recovery from the lows reached after the vulnerability’s disclosure. The post arrived at a critical moment for the asset: ZEC had crashed approximately 50% from a June 4 peak of $624 to $309 on June 5, wiping more than $3 billion from its market capitalization, per the BitMEX Blog’s documented timeline of the incident. ZEC's price trends to the upside over the past 48 hours, as seen on the daily chart. Source: ZECUSD on Tradingview How The Zcash Bug Was Found — And What It Was The vulnerability was discovered on May 29, 2026 by security researcher Taylor Hornby during a protocol audit commissioned by Shielded Labs. Hornby identified a “soundness” flaw in Zcash’s Orchard zero-knowledge proof circuit — specifically an under-constrained element in the Orchard Action circuit that could allow invalid state transitions, creating a theoretical double-spending risk within the shielded pool. The discovery was made using Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 AI model alongside a custom analysis suite, per Shielded Labs’ official disclosure. Hornby and the AI developed a working proof-of-concept that successfully generated unlimited, completely undetectable counterfeit ZEC in a local test environment — described by one independent analyst as “about the worst kind of bug a cryptocurrency can have,” per Yahoo Finance’s reporting of the disclosure. Critically, the flaw did not permit inflation of the total ZEC supply on the live network. Zcash’s internal turnstile accounting mechanism — which tracks the total value moving into and out of the shielded pool — confirmed no unauthorized value creation occurred while the flaw was active, per Shielded Labs’ official statement. However, the organization acknowledged directly that due to the privacy properties of Orchard and the nature of the bug, there is no definitive cryptographic way to determine whether exploitation occurred — a limitation inherent to the shielded pool’s design that became its own source of market concern. The vulnerability had been present since Orchard’s activation in May 2022 — four years — without detection. The Emergency Response Zcash’s development ecosystem responded with unusual speed. The first phase was an emergency soft fork deployed through Zebra 4.5.3, activated at block 3,363,426 on June 2, which temporarily disabled all Orchard transactions to remove the attack path while developers prepared the permanent fix. Transparent and Sapling transactions continued operating normally throughout, per the Zcash Foundation’s official announcement on X. The second phase arrived on June 3 through the NU6.2 hard fork — activated at block 3,364,600 via Zebra 5.0.0 — which introduced a corrected circuit and a new verifying key, patching the flaw and re-enabling Orchard transactions, per the Foundation. The market’s initial reaction to the hard fork was positive. ZEC rose from $544 on June 2 to $603 on June 3, continuing to $624 on June 4 — its highest level since the rally began. Then Arthur Hayes publicly disclosed he had exited his entire ZEC position intraday on June 4 — the same day as the peak — citing five macro factors including higher energy prices and upcoming AI IPOs, per his X post covered in prior reporting. The combination of Hayes’ exit and lingering uncertainty about whether exploitation had occurred before the patch sent ZEC to $309 on June 5. The Recovery And What It Means Swihart’s June 7 X post — reassuring the community that total ZEC supply remained intact throughout and that the network had passed through the emergency without confirmed exploitation — appears to have been the catalyst for the recovery now underway. The swift two-phase response, combined with the Foundation’s transparent disclosure and Swihart’s direct communication, provided the confidence signal the market needed. This development marks a pivotal and genuinely uncomfortable moment for Zcash’s long-term positioning in the nascent sector. A four-year-old vulnerability in the Orchard pool — the very component that defines ZEC’s core privacy value proposition — has been fixed cleanly and without confirmed exploitation. Related Reading: Has The Bitcoin Price Crash Ended Or Is This Just The Beginning? Analyst Answers But the structural irony that the privacy properties that make Zcash valuable also make it impossible to confirm the vulnerability was never used will remain a question mark the community will need to address as the recovery continues. As of this writing, ZEC trades at around $430, recovering from its June 5 lows as confidence in the network’s security response gradually rebuilds. Cover image from Grok, ZECUSD Chart from Tradingview
Zcash pared steep losses after the privacy coin's backers introduced an upgrade aimed at restoring faith in the digital asset's supply.
The Zcash vulnerability uncovered with help from Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 signals a shift in who may discover critical flaws first.
Frontier AI models have evolved into bug-finding tools, uncovering vulnerabilities across the tech world—and now in crypto too.
Fallout from a bug that enabled undetectable Zcash counterfeiting shows that privacy can sometimes present tradeoffs, experts say.
The price of Zcash cratered following the disclosure of a serious vulnerability for the privacy coin. Can ZEC make a comeback anytime soon?
Cypherpunk Technologies shares tumbled to their lowest point since March as jitters tied to a Zcash bug knocked the Winklevoss-backed firm.
