I just saw the latest rally in privacy coin Zcash, and it’s really quite intense. On Tuesday, during the Asian trading session, it surged nearly 30% at one point, with the price hitting $543. Over the past week, its gain has been nearly 60%—this kind of rally is quite rare among privacy coins. The derivatives market was also set off: around 5,000 traders were liquidated, with total liquidation amounts nearing $62 million, including $60 million from short positions, which left people betting against it in a very bad state.

Behind it, it’s actually related to institutional capital moving in. Tushar Jain, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, recently disclosed on X that since February they have been building large positions in ZEC, because they see privacy coins as tools to counter government regulation. He especially emphasized the controversy around California’s “wealth tax,” believing the government is closely eyeing control over people’s assets. His logic is: although Bitcoin is resistant to censorship, its account balances are completely public, and tax authorities can see assets and carry out tax collection using blockchain explorers. Zcash’s shielded pools can hide transaction details; currently, about 30% of ZEC’s circulating supply is stored in shielded addresses, far higher than the 8% at the beginning of last year. Although the publicly reported trading volume remains around 8,500 trades per day on average, most active trading actually takes place within the shielded pools, and these data are not reflected in ordinary statistics.

CoinDesk’s research team pointed out that privacy assets have officially entered the “crypto hegemony” era, with quarterly trading volume surpassing the $100 billion mark. At the moment, ZEC is quoted at $554.64. Its cumulative increase since the start of the year is over 1,400%, but it is still below the $750 peak reached in November last year. If demand for privacy keeps heating up, there is still plenty of room for this rally to run higher. The next step for the bulls is to break through the resistance zone between $600 and $650.