Zcash broke above $1,000 on Friday, its best price in almost a decade, extending a run that started near $500 a month ago. The token touched an intraday high of $1,029 on Binance before easing to around $984, up roughly 20% over 24 hours, scoring a new all-time high.
The privacy coin’s market cap climbed toward $17 billion, enough to push ZEC past Dogecoin among the ten largest cryptocurrencies, according to CoinMarketCap.
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The break above $1,000 caught short sellers off guard. About $34.5 million in short bets got force-closed as the price of Zcash punched through the round number, according to CoinGlass data, pushing total ZEC liquidations to roughly $36.6 million. Every trader forced to buy back a short adds real demand, which is part of why the rally kept accelerating.
A squeeze years in the making
Zcash is a so-called privacy coin, one of several in crypto but arguably the best known alongside Monero, which trades as XMR. It launched in 2016, created by cryptographer Zooko Wilcox and a team of researchers. Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum, where transactions are visible on a public ledger by default, Zcash is designed to keep them private, using zero-knowledge cryptography to conceal who sent what to whom—and how much—while still proving that the transaction is valid.
The coin is currently on one of the most impressive runs in the crypto market, especially among older digital assets. It has gained about 94% over the past 30 days and more than 2,300% over the past year, outpacing every other large-cap crypto asset even after an eight-year high in August. Grayscale's Zcash ETF began trading on NYSE Arca under the ticker ZCSH on August 25, giving brokerage investors a way into ZEC without a wallet.
The daily chart shows why some traders are cautious even as the trend stays intact. The Relative Strength Index, or RSI, sits at 78.6, well past the 70 level traders read as overbought, while the 50-day moving average sits above the 200-day in a bullish setup. It means short-term demand is outpacing long-term, which bodes well for new buyers.
Zcash (ZEC) price data. Image: Tradingview
The Average Directional Index, or ADX, which tracks trend strength regardless of direction is currently at 48, well above the 25 mark traders use to determine a real trend is in place. And with positive momentum outpacing negative, it points to a trend still forceful enough to keep pushing through overbought conditions, at least for now.
While Zcash is in price discovery mode, the $892.94 and $808.63 retracement levels are the logical support if the rally cools.
Zcash is also outrunning Bitcoin, but they started the week on the same trigger. Bitcoin reclaimed $80,000 Thursday after Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller's remarks pulled September hike odds lower and set off more than $415 million in short liquidations across the broader market.
That reversed Friday morning. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the U.S. economy added 162,000 jobs in August, well above the 56,000 consensus estimate, with unemployment holding at 4.1%. Bitcoin fell back below $80,000 as traders priced in better odds of a hike at the Fed's September 15-16 meeting, with next Friday's August CPI report now the number to watch.
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