Arthur Hayes says Maelstrom has sold its entire Zcash position after new disclosures around the Orchard Pool vulnerability sharpened the perceived risk around ZEC’s monetary integrity. The move effectively ends his recent “Holy Trinity” trade across ZEC, NEAR and HYPE, while leaving Worldcoin as the AI-linked bet he says the fund still holds. “The Holy Trinity is dead,” Hayes wrote on X. “Sadly due to the Orchard Pool exploit, I had to dump our entire ZEC bag.” Why Is Hayes Dumping Zcash Now? The post followed a detailed statement from Zooko Wilcox, Jason McGee and Taylor Hornby, who described the issue as “The Orchard Counterfeiting Vulnerability.” According to their summary, Hornby discovered a critical vulnerability in Zcash’s Orchard pool on May 29 and disclosed it to Zcash Open Development Lab, which then coordinated an emergency response completed on June 2. The key line was stark: the vulnerability “could have been exploited to undetectably create an unlimited amount of counterfeit ZEC within Orchard.” Related Reading: Zcash Fixes Critical Orchard Vulnerability As ZEC Holds $600 Support That disclosure changed the market framing. Earlier ecosystem messaging had emphasized that the vulnerability had been remediated, that there was no evidence of exploitation, and that user funds remained safe. But Wilcox, McGee and Hornby added an important caveat: because of Orchard’s privacy properties, there is no way to cryptographically prove whether the vulnerability was exploited while it existed. That distinction sits at the center of Hayes’ decision to exit. “While I think it’s extremely unlikely of any minting, it cannot be formally cryptographically proved impossible,” Hayes wrote. “The privacy from AI, govt, big tech narrative demands perfection not improbability. I read about the exploit yday, and didn’t appreciate how it violated my narrative mental map.” Josh Swihart, founder and CEO of Zcash Open Development Lab, offered his own explanation in a post titled “Never Again.” He described the Orchard bug as a failure in one of the system’s rules: the rule was written loosely enough that it could accept false information and still pass. In other words, the problem was not a privacy leak but a soundness failure in the proof system, the kind of issue that can undermine confidence in whether invalid value creation was possible inside a shielded pool. The emergency fix required coordinated network action rather than a simple wallet or application patch. ZODL and the broader Zcash ecosystem moved to disable Orchard actions temporarily and then restore them with a corrected circuit. The remediation may have closed the vulnerability, but for a privacy asset, the reputational damage came from the residual uncertainty: no evidence of counterfeiting is not the same as a cryptographic proof that counterfeiting never occurred. Related Reading: Zcash (ZEC) Soars To Six-Month Highs After 110% Rally – Can It Break The $700 Barrier? Hayes said the roughly 30% selloff in ZEC forced him to reassess the position. “The 30% dump made me rethink, and I had to take profit on the entire position,” he wrote. His stated logic was not that exploitation had happened, but that the privacy thesis he had attached to ZEC required a higher standard than probabilistic reassurance. The sale completes a rapid reversal from Hayes’ May 22 “Holy Trinity” call, when he grouped HYPE, ZEC and NEAR as a three-token basket. “When you are in position, trading is easy, sit back and watch number go up,” he wrote at the time, naming “HYPE, ZEC, NEAR the holy trinity.” HYPE represented the on-chain derivatives and protocol revenue trade, NEAR the AI and chain-abstraction angle, and ZEC the privacy leg. A day before the ZEC sale, Hayes had already said he dumped his entire HYPE and NEAR positions, citing higher energy prices, looming major AI IPOs and political risk around artificial intelligence as reasons for taking profit. Still, Hayes did not close the door on Zcash. “We will consistently re-evaluate our thinking and if my assumptions are proven incorrect, will rebuy, hopefully at lower prices,” he wrote. “Privacy is priceless and I have no issue eating humble pie and rebuying much higher.” For now, Worldcoin is the remaining public expression of his AI-linked rotation. “We still hold WLD and are excited for Lord Elon to pump our bags,” Hayes added. That follows his recent public call for a WLD bull market, linking the move to renewed speculation around AI assets and an OpenAI IPO. At press time, ZEC was down more than 45% in 24 hours. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
ZEC crashed over 50% to around $310 amid Zcash's Orchard bug disclosure and more than $116 million in 24-hour liquidations.
The Zcash vulnerability highlights the critical need for robust security measures in cryptocurrency systems to maintain investor confidence.
The post Zcash tumbles 50% as Hayes exits bag over unverifiable counterfeiting risk appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
Zcash lost more than $5 billion in market value after its developers, using Anthropic's Claude AI, discovered a long-running flaw in one of its privacy systems that could have enabled counterfeit tokens to be created without easy detection. In response to this disclosure, data from CryptoSlate showed that ZEC fell more than 50% to as low as $255 […]
The post Zcash loses over $5 billion after AI finds 4-year bug that could have created fake hidden coins appeared first on CryptoSlate.
