Zcash tops $1,600, a 10-year high, but it is still about half its 2016 launch-day peak

Zcash (ZEC) traded as high as $1,676.81 on Coinbase on Wednesday, its highest price in about a decade, before slipping back to about $1,526 by early afternoon New York time. The token has risen roughly 84% over the past 30 days, according to CoinGecko, and it now ranks ninth among cryptocurrencies by market value, at about $25.9 billion.

Fortune reported the move under a "record high" headline, while describing it in the story itself as a new 10-year high. The second description is the accurate one.

The number the headline left out

CoinGecko lists Zcash's all-time high as $3,191.93, set on Oct. 28, 2016, the day the coin launched. Today's intraday peak is about 47% below that level, and the afternoon price is about 52% below it.

That 2016 print was set on the coin's first day of trading, when very little ZEC had been created, so it is fair to argue it says little about value. But it is the recorded high, and a trader looking at a long-term chart will see it. "Highest since 2016" describes Wednesday's move; "record" does not.

The full picture

Weekly change figures differ by source because they measure from different starting points. Fortune, citing its own window, put the gain at more than 28% this week; measured from last Wednesday's Coinbase close it is about 14%.

One thing that stands out is what the table does not show: frantic churn. Daily volume of about $2.1 billion against a $25.9 billion market value is a ratio of roughly 0.08. That is ordinary for a large coin and a very different profile from the small tokens on our movers list, where a day's trading can exceed the whole market value.

What is behind the move

Fortune pointed to three things. Zcash lets users hide the sender, receiver and amount of a transaction, and that privacy pitch has drawn buyers. Crypto manager 21Shares listed a Zcash exchange-traded product on Euronext Paris and Amsterdam on Tuesday; Cointelegraph reported it charges a 2.5% annual fee and follows Grayscale's U.S.-listed Zcash fund on NYSE Arca. And investors including Multicoin Capital and Cypherpunk Technologies, a listed company that holds ZEC, have disclosed positions. David Lawant, head of research at Anchorage Digital, told Fortune the token climbed from outside the top 80 by market value to the top 10 during 2026.

The wider market helped too. Bitcoin touched an eight-month high above $87,000 this week before falling back below $84,200 as Treasury yields jumped.

What traders are watching

• Whether ZEC holds above the $1,500 area it tested on Wednesday after the spike to $1,676.
• Whether the 21Shares product draws real money, which would be the first sign of steady institutional demand rather than momentum.

Live prices: crypto prices, meme coins.

Sources: Fortune; Cointelegraph; Coinbase Exchange ZEC-USD data; CoinGecko. Prices change quickly. This is market information, not investment advice.