Grayscale reports Zcash market cap rises to 1.5% of Bitcoin’s in one year

A year ago, Zcash was a rounding error next to Bitcoin. Its market cap sat at roughly 0.1% of Bitcoin’s, the kind of ratio that makes a coin easy to ignore. Fast forward to September 2026, and that number has jumped to 1.5%, according to new research from Grayscale. ZEC went from approximately $60 to around $1,500 in twelve months, a roughly 19-fold increase that pushed its market cap near $13.74 billion by late August. For context, Bitcoin’s market cap hovered around $1.56 trillion at the time. What’s driving the surge Grayscale’s report, published September 29, 2026, attributes the rally to growing demand for financial privacy. The thesis is straightforward: as blockchain transparency improves and on-chain surveillance tools proliferate, a segment of users and investors increasingly values the option to transact privately. Zcash’s core feature, shielded transactions, lets users encrypt sender, receiver, and amount data while still settling on a public blockchain. By late September 2026, ZEC was trading around $1,400, with its market cap reported near $23-24 billion, suggesting continued momentum even after the initial price spike earlier in the summer. Grayscale frames the opport...