An Orchard vulnerability that allowed undetectable counterfeiting of ZEC in its shielded pool has reignited debate over privacy coins.
Bankless co-founder David Hoffman has disclosed how he redeployed capital after selling ETH, revealing a new portfolio tilted toward VVV, NEAR, ZEC, HYPE and LIT. The move marks a notable shift for one of Ethereum’s most recognizable public advocates and has triggered debate over whether Hoffman is rotating into a new long-term thesis or chasing a different segment of the market. In a post on X, Hoffman said he “immediately took ~50% of the capital to VVV, NEAR, ZEC, HYPE” after selling ETH. The other half, he said, was held back for dollar-cost averaging into an asset that had not already moved sharply higher. “I left the rest as capital to DCA into something not already up multiples,” Hoffman wrote, adding that NEAR was an exception because it was “~1.40 at the time.” He then said he had completed that second leg of the rotation: “I’ve finished buying LIT with that remaining 50%.” Why Hoffman Chose LIT As Next Major Crypto Bet The disclosure quickly shifted into a broader discussion about Hoffman’s investment thesis around LIT and Lighter, particularly after Multicoin Capital’s Kyle Samani asked why a user would choose Lighter over Robinhood. Hoffman framed the answer around product specialization, market structure and auditability rather than simply token speculation. Related Reading: ‘Coldest Crypto Winter Ever’: Bloomberg’s Weisenthal Lists 12 Reasons “The easy answer is that Robinhood is an everything platform, and Lighter is highly optimized for perps specifically,” Hoffman wrote. “Lighter has more assets, including more pre-IPO markets. Lighter doesn’t require KYC sign up, and Robinhood Perps are for only a closed group of users in the EU.” He acknowledged one important constraint: “By contrast, Lighter is VPN blocked in the US.” But Hoffman argued that the deeper distinction is transparency. He pointed to zkLighter, Lighter’s zero-knowledge system, which he said allows end users to verify the exchange’s rule enforcement without permission. “zkLighter is fully auditable by end users, so anyone can permissionlessly verify the exchange is following its own rules,” he wrote. “Order matching, funding, risk checks, liquidations etc are defined in zk circuits, so Ethereum verifies that they followed Lighter’s rules before accepting state updates. Bullish crypto ethos!” For Hoffman, the auditability claim is not merely technical branding. He argued that it goes directly to trader and market-maker trust, because participants can verify that “there is no privileged party trading against users,” invoking the FTX and Alameda collapse as the relevant failure mode. Hoffman also emphasized latency and execution cost. He claimed Lighter has “the best latency of any perp exchange” and “the best fee structure,” while pointing to third-party comparisons against Hyperliquid. On Robinhood, however, he was more cautious, saying he could not judge Robinhood perps directly because he cannot access them and would not be able to audit them in the same way. Related Reading: Crypto Is A ‘Failed’ Asset Class, Says Renowned Economist “Maybe Robinhood, when it eventually rolls out perps, also has a 0-fee structure too,” he wrote. “But that means a tie between RH and Lighter, not a RH win.” The debate also exposed pushback from parts of the Ethereum community. One user accused Hoffman of going “from eth maxi to the other extreme,” while another suggested he had become more of a short-term trader. Hoffman rejected both characterizations. “The technology under all of these assets is pretty interesting too,” he replied to one critic. To another who joked about him having an investment thesis and sticking to it, Hoffman responded: “My last investment thesis I had for eight years. God forbid I get a new one!” Asked directly about LIT versus HYPE, Hoffman said he views the position as both “beta and alpha” to HYPE. His reasoning centered on relative buybacks, product quality and regulatory positioning, citing “LIT buybacks” as moving at “2x the relative speed of HYPE Buybacks,” alongside what he described as a technically superior product, better fees, stronger latency and US domicile. At press time LIT traded at $1.50. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
Zcash became the subject of a brief market scare after block explorers appeared to show that the privacy-focused blockchain had stopped producing blocks for several hours. By the time developers and infrastructure providers pushed back on the claim, the market had already moved in the opposite direction. ZEC was recently trading near $620, up about […]
The post Zcash was rumored to have stopped working – then it became crypto’s only winner appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Zcash has patched a dangerous vulnerability in its privacy-focused infrastructure that could have enabled double-spending, deploying an emergency network upgrade to prevent exploitation. Related Reading: Ethereum Ready For The ‘Final Dip’? Analysts Call For New Lows As Price Retests $1,900 Zcash Fixes Critical Bug With Emergency Upgrade On Wednesday, the Zcash Foundation revealed that developers had fixed a serious vulnerability in its Orchard shielded pool, which could have allowed invalid state transitions, potentially enabling double-spending within the pool. According to the report, Zcash researcher Taylor Hornby, who is conducting an ongoing protocol audit on behalf of Shielded Labs, discovered a critical soundness vulnerability in the Orchard