Zcash has climbed back into crypto’s top 20 largest tokens by market capitalization, trading above $600 for the first time in nearly seven years.
The privacy-focused token has gained more than 1,270% year-over-year, according to CoinGecko data, pushing its market cap to just under $10 billion.
The rally coincides with renewed attention to privacy infrastructure and a wave of technical upgrades from the Electric Coin Company (ECC), one of the network’s developers and maintainers.
The rising popularity of the Zashi wallet, combined with upcoming developments under Project Tachyon, has revived both user activity and investor confidence, as CoinDesk Research noted in its Zcash report.
Daily trading volume has risen to over $1.8 billion, with liquidity deepening across major venues such as Binance, Hyperliquid and Bybit.
The futures markets have risen in tandem. Data from CoinGlass shows that Binance leads open interest at around $340 million, closely followed by Hyperliquid at $332 million, with Bybit in third place at $157 million. Long-short ratios are hovering around parity (1.05-1.13), suggesting balanced market positioning rather than speculative mania.
Spot market measurements tell a complementary story. ZEC’s spot-to-futures ratio remains high, with about $801 million in 24-hour spot volume against $4.5 billion in futures turnover — an indication that organic demand, rather than pure leverage, is driving this cycle’s movement.
Technically, the break above $500 represents a full retracement of the local highs of the 2021 cycle.
If the momentum holds, Zcash could mark one of the strongest annual performances of any large-cap crypto asset in 2025 — making it not just a price rally, but a narrative reset.
