Arthur Hayes thinks Zcash can move an order of magnitude faster than most investors expect—and he spelled out why in a Coin Bureau interview released on November 3.
The former BitMEX CEO ties the new Zcash bull case to a three-part story that mixes technical maturation, visible shifts in on-chain behavior, and a looming supply inflection. “I think that 10% to 20% of the value of Bitcoin quite quickly is something that Zcash could achieve,” he said—an estimate that, at current Bitcoin prices, translates to roughly $10,000–$20,000 per ZEC.
Costs remain a friction—“It’s definitely not cheap yet”—but he points to trend data he has reviewed showing a secular rise in actual privacy usage: “the amount of shielded transactions is approaching I think 30%, up from like a few percentage points when I cared about Zcash a long time ago.” In other words, the privacy feature set is not just theoretically stronger; it is being used.
The demand narrative rests on a simple claim: in the age of on-chain forensics and AI-enabled pattern recognition, true cash-like privacy is a product with differentiated utility. Hayes draws a sharp line between pseudonymity and privacy. “I believe in privacy coins… I think Bitcoin being synonymous is actually a good thing because I want to be able to track Bitcoin, but I also want to have internet cash where there is no traceability of that.”
He contrasts Zcash with Monero’s recent headlines, citing reports that “the Japanese authorities were able to deanonymize Monero by… linking together different disparate parts of some information.”
Scarcity is the third pillar. Hayes flags the Zcash halving “coming up in a few weeks, November,” framing it as the timing catalyst that could supercharge reflexivity if investor attention and liquidity arrive in tandem. The supply cut is not the entire story for him—he dismisses halving dogma in Bitcoin—but he does view a synchronous demand narrative plus a mechanical issuance drop as unusually potent for a small-float asset when a privacy bid is already rising on-chain.
Liquidity and access are precisely why he sees the setup as asymmetric. Zcash is not broadly quotable, which is a risk and an opportunity. “I hit up… eight or nine OTC brokers. Only two brokers would quote me Zcash,” he said, describing how hard it was to acquire size through traditional venues. He expects that, if the price begins to trend, the path will run through permissionless rails rather than regulated exchanges. “If the price rises high enough… I can buy it on one of these decentralized exchanges and that’ll be how you really get access… just like how Bitcoin was back [then].”
Hayes believes the upside can compress into weeks rather than years. In his words: “I’ve bought a lot of it… I’m still buying it. I think that this is probably going to be one of my better trades of the cycle.”
At press time, ZEC traded at $464.