zero-knowledge proof circuit on May 29 and disclosed the issue to Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) core engineers that same day. “A soundness vulnerability is one that could allow the system to accept something it should reject. In this case, successful exploitation could have allowed the Orchard pool to accept invalid state transitions, potentially permitting double-spending of funds within Orchard, though with no ability to inflate the total ZEC supply, which is protected by Zcash’s turnstile mechanism,” the foundation explained. After identifying the vulnerability, Zcash developers, miners, and infrastructure operators coordinated privately to prepare a fix, keeping details confidential to avoid potential exploits. The first soft fork attempt faced technical challenges, but engineers quickly released a revised patch that successfully activated on June 2, temporarily disabling Orchard-related transactions. On June 3, the network completed a full hard fork upgrade, NU6.2, restoring Orchard functionality with the corrected code and permanently resolving the vulnerability. The Foundation said there was no evidence that the bug was exploited, as no unauthorized value creation was detected. In addition, they affirmed that the total ZEC supply remains safe and the issue did not affect the privacy of funds held in any Zcash pool. ZEC Holds Key Support Amid Network Confusion Following the upgrade, news that the network was offline circulated on social media, creating confusion among community members. Some reports claimed that Zcash had failed to produce blocks for over four hours. However, Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Solana infrastructure firm Helius, dismissed these reports, affirming that the network was never down and that explorer apps were connected to a bad node. In a series of X posts, Zcash blockchain explorer CipherScan confirmed the issue, explaining that its nodes were upgrading to support the recent NU6.2 network upgrade. “What actually happened: Zcash pushed a coordinated network upgrade (NU6.2) that required all node operators to update. During that transition, some block explorers, including ours, showed stale or missing data while we upgraded,” the post stated. “That’s the explorer being out of sync, not the blockchain being broken. Important distinction. (…) Block explorers are just readers. They pull data from a node, parse it, and display it. If the node is upgrading or resyncing, the explorer goes stale,” the explorer continued. Related Reading: Arthur Hayes Bets $100K On Hyperliquid, Says HYPE Will Beat Solana By Year‑End Despite the confusion, ZEC’s price continued to defy the broader market trend, rallying over 8% intraday to retest the $636 around on Wednesday morning. Notably, the cryptocurrency has soared roughly 20% over the past two days while most of the market bled. After failing to reclaim the $630 local resistance, the cryptocurrency dropped toward the $600 support, briefly falling below it before bouncing again. As of this writing, Zcash trades at $612, a 9.5% increase in the weekly timeframe. Featured Image from Unsplash.com, Chart from TradingView.com
Economist and macro trader Alex Krüger has argued that “crypto” has largely failed as an asset class, even as blockchain-based adoption accelerates across stablecoins, tokenization, prediction markets, perps, AI and privacy-focused assets. In a post on X, Krüger drew a sharp distinction between the speculative crypto market of recent cycles and the parts of the industry he believes are still showing meaningful traction. His central claim was blunt: most crypto tokens have failed to produce durable value for holders, while founders and insiders have repeatedly used the sector’s weak guardrails to extract liquidity from retail investors. “I largely think of ‘crypto’ as a failed asset class at this point,” Krüger wrote. “I’ve written about the causes multiple times. Mainly, most crypto assets are worthless, or have dreadful value accrual, and most founders have abused the lack of guardrails and dumped on people indiscriminately, or are outright scammers.” Krüger said the damage was compounded by what he called the “Memecoins SuperBullshitCycle,” describing it as a speculative trend that “brought the worst out of people” and drained both capital and morale from market participants. He also pointed to “the never-ending wave of DeFi hacks,” which he said has increased sharply since last April, as another factor weighing on crypto’s credibility as an investable asset class. Krüger Sees Adoption Rising, But Not In “Old Crypto” The economist acknowledged that his assessment may seem contradictory, given that several blockchain-linked sectors are still expanding rapidly. He cited growing stablecoin adoption, openly pro-crypto politicians in the United States, TradFi’s push to tokenize assets, rising usage of equities and commodities perps on offshore and DeFi venues, the early development of US perps markets, and the increasing presence of prediction markets in everyday information flows. Related Reading: Crypto In 401(k)s: Senators Sanders, Warren Letter Warns $14 Trillion At Risk From DOL Proposal But Krüger framed many of those trends as “more ‘blockchain’ than ‘crypto’,” suggesting that the infrastructure and application layer may be advancing while the legacy token market remains structurally weak. In his view, the key exception is where tokens have clearer links to revenue, user demand or capital return mechanisms. “A few among those exceptions even distribute most revenue to holders via buybacks,” he