Zcash (ZEC) has staged one of the sharpest recoveries of the quarter, vaulting roughly 160%–170% from late-September levels and briefly trading in the low-$150s on October 2 after spending much of 2024 and early 2025 suppressed in the $16–$20 corridor.
There is no single on-chain or protocol-level catalyst that neatly explains the surge. Instead, a confluence of factors has seemingly pulled ZEC into the center of crypto’s attention cycle. First, the privacy theme itself has re-entered the conversation at the ecosystem level.
Second, influential market voices amplified ZEC directly. Naval Ravikant, a co-founder of AngelList and a long-time crypto commentator, wrote: “Bitcoin is insurance against fiat. ZCash is insurance against Bitcoin.” The line—short, memetic, and easy to circulate—propelled visibility for ZEC across trading circles and crypto media. As is typical in momentum-driven markets, the endorsement coincided with outsized follow-through as price and attention reinforced each other.
From the builder side, Helius Labs CEO Mert Mumtaz distilled a multi-part thesis that resonated with technically minded traders: privacy has been “slept on” and is “about to make a comeback” amid CBDC and centralized-coin momentum; a “Renaissance of talent” is entering Zcash across the Zashi wallet, intents research, and performance workstreams; and several “large tech improvements” are in flight that could “1,000x performance and scale as well as help with security and finality.”
look some of you are in the replies asking why I’ve been shilling Zcash for a while
relatively simple
i) three important missions in crypto: markets, store of value, privacy/freedom
Well-followed traders added fuel. Luke Martin captured the positioning dynamics succinctly: “Some of the smartest people on this app are bullish on ZEC right now… [but] one of the dumbest things you could do on this app for the past 7 years was buy ZEC anytime someone shilled it. Certainly not lacking fuel for a hated rally if it does continue higher.”
Mechanically, the rally exhibits the typical signatures of a narrative rotation. As privacy returned to headline status and ZEC became the cleanest liquid proxy for that theme, order books thinned and intraday ranges expanded.
At press time, ZEC traded at $142.84.
