Zcash ZEC

Where ZEC sits in the market

At #15, Zcash sits in the top of the large-cap band, near enough to the leaders to be quoted like one of them. This close to the leaders the book behaves like a major most of the time: ZEC quotes continuously on the large venues and the spread is rarely the reason a trade goes wrong. What separates it from the top ten is reflexivity — it takes the benchmark's direction and amplifies it, so drawdowns arrive faster than the rank suggests.

CryptoPingAi is currently streaming 5 live ZEC order books (Binance, OKX, Gate.io, MEXC, HTX). That is coverage in line with a #15 ranking: enough books to cross-check a quote, few enough that one of them can dominate price formation for hours at a time. None of the books we see for ZEC are regulated US or Korean venues, so this is an offshore-quoted asset — availability, and the price itself, depend on which jurisdiction you trade from.

ZEC against its all-time high

ZEC has given back 60.1% from its $3,192 high (on 2016-10-29). Recovery now needs 2.51x — a full trend, not a bounce. Statistically this is the depth at which the reference point people quote shifts: the prior high stops being a target and starts being a ceiling that gets mentioned only after price has already run. It was set 10 years ago. A reference that old says more about the cycle it belongs to than about the asset as it trades now.

ZEC across its historical range

ZEC has traded across a 199x range, between $16.08 and $3,192. Any volatility figure quoted for this asset depends heavily on which part of that range it is measured over.

Spot is about 79.1x above the all-time low of $16.08 (on 2024-07-05) — a substantial recovery, but one where a meaningful share of the holder base still has a cost basis within the visible range rather than far beneath it.

ZEC supply structure

ZEC is capped at 21.0 million ZEC, of which only 16.7 million is circulating — 79.5% issued, leaving 4.3 million still to come. At that ratio the emission schedule is a primary driver of the supply story, not a footnote: new supply arrives continuously and has to be absorbed by new demand before price can hold a level.

What kind of asset ZEC is

Zcash belongs to the privacy-coin category, which comes with a specific and unusual risk profile: the dominant driver of its trading environment is regulation, not technology or demand. Privacy assets have been removed from major regulated exchanges in several jurisdictions, and each delisting permanently narrows where the asset can be traded and how deep its books are. For this class, exchange availability is not a convenience question — it is the primary risk factor, and it moves in steps rather than continuously.

CoinGecko files ZEC under 10 categories, including Privacy Coins, Layer 1 (L1), Near Protocol Ecosystem, Zero Knowledge (ZK), Proof of Work (PoW). CoinGecko also records deployments on NEAR (42 tracked tokens), so its on-chain liquidity and its user base move with that network. ZEC is mined rather than staked — one of only 130 proof-of-work assets in a dataset of almost ten thousand — which means issuance is tied to physical energy cost and miners have a structural, schedule-driven reason to sell. Worth flagging from the metadata: ZEC is tagged as US-originated, and is a constituent of the Coinbase 50 Index.

How to set a Zcash alert that is worth receiving

Zcash (ZEC) — quoted on 5 venues we stream — high dated 2016-10-29 — rank #15. On this profile the condition that carries signal is a price threshold plus venue-availability news, which moves this class faster than any candle.

Full alert-design method: thresholds, RSI/MACD and volume conditions →