wrote, naming Hyperliquid in particular. “Which is what every investor actually wants to see to be invested in a good business rather than a fleeting narrative.” That distinction sits at the core of Krüger’s argument. He is not saying that blockchain-based markets are dead. Rather, he is saying that broad, narrative-driven crypto exposure has failed to deliver the kind of value accrual investors were promised, while a narrower group of sectors has begun to resemble operating businesses or infrastructure plays. Privacy And AI Stand Out Krüger identified privacy as one of the few “old school” crypto categories that remains relevant. He argued that demand for private, non-custodial stores of value is real, even if part of that demand comes from illicit flows. He referenced the US Department of Justice’s confiscation of $15 billion in Bitcoin from Cambodia-linked pig butchering operations, saying the legal filing was submitted on October 8, 2025. Related Reading: $12.6 Trillion Schwab Targets Mid-2027 Crypto Trading Rollout For Advisors “Of course, everyone needs privacy, not just criminals, but crime flows are real, and large,” Krüger wrote. “The asset attracting the most flows in this niche is Zcash. Zcash’s recent performance has been fascinating, as it has been trending higher with bitcoin trending lower, a sign of real reallocation among bitcoiners.” The other category Krüger said is not dead is AI. Still, his view of the sector was selective. He described most AI tokens as “high flying, fundamentally lacking, narrative driven tokens,” while naming Venice as a standout because he sees it as tied to a private AI platform with growing users and revenue. That leaves Krüger with a more nuanced conclusion than the headline claim alone suggests. He sees the old token market as broken, but not the broader direction of crypto-enabled infrastructure. Stablecoins, tokenized assets, prediction markets, perps, AI and privacy may form the sector’s next investable narrative, provided the tokens attached to them can show actual value capture rather than recycled speculation. “So one could say old ‘crypto’ is a failed asset class,” Krüger wrote, “but from the ashes come new beginnings, and the new face of crypto is one heavily dominated by the needs of Tradfi, prediction markets, AI, and privacy.” His closing line captured the contradiction he sees in the market: “Crypto sucks. Long live crypto.” At press time, the total crypto market cap was at $2.28 trillion. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
A Zcash vulnerability could have allowed double-spending within the network's flagship privacy pool, though no exploitation occurred.
Ethereum developers are racing to bring native privacy to the world’s largest smart contract blockchain as investors warn that delays could weaken ETH’s claim as crypto’s default settlement layer. The pressure has intensified as the market rotates toward privacy-focused assets while Ethereum struggles to hold investor attention amid its current wave of FUD and questions […]
The post Ethereum’s privacy push faces a 12-month deadline as markets reward privacy-first assets appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Arthur Hayes said NEAR and Zcash form the core of his privacy trade, arguing that crypto markets are beginning to reprice assets tied to private value transfer, AI-era sovereignty and real protocol economics. In an interview with The Rollup, the Maelstrom CIO said NEAR could offer “20x potential,” while Zcash may have “5x potential” over the next year, framing both assets as part of a broader reaction to “big tech, big government” and AI-driven surveillance. Hayes’ thesis starts with a macro shift. Earlier this year, he said he had been cautious because Bitcoin appeared to be pricing in an “AI deflationary credit event,” with monetary authorities unlikely to print aggressively until a crisis forced their hand. That changed, he argued, after the Iran conflict crystallized a liquidity-positive setup for markets. “Governments print money to win war. AI is part of war. The AI capex will be underwritten, both in the United States and China, by the governments,” Hayes said. He added that governments in the US, China and Europe would likely fund a wartime economy and AI infrastructure through monetary expansion, with some of that liquidity leaking into Bitcoin and selected crypto assets. Why NEAR And Zcash? Hayes’ strongest comments were reserved for privacy. He once again confirmed Zcash as his “second biggest bag” and said the asset had become investable again after earlier concerns around its trusted setup, issuance profile and developer subsidy faded into the background. The old Zcash trade, in his view, was too early and too messy. The new one is cleaner, more liquid and more relevant to the current political and technological moment. Related Reading: Zcash (ZEC) Soars To Six-Month Highs After 110% Rally – Can It Break The $700 Barrier? “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have private money over the internet,” Hayes said. “And that’s what Zcash represents, that’s what Monero represents. And as we are learning the ability for big tech, big government and AI to essentially know everything about us and to trace everything that’s going on in our lives, to have pure, just cryptographically proven privacy with money is going to be super needed.” Hayes said his renewed interest in Zcash accelerated after a conversation with Naval Ravikant during Tokyo 2049. According to Hayes, Ravikant argued that Monero’s ring signatures were weaker than commonly assumed and