Privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash (ZEC) has spiked by more than 70% over the past week as crypto traders have been paying closer attention to privacy-focused projects.
Zcash traded at about $346 on Friday, May 1, before hitting a seven-day peak of $593.86 on Wednesday. It has since settled at around $570 as of Friday, according to CoinGecko.
Pav Hundal, lead market analyst at crypto exchange Swyftx, told Cointelegraph that traders have begun paying closer attention to privacy projects “amid broader concerns about the impact of AI, quantum computing and financial surveillance on crypto.”
He added that ZEC was also boosted after Tushar Jain, the co-founder of the investment firm Multicoin Capital, said on Wednesday that it had “built a significant position” in ZEC since February.
Zcash is one of the more prominent privacy-focused cryptocurrencies, trailed by its significant rival Monero (XMR), and Jain said it is an attractive investment as “institutions will increasingly seek private assets to protect themselves” from what he claimed was a “political trend to seize private wealth.”
Several crypto firms have also recently released new privacy features. The Ethereum scaling solution Polygon launched private stablecoin payments on Sunday, while Aptos Labs’ privacy feature Confidential APT, which conceals token balances and transfer amounts, went live on the mainnet in April.
The market intelligence platform Santiment said in an X post on Wednesday that Zcash was “emphatically rebounding,” as fear of missing out and social media mentions of Zcash spiked along with its price.
Santiment pointed to a lack of government trust as a possible catalyst for the surge in interest from retail traders.
Source: Santiment
“The crowd is increasingly viewing privacy-focused assets as a hedge against growing surveillance concerns, tighter exchange regulations and expanding AI-driven data tracking across financial platforms,” Santiment said.
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“At the same time, lower market caps across many privacy coins have traders eyeing them as high-upside momentum plays during this mild altcoin rally crypto has seen so far in May,” it added.
Zcash rally could be short-lived
Privacy was a significant investment theme for crypto in 2025, with privacy-focused tokens surging last year despite a broader downturn in the rest of the market.
Zcash nearly crossed $700 in November, its highest price since 2018, while fellow privacy coin Monero reached a new all-time high of $797.73 in January.
However, neither held on to the gains, and Swyftx’s Hundal said that the recent rally could also be short-lived.
“Zcash’s move has some hallmarks of a narrative rotation into privacy coins,” Hundal said. “I’d be careful calling it a clean fundamental repricing just yet. We need more time to see how durable investor interest is.”
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