ZEC is the currency of Zcash, a blockchain of its own. What sets it apart from Bitcoin is that the sender, the recipient and the amount can be encrypted.
This article checks three things against public data and the official documentation: how ZEC works, how its price has moved, and where it is listed and how it can be held.
Every figure was measured on 25 September 2026 at 18:39 JST. It is written for people holding crypto with their own money, and it neither recommends a trade nor predicts a price.
What Zcash (ZEC) is
| Name | Zcash |
|---|---|
| Ticker | $ZEC |
| Chains | Zcash (its own chain) |
| Launched | 28 October 2016 |
| Market cap rank | 9th ($26.92bn) |
| Price | $1,588.1 |
| Issuer | Conceived by Electric Coin Co.; now developed by the Zcash Foundation, ZODL and others |
Zcash was created from the original Bitcoin code base, with a privacy technology added that encrypts transaction information.
The official site says it was conceived by scientists at MIT, Johns Hopkins and other academic institutions.
Like Bitcoin, the supply is fixed at 21 million ZEC, of which about 16.95 million are in circulation. New ZEC comes into existence through mining.
ZEC runs on Zcash’s own chain, and CoinGecko lists no official version on any other chain. When withdrawing from an exchange, choose Zcash as the network.
Why a coin like ZEC came about, and what it changes
What was awkward before
Bitcoin transactions are recorded on a public ledger, so anyone can see balances and transaction histories. The official site notes that most blockchains are designed to expose all transaction and balance information.
Once an address is linked to its owner, others can see what that person is paid and whom they pay. The official site says this exposure can make people targets for fraudsters and other ill-intentioned actors.
What Zcash changes
With Zcash you can choose to keep a payment transparent (public) or shielded (encrypted). Between shielded addresses, the sender, the recipient and the amount are all encrypted.
To stop fake payments slipping through while details stay hidden, Zcash uses zero-knowledge proofs: a way to prove that a balance covers a payment without revealing the balance.
The official site calls Zcash the first real-world application of zero-knowledge proofs.
The social impact
Financial privacy
The official site describes privacy as the power to choose what you share and with whom. The benefit is that a payment no longer has to show your balance to the whole world.
Selective disclosure
The owner of a shielded address can hand a viewing key to a trusted party so that only they can read the transactions.
The key grants read access but cannot spend, and the documentation says it supports auditing and compliance with anti-money-laundering rules.
Scale
According to the statistics on the official site (sourced from the ZecHub Wiki), about 4.91 million ZEC sat in shielded pools at 18:39 JST on 25 September, or around 29% of the supply in circulation.
The limits
- The documentation says most wallets and exchanges support only transparent addresses
- Payments between transparent addresses are public, just as on Bitcoin
- In May 2026 a flaw was found in one of the shielded protocols (Orchard); Orchard was paused and the fix went live in June
What makes ZEC different
The same supply cap and halvings as Bitcoin
A new block is mined every 75 seconds, and the block reward is currently 1.5625 ZEC. The reward halves roughly every four years; under the current rules the next halving falls on 23 November 2028.
One address for both transparent and shielded
A unified address bundles transparent and shielded receivers into a single address. In wallets that support auto-shielding, ZEC received to it can be shielded by default.
Development is paid for from the block reward
Since November 2024, 80% of the block reward goes to miners, 8% to Zcash Community Grants for independent teams, and 12% to a fund whose use is decided later.
Under the model adopted in NU6.1, coin holders decide how that 12% fund is used, until the third halving. Protocol changes are debated in the open through Zcash Improvement Proposals (ZIPs).
How ZEC has moved so far
As of 25 September the price had moved +7.6% over twenty-four hours, +7.2% over seven days and +101.8% over thirty days. Within the day it ranged between $1,591 and $1,462.
Against a year earlier it was up 2,614%, roughly twenty-seven-fold. On daily values over the year, the low was $54.8 in September 2025 and the high $1,629 on 23 September 2026: about a thirty-fold range.
The all-time high was $3,192 on 28 October 2016, the launch day, and the price sits about 50% below it. The all-time low was $16.08 on 4 July 2024.
What to watch from here
Where things stand now
Zcash changes through network upgrades (NU). These are the dates in the official sources, checked on 25 September 2026.
| 2022 | Orchard, a newer shielded protocol, introduced |
|---|---|
| Nov 2024 | Second halving; NU6 changes how development is funded |
| 3 Jun 2026 | NU6.2 fixes the Orchard flaw (live) |
| ~28 Jul 2026 | NU6.3 (Ironwood), estimated activation per the official site; ZIP still a draft |
| 5 Nov 2026 | NU7, tentatively; its contents are still candidates |
| 23 Nov 2028 | Next halving under current rules |
Ironwood, introduced with NU6.3, is a new shielded pool designed so that funds can be recovered if quantum computers or other attacks ever break the underlying cryptography.