referenced a Japanese law-enforcement case involving deanonymization. Hayes said he bought $1 million of Zcash “right then and there,” then continued accumulating as he researched the thesis further. The price target came as Hayes connected Zcash to NEAR’s role in making private value transfer more usable across assets and chains. He argued that shielded Zcash alone is important, but the larger opportunity comes when users can move from shielded ZEC into other assets, including stablecoins, through NEAR Intents. “Within the ZODL app, I can now send any crypto asset I want to anyone across the Internet in an anonymous way. From Shielded Zcash, using Near Intents. Now I’m into, you know, USDT on Tron and I’ve sent it to whoever I’m going to send it to in an anonymous fashion. That’s huge,” Hayes said. That is where his upside estimates diverge. Hayes said Zcash remains the primary expression of the privacy trade, but NEAR may offer the more asymmetric setup because it is tied to the execution layer behind confidential transfers. “I think Near has a 20x potential where, you know, Zcash might have a 5x potential over the next year or something like that,” he said. “So you scale the capital that you allocate accordingly to the risk.” Related Reading: Why Multicoin Is Betting Big On Zcash: Tushar Jain Lays Out The Bull Case NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin reinforced the economic side of that argument, saying NEAR Intents is approaching $20 billion in lifetime volume, with $18.9 billion cited during the interview, and has generated $33 million in fees. He said NEAR takes a fee from every transaction and uses it to buy back NEAR, while the ecosystem has already halved inflation and may push for further reductions as revenue grows. Hayes also tied the trade to token structure. He said NEAR benefits from being “fully diluted,” avoiding the large overhang of venture allocations that still weighs on many L1 assets. For a token expected to move in an upmarket, he argued, that clean supply profile matters. The risk, in Hayes’ own framing, is macro. He said he intends to hold until the broader liquidity backdrop changes, but warned that reduced government support for AI capex or a worsening war scenario would alter the setup. For now, he sees privacy, AI-linked sovereignty and exchange revenue as the trades with the clearest market validation. At press time, Zcash traded at $624. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
Hyperliquid’s HYPE token has surged 55% in a single week and delivered more than 130% in year-to-date returns — but prominent crypto analyst Ali Martinez (@alicharts) is warning that the asset is now approaching a critical resistance zone with multiple technical indicators flashing sell signals simultaneously, a setup he says could trigger a retracement toward $40 if momentum fades at current levels. Related Reading: XRP Sees 4th-Largest Wallet Growth Spike Of 2026, Santiment Says In a post on X, Martinez laid out the technical case with precision. Three converging signals are appearing on HYPE at the same time: the TD Sequential Combo 13 sell signal is already active, a standard green 9 sell signal could confirm as early as the next session, and both the Relative Strength Index (RSI) and the Chande Momentum Oscillator are sitting at historically elevated — or overheated — levels, per the analyst’s analysis. HYPE's price trends to the upside following a surge in institutional adoption, as seen on the daily chart. Source: HYPEUSD on Tradingview Why The Setup Concerns Martinez The significance of the current configuration lies in precedent. According to Martinez’s post, the last two occasions when TD Sequential sell signals appeared on HYPE while the RSI and Chande Momentum Oscillator were simultaneously at overheated levels, both instances led to significant corrections. The analyst is not pointing to isolated indicators — he is pointing to a specific combination of signals that has already proven consequential twice in HYPE’s relatively short price history. HYPE's price entering a dangerous area if the asset can't sustain its current bullish momentum, as seen on the TD Sequential Indicator. Source: Ali Martinez on X The analyst does leave room for one final push before any reversal materializes. HYPE could still push toward $59 or even slightly above $60 before momentum fades, he notes — but frames that move as a potential exhaustion run rather than the beginning of a new leg higher. If rejection comes from the $59–$60 area, a retracement toward approximately $40 becomes increasingly likely, per his assessment. That would represent a pullback of roughly 33% from the upper resistance zone — meaningful, but consistent with the corrections that followed the previous two sell signal setups he references. ZCash Flashing A Similar Warning Martinez also flagged ZCash in the same post, noting a comparable technical structure after a 40%-plus weekly surge. ZCash is approaching the same resistance zone that triggered a major rejection in November — around the $700–$730 area — with the TD Sequential now flashing a sell signal on the weekly chart. Because the signal appears on the weekly timeframe, Martinez warns the potential correction could be substantially larger, with first downside support near $500 and a deeper retracement potentially reaching $380. The parallel between the two assets is notable given that BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes has publicly disclosed large positions in both HYPE and ZCash — with a $150 HYPE target and a $10,000 long-term ZCash target — making the current resistance zone a critical test of two of his highest-conviction calls simultaneously. Related Reading: New Bitcoin Lows? Analysts Say Chances Are ‘Extremely Slim’ As of this writing, HYPE trades at around $56, consolidating just below the critical $59–$60 resistance zone that Martinez has identified as the make-or-break level for the near-term price trajectory. Cover image from Perplexity, HYPEUSD Chart from Tradingview
