Zcash cracked $1,600 on Tuesday for the first time since 2016, hours after 21shares listed Europe's first Zcash exchange-traded product on Euronext Paris and Amsterdam. The listing follows Grayscale's U.S. spot ZEC fund and arrives as more than 30% of all ZEC now sits shielded in encrypted pools, an all-time high.
ZEC breaks $1,600 on European listing
Zcash pushed past $1,600 over the past 24 hours and is currently trading at $1,622, up 8%. The catalyst came from Europe: asset manager 21shares listed the region's first physically backed exchange-traded product tied to zcash on Euronext Paris and Amsterdam, trading under ISIN CH1608218801. The firm listed a second ETP alongside it, tracking ETHFI, the governance token of Ether.fi.
A fee that prices in scarcity
Both products are physically backed, meaning the issuer holds the underlying coins rather than synthetic exposure. They also carry a 2.5% annual fee, several times what a European investor pays for mainstream bitcoin or ether products, pricing in how hard the underlying asset is to source and custody.
Grayscale led, now lowers the entry price
The European listing follows Grayscale, which brought the first spot Zcash exchange-traded fund to NYSE Arca under the ticker ZCSH. That fund is now running a 3-for-1 forward split with a Sept. 28 record date, additional shares distributed Sept. 29, and post-split trading beginning Sept. 30. Earlier this month, ZCSH absorbed $46.56 million in a single session, its second-largest daily inflow since launch, lifting net assets near $917 million.
Record shielded supply signals conviction
More than 30% of all ZEC in existence, roughly 4.9 million coins, now sit fully shielded in encrypted pools, an all-time high for the network. As a privacy coin, Zcash lets holders move coins out of transparent addresses at a usability cost, so a record share of supply taking that step while price runs suggests the buyers are not purely speculative.
Bitcoin.com News covered the asset when it first crossed $1,000; according to Arthur Hayes and Bitwise's Matt Hougan: "structural trade rather than a seasonal one". ZEC has since climbed roughly 19-fold over the past year.
The rally has not been clean
ZEC fell from a year-to-date high of $1,590 on Sept. 18 to $1,429 before finding support above $1,440, and Tuesday's move reclaimed that ground and then some. Leverage has followed the rally too: one trader running a 50x long on Aster DEX was reportedly up 1,581% on a $224,000 position as ZEC broke through, per Lookonchain.
Zcash's market cap now stands at $27.5 billion, ranking it ninth among all crypto assets, with regulated wrappers on two continents and a fee that still tells everyone the plumbing is expensive. The next test is whether European flows match the size of the U.S. inflows.
Source: Bitcoin News
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