In brief
- Zcash reached its highest price since 2018 after gaining more than 50% in four days.
- Open interest in ZEC perpetual futures rose from $963 million to $1.8 billion in five days.
- Crowded futures markets can intensify both short squeezes and selloffs.
Zcash briefly reached $888—its highest price level since 2018—before pulling back to around $843, up nearly 7% over 24 hours and roughly 48% since August 20.
The privacy coin, which trades as ZEC, remains well short of a record all-time high of $3,191.93, set in October 2016 during the coins earliest days of trading when liquidity was thin. The coin dropped as low as $16 just two years ago and has been on a remarkable run since, appreciating by over 1,800% in the last year alone.
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ZEC perpetual futures open interest nearly doubled from $962.5 million on August 19 to $1.8 billion Monday, while 24-hour volume reached $5.3 billion, according to crypto derivatives data platform Loris Tools. The average eight-hour funding rate was 0.0106%, meaning traders paid a premium to hold long positions.
ZEC futures let traders bet on Zcashs price without owning the coin, often with leverage. Open interest tracks outstanding contracts, while positive funding signals stronger demand for long positions—raising the risk of a short squeeze if ZEC rises or long liquidations if it falls.
Interest in Zcash grew over the last year as investors searched for an alternative to Bitcoin with stronger privacy protections. Zcash, a type of privacy coin, makes it difficult to track transactions on the network by shielding balances, unlike traditional cryptocurrencies—such as Bitcoin or Ethereum—which are transparent by default.
Interest in the coin further grew after Grayscale filed to convert its Zcash Trust into an ETF in November. The proposal is still under review.
What bullishness the Grayscale news may have garnered was tested in June, when ZEC plunged from $635 to $309 after developers using Claude Opus 4.8 disclosed a flaw in its Orchard shielded pool that could have enabled undetectable counterfeiting.