Multicoin Capital co-founder Tushar Jain said the firm’s recent investment in Zcash was driven by a convergence of stronger market traction, improving infrastructure and a broader return to crypto’s privacy roots. Speaking on the latest Bankless podcast released May 19, Jain argued that Zcash has moved from a “left for dead” asset into a credible private store-of-value contender. Jain said Multicoin had watched Zcash for years without being convinced. The asset, in his view, had long suffered from weak attention, poor usability and limited evidence that privacy demand could translate into durable market interest. That changed after Zcash rallied sharply, corrected, and still retained both community intensity and a higher market baseline than in prior years. Multicoin’s Zcash Thesis “When I see something like that, I always pause and wonder, is this some manufactured thing? Is it sustainable? Is there a real groundswell of support here?” Jain said. “And when you see the price do what it did last year and then what we saw was it pulled back very significantly. As I saw it pull back, what I saw was one, the people who were talking about it were still excited about it. Two, the place where it pulled back on the chart actually demonstrated much better attention and strength than where the thing was trading for years and years before that.” That, Jain said, helped get Multicoin “over the line.” The firm interpreted the correction not as a failed narrative, but as a stress test. Zcash, he argued, retained the “key people” supporting it and showed that interest in the asset was not merely a short-lived speculative burst. Related Reading: Zcash, Bitcoin, And Solana—Catalysts Ahead That Could Fuel Another Upswing Before May End The discussion, which also featured Helius Labs founder Mert Mumtaz, framed Zcash as a possible answer to what both guests described as crypto’s unfinished privacy problem. Mumtaz, who said he began looking more seriously at Zcash in early 2024 after reviewing its scaling plans, argued that privacy had become “the major thing that crypto has forgotten,” particularly as institutional adoption pushes more financial activity onto transparent rails. Jain’s core investment thesis is not that Zcash becomes a high-throughput payments network. He described the asset’s real market as the store-of-value sector, where social coordination, brand and perceived monetary properties matter as much as raw technical capacity. In that context, he argued, Zcash is beginning to form a Schelling point around private wealth storage. “The market that Zcash is competing for is the store of value market,” Jain said. “Like that’s the job that it does is it’s for storing value and it is far more scalable than Bitcoin and so enables more transactions and such. But the core value prop is store of value.” Jain compared that dynamic to Bitcoin’s early reflexivity: more people treating an asset as a store of value makes it a stronger candidate for that role. He said Zcash now has the potential to benefit from a similar feedback loop, particularly if it remains the leading privacy asset by market cap, volume, attention and other relevant metrics. Related Reading: Arthur Hayes Says Zcash Is His Largest Crypto Position Outside Bitcoin The guests also contrasted Zcash with Monero. Mumtaz argued that Monero’s ring-signature design relies on decoys, while Zcash’s shielded model offers a stronger cryptographic foundation. Jain emphasized a separate but related point: brand. In his telling, Zcash is positioned less as a tool for illicit use and more as “privacy for the normal person.” “Zcash is not for that,” Jain said, referring to Monero’s darker market associations. “Zcash is for the regular person who says, no, I care about my privacy, not because I’m doing anything illegal or I have anything to hide, but because I don’t need to reveal all of my financial transaction history to every single person with whom I interact.” That positioning, he argued, could make Zcash more legible to institutions and a broader group of users. The asset’s transparent mode may allow institutional exposure, while improved wallet infrastructure and decentralized access routes could push more activity into the shielded pool over time. The podcast also addressed the bear case directly: investors have repeatedly overestimated demand for privacy, and prior privacy narratives have often ended poorly. Jain acknowledged that Zcash had previously been “hugely inflationary,” difficult to use, weakly marketed and dependent on centralized exchanges for acquisition. But he said the last 18 months changed the setup, citing better wallet infrastructure, more attention, and a macro backdrop that has made private stores of value more salient. Mumtaz added that upcoming catalysts could matter for adoption, including Ledger support for shielded ZEC, a rising shielded pool share of roughly 31% to 32%, planned block-time reductions from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, and further work on quantum resistance. At press time, ZEC traded at $584.82. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
