Zcash Soars 1,400% in Three Months, Hits 7-Year High as Privacy Narrative Reignites

Zcash ($ZEC) has stunned the market, soaring 1,400% in just three months to hit a 7-year high and climb into the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

Its market cap now approaches $10 billion, ranking Zcash 19th overall. In the past 30 days alone, Zcash has surged 351%, nearly quadrupling, while Bitcoin has dropped 16.8%.

This surge comes amid extreme market volatility.

On October 11, 2025, the crypto market faced its largest liquidation event in history, with over $19.1 billion in contracts wiped out in a single day. Recently, the broader cyrpto market once again perform weakly. Yet, Zcash’s rapid recovery and continued rally have made it one of the standout performers of the post-crash rebound. Together, the privacy token category has overall perform well over the past 30 days.

Zcash Surges 400% as Privacy Narrative Returns

October’s short but sweet "Uptober" rally belonged not only to Binance’s new meme coins but also to tokens that pioneered early narratives but have since faded from mainstream attention, also known as "Dino Coins."

Take Zcash, for example.

The spark behind this old coin’s revival was not institutional buying or a major technical upgrade, but a single tweet that reignited the hype.

A tweet from Naval

On October 1, Silicon Valley legend and investor Naval Ravikant, who has 2.9 million followers, posted a highly controversial take on X.

Shortly after, Zcash’s price surged, and other privacy coins followed as market sentiment spilled over. As prices climbed, debates reignited, and the privacy narrative which has long silence suddenly became one of the hottest topics again.

If you missed Zcash’s rally, it’s worth revisiting how this "Dino Coin" revival began and how much influence one tweet can have.

Naval Ravikant is a well-known figure in Silicon Valley's investment circle. As the co-founder of AngelList, he built a startup funding platform valued at $4 billion and was an early investor in more than 200 companies, including Uber and Twitter.

In crypto, Naval’s track record is equally strong. In 2014, he co-founded MetaStable Capital, one of the earliest crypto hedge funds, which achieved a 540% return in 2017 with early positions in Ethereum, Bitcoin, and other core digital assets.

On October 1, Naval Ravikant tweeted that Zcash serves as "insurance against Bitcoin," followed by several posts criticizing Bitcoin's privacy shortcomings. He argued that Bitcoin's transparent public ledger exposes all users that even Satoshi himself could not use Bitcoin without revealing his identity since governments and financial institutions can easily trace transactions through blockchain analysis. By contrast, Zcash employs zero-knowledge proof technology to hide critical transaction details including sender, receiver, and amount, positioning it as a privacy-focused alternative to Bitcoin.

However, these advantages aren't novel. Zcash has offered these features for years.

This seemed more like a casual case of an influential figure reviving an dino coin. Notably, the timing of his tweets coincided with a sharp spike in Zcash's price. His objectivity is also questionable: Naval invested in the Zerocoin Electric Coin Company (later renamed Electric Coin Company), which developed Zcash, as early as 2015, and served on the Zcash Foundation's board of directors.

This led to debate within the community: was the famed investor using his influence to pump an early investment?

Naval stayed silent, neither confirming nor denying the speculation.

Regardless of the controversy, his impact was undeniable. His tweet garnered 3.3 million views and quickly sparked responses from prominent crypto figures. Balaji Srinivasan (former a16z CTO) and Mert Mumtaz (Helius CEO) both echoed support for the privacy coin narrative, amplifying market sentiment even further.

The Driving Forces

At first glance, Naval’s tweets sparked a wave of follow-up buying. Beneath the surface, several deeper forces were at play:

• Oversold Rebound: The total market cap of the privacy sector had dropped from $40 billion to $10 billion, a 75% decline. Any positive catalyst could trigger a sharp rally, and Naval’s tweet became the perfect spark.

• Grayscale Reopening Subscriptions: In early October, Grayscale reopened its Zcash Trust for subscriptions. Though no figures were disclosed, it fueled speculative buying.

• Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik’s Support: The Ethereum Foundation mentioned Railgun technology in its Kohaku roadmap, and Vitalik donated $300,000 to the project, reinforcing confidence in privacy assets. $RAIL surged 270% that day, confirming the narrative’s comeback.

• Macro Catalysts: Geopolitical tensions and increasing financial surveillance boosted both institutional and individual demand for financial privacy. The black swan event only pushed that demand further into the spotlight.

Zcash After the Black Swan

On October 11, 2025, the crypto market experienced the largest liquidation event in its history, with $19.1 billion in contracts wiped out in a single day.

The crash served as a stress test, revealing which assets could withstand extreme volatility. Among them, the standout performer was once again Zcash. On the day of the crash, Zcash briefly plunged from $268 to below $200, only to recover sharply within two days and rally to $293, climbing 37% above its pre-crash high. It was one of the first assets to achieve a full post-crash recovery.

Even more remarkable, Zcash was trading at just $74 at the start of October. In less than two weeks, it had surged nearly 400%.

This rally brought renewed market attention to the privacy sector and reignited discussions about revaluing privacy-focused assets.

The Evolution of Privacy Coins

The development of privacy coins can be divided into four key stages:

The Pre-Crypto Era (1980-2013): The Birth of Cypherpunk Philosophy

The idea of privacy-focused money emerged in the late 1980s from the Cypherpunk movement. Advocates of this ideology believed in using strong cryptography to protect personal privacy and resist centralized surveillance. They published the Crypto Anarchist Manifesto and the Cypherpunk Manifesto, declaring: “We, the cypherpunks, are dedicated to building anonymous systems and defending privacy with cryptography.”

The First Wave (2014): The Birth of Privacy Coins

2014 marked the birth of the privacy coin sector with the emergence of Dash and Monero (XMR). Both tokens saw significant gains that year before quickly retracing and settling down.

Among them, XMR's enforced anonymity feature led to its adoption in the notorious dark web economy. While this created a unique use case, it also laid the groundwork for the devastating regulatory crackdown that would later strike the privacy coin sector.

The Rise to Mainstream (2017-2021): From Fringe to Spotlight

The privacy sector surged alongside the booming crypto market as capital flooded in. Privacy coins outperformed on their unique value proposition, with the "privacy as a right" narrative breaking out from tech circles into mainstream investment.

Dash exploded 135x, crushing Bitcoin's returns, and hit an $11 billion market cap. Monero climbed 24x, processing 450,000 daily transactions in Q4 2017 due to its dark web dominance. Zcash debuted with zero-knowledge proof technology, pulling in technical investors and institutions. Its 29x surge to $4.2 billion proved the market's appetite for privacy.

Major exchanges rushed to list privacy coins during this period, fueling the sector's rise. Through DeFi Summer, privacy coins' combined market cap surged from $2 billion in early 2020 to $14 billion by mid-2021, marking their complete transformation.

The Dark Age (2022-2025): Regulatory Pressure and Market Decline

Between 2022 and 2024, privacy coins faced unprecedented regulatory assault, entering their darkest hour.

In 2022, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Tornado Cash, launching formal regulatory crackdowns on privacy protocols. By February 2024, Binance delisted Monero (XMR) for compliance reasons, with Kraken, OKX, and others following suit. Today, fewer than ten exchanges worldwide support privacy coin trading, mostly small platforms. Liquidity has collapsed.

Naval's endorsement triggered a brief rebound, but the European Union's plan to ban anonymous crypto transactions by 2027 signals the regulatory storm ahead for privacy coins.

The Return of the Privacy Narrative

From Naval's tweet to Zcash's post-crash rebound and its continued surge through market turbulence, Zcash's rally resembles an "old coin revival." Yet beneath the surface buzz lies a deeper shift: the market is rediscovering privacy's fundamental value.

In the ongoing struggle between regulation and decentralization, privacy coins may never return to their peak. But the principles they represent (anonymity, freedom, and resistance to censorship) remain core to crypto's founding ideals.