Zcash Hits Eight-Year High After Grayscale Advances U.S. ETF Push

Zcash surged to its highest level since 2018 on Saturday, briefly reaching $855 as derivatives activity accelerated and Grayscale moved closer to converting its existing Zcash Trust into a U.S. exchange-traded fund.ZEC gained more than 22% over 24 hours to about $819 by early afternoon in New York, extending a rally that had already lifted the privacy-focused cryptocurrency more than 30% for the week. The advance pushed Zcash’s market capitalization to roughly $13.8 billion, making it the 12th-largest cryptocurrency by market value.Trading activity was heavily concentrated in derivatives. ZEC futures volume reached about $9.54 billion over 24 hours, compared with roughly $1.06 billion in spot volume. Open interest stood near $1.8 billion, equal to about 13% of the token’s market capitalization.Grayscale added another catalyst after filing its fifth amended registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday. The filing says the Grayscale Zcash Trust would be renamed The Zcash ETF and list on NYSE Arca under the ticker ZCSH if the conversion moves forward. Grayscale set the proposed annual sponsor fee at 2.5%.Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst James Seyffart said Grayscale was “getting closer and closer” to converting the trust into an ETF.A subsidiary of Grayscale parent Digital Currency Group is also considering contributing approximately 200,000 ZEC to the trust. The discussions remain nonbinding, meaning the contribution could be larger, smaller or not happen at all.Zcash’s latest run also marks a sharp recovery from June, when ZEC fell from around $630 to $250 after developers disclosed a counterfeiting vulnerability affecting the Orchard shielded pool. The flaw was later patched through the NU6.2 network upgrade.At Saturday’s peak, ZEC had more than tripled from that June low, although it remained roughly 75% below its record high above $3,190.The Zcash cryptocurrency is currently trading at approximately $800 U.S. per digital token.