The ZEC technical structure continues to strengthen after breaking above a key macro resistance level that had capped price action for an extended period. Following a successful breakout above a long-standing descending trendline, the asset has continued to hold above key levels that previously served as strong resistance throughout the broader downtrend. The move signals a potential shift in momentum as bullish pressure gradually returns to the chart. How Zcash Momentum Continues Building After Technical Breakout Zcash is showing signs of renewed technical strength after completing a significant compound breakout above both a long-standing descending trendline and the critical $540 macro resistance zone. Technical analyst Ardi mentioned on X that the asset has also closed above the previous lower high near $560 for the first time since the broader shift in market structure. Related Reading: Here’s Why The ZCash (ZEC) Price Rallied Above $500 Again This level now becomes a critical pivot, whether ZEC can hold its reclaimed level as support and build momentum toward the next major resistance region between $590 and $600. However, if ZEC fails to maintain this structure, it would quickly shift price back toward the $540 level as the next key support zone. Ardi highlighted that the cleanest risk setup and reward remain at the extremes, which is either a confirmed breakout above $640 highs or a retest into $540 support with a clear invalidation below. The current range of ZEC is likely to remain choppy, with price action lacking clear direction between key levels. Ardi advises that with further consolidation still possible before a decisive breakout, the more strategic approach is to avoid chasing price in the middle of the range. Instead, the better trade structure is to position longs at support. Will Zcash Rally Gains Strength Following Clean Breakout Confirmation Zcash has continued to strengthen technically after successfully confirming a breakout from a well-defined daily bull flag continuation pattern, signaling a sustained upside bullish continuation momentum following weeks of consolidation. Related Reading: Zcash (ZEC) Approaches Critical Breakout Zone With Bulls Targeting Higher Levels After Recent Surge According to a post on X from an analyst known as Team LAMBO, the setup move inside the premium from the $510 breakout zone toward $560 has already delivered nearly 20% expansion from the previously identified local bottom, reinforcing growing optimism around the ZEC higher timeframe structure. Despite this move, the broader structure still appears incomplete. As long as the price holds above the breakout region, the bullish bias will remain intact, with momentum favoring further upside. From a higher timeframe (HTF) perspective, the next key expansion targets are positioned around $625, followed by the $680 resistance zone, where a significant pool of liquidity is expected to be situated. Featured image from Medium, chart from Tradingview.com
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes has suggested that Zcash (ZEC) could eventually reach 10% of Bitcoin’s market capitalization, a long-term bullish thesis on privacy coins rather than a near-term price forecast. Based on ZEC’s circulating supply of around 16 million tokens, that scenario would imply a price in the high four-figure range, roughly $8,000–$10,000, depending on Bitcoin’s valuation. A Chart Pattern Worth Watching On the technical side, traders point to a possible cup-and-handle pattern, but this is a subjective chart formation with no guarantee of outcome. Resistance is often cited around $625–$650, with some speculative projections suggesting a move toward $1,000, though this depends heavily on broader market conditions and is not a confirmed target. The target also lines up with ZEC’s 1.618 Fibonacci extension, drawn from a $745 swing high down to a $185 swing low. Privacy Coins Pull Ahead ZEC is not moving alone. Monero and Dash, both privacy-focused tokens, have also posted gains over the past month. But Zcash leads the pack. Reports indicate the coin climbed more than 80% in 30 days while the total crypto market cap barely moved — up just 0.2% over the same stretch. $ZEC update This thing is running its own bull market rn… gg I closed my short. Especially with $BTC sitting on support around $76k Even a small pump in Bitcoin makes ZEC go absolutely stupid right now https://t.co/xLs6ficv7l pic.twitter.com/obAhbnXqfp — SnorlaX お金 (@SnorlaxOnChain) May 18, 2026 In the past three days alone, ZEC added 18% as the broader market slipped 3%. That split has prompted some traders to say Zcash is running its own bull market. Growing demand for financial privacy appears to be the main force behind the move, pulling fresh interest into a coin that had been largely overlooked for years. Related Reading: XRP Will Go ‘Higher, Much Higher,’ Analyst Says, Betting On Explosive Breakout Institutional Interest Adds Fuel Earlier in May, hedge fund Multicoin Capital disclosed it holds a position in ZEC. Around the same time, Robinhood added the token to its platform, opening it up to a wider pool of retail investors. Both developments landed at a time when the privacy narrative was already building. Hayes’s comment added another layer. His estimate was speculative — based on a market cap comparison to Bitcoin — but it drew attention and, according to data, ZEC’s value in Bitcoin terms has risen about 20.5% since he made the remark. Whether the cup-and-handle plays out or not, the coin has already proven it can move on its own terms. Featured image from Quicknode, chart from TradingView