The ZIP states that this alone does not make Zcash quantum-secure.
Sources of demand
In September and October 2025, Electric Coin Co. added features to its Zashi wallet (now Zodl) that let holders swap or pay straight from shielded ZEC into other cryptocurrencies.
In November 2025 ECC reported that the exchange Gemini now supports shielded withdrawals straight into Orchard, the newest shielded pool.
Who stands behind it
The Zcash Foundation is a US public charity that builds the Zebra node software. It also holds the Zcash trademark, donated by Electric Coin Co. in 2019.
ZODL was formed by the former Electric Coin Co. team; the official site says it raised more than $25 million in 2026. Shielded Labs, based in Switzerland, is funded by donations.
Points of concern
- A doubling in thirty days and a thirty-fold range in a year: the price moves widely
- As the May 2026 flaw showed, bugs can surface in the shielded protocols
- Upgrades in June, July and November mean nodes and wallets must keep up
- Most exchange support is for transparent addresses, so wide use of shielding is still in progress
Where ZEC is listed (public data)
Who can buy it
ZEC is a publicly traded crypto asset. Anyone who meets an exchange’s account requirements can buy it where it is listed.
The Japanese exchanges checked here, OKJ (46 markets) and bitbank (62 pairs), did not list ZEC as of 18:39 JST on 25 September 2026.
Where spot ZEC trades
Spot ZEC trades on overseas exchanges. This was checked with CoinGecko’s per-exchange data at 18:39 JST on 25 September 2026. The five venues with the largest twenty-four-hour turnover were:
- Binance
- Coinbase Exchange
- Toobit
- Poloniex
- OKX
ZEC on Hyperliquid
Hyperliquid lists a ZEC perpetual contract. A perpetual tracks the price; it does not deliver the ZEC token itself.
At the same time, the public figures were: maximum leverage 10x, 24-hour turnover about $535 million, and open interest about $863 million. On the same venue BTC allows 40x and ETH 25x.
The funding rate was +0.00125% per hour, about 0.03% per day, paid by buyers to sellers.
With leverage, a small move against a position can take the entire margin.
For spot, there is a pair of UZEC (Unit Zcash) against USDC. Unit’s documentation says UZEC can be deposited and withdrawn over the Zcash network, with a minimum of 0.07 ZEC.
The UZEC/USDC pair turned over about $17.1 million in twenty-four hours.
Moving ZEC to your own wallet
- Choose Zcash as the withdrawal network. Tokens sent over the wrong network may be lost
- Check the address format. ECC said in November 2025 that apart from Gemini, centralised exchanges only withdraw to transparent addresses
- Send a small test amount first, and the rest once it arrives
- Shield the ZEC you receive in a wallet that supports shielding
This section records public figures. We do not recommend trading ZEC or using any particular exchange.
Frequently asked questions
Q. Does ZEC hide every transaction?
No. Payments between transparent addresses are public. Even for shielded payments, the fact that a transaction happened and the fee paid remain visible.
Q. Can ZEC be bought on a Japanese exchange?
Listings differ from exchange to exchange and can change. Of the two checked in this article, neither OKJ nor bitbank listed ZEC as of 25 September 2026. Spot ZEC trades on overseas exchanges.
Q. Will the supply of ZEC keep growing?
The total is capped at 21 million ZEC, and the block reward halves roughly every four years. A proposal to smooth issuance (ZIP 234) exists, but it is still only a draft.
In summary
- ZEC is the currency of Zcash, a blockchain of its own, ranked 9th by market capitalisation
- Payments can be transparent or shielded, and viewing keys let you choose who can see them
- +101.8% in thirty days and a thirty-fold range in a year: the price moves widely
- Neither OKJ nor bitbank lists it; spot ZEC trades overseas, and Hyperliquid offers a perpetual plus UZEC spot
💡 Comparing ZEC with other markets
The markets screen in Hype Trade puts ZEC side by side with the Hyperliquid markets that trade the most. Pressing “Set end price” records the price at that moment, so you can watch how far it moves from there.
The funding plan table works out a position size from the amount you are prepared to lose on one trade, before any order is placed.
(Based on public data and the official documentation, checked on 25 September 2026 at 18:39 JST. Not a recommendation to buy or sell.)
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