Key takeaways:
Zcash surged more than 10x within weeks, briefly returning to large-cap territory with a valuation above $10 billion.
On Coinbase, ZEC became the most-searched asset in mid-November, surpassing both Bitcoin and XRP.
The rally is supported by several real shifts: the 2024 halving, rising shielded balances and the NU6.1 holder-controlled funding model.
Analysts are divided, with some calling the move a blow-off top and others viewing it as a repricing driven by renewed interest in “responsible” privacy coins amid stricter AML rules.
Zcash wasn’t expected to become a major story this market cycle. For most of the past few years, the privacy coin remained in the background while Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), XRP (XRP) and a rotating cast of memecoins dominated headlines and trading activity.
Then November arrived.
In just a few days, Zcash (ZEC) climbed to the top of Coinbase’s search rankings. A screenshot shared by Zcash adviser Thor Torrens showed ZEC drawing around 52,000 searches on the platform. This was ahead of both XRP and Bitcoin, which recorded roughly 41,000 and 39,000 searches, respectively.
At the same time, ZEC’s price had already surged, delivering a four-digit percentage gain over the past year and briefly pushing the token back into the large-cap bracket.
For a coin many traders had written off as a relic of the previous privacy cycle, the question now is simple: How did Zcash go from low-profile to most-searched in a single month?
Did you know? Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox is a longtime cypherpunk who worked on DigiCash in the 1990s and helped create projects such as Tahoe-LAFS, the BLAKE2 hash function and the concept known as Zooko’s Triangle long before ZEC launched.
How Zcash slipped into low-profile relic status
For readers who haven’t looked at it in years, it is worth remembering what Zcash actually is.
Launched in 2016 as a Bitcoin-style proof-of-work (PoW) chain with a hard cap of 21 million coins, it was built around cutting-edge zero-knowledge proofs. These allow users to send either transparent transactions, similar to Bitcoin, or fully shielded transactions where amounts and addresses are hidden but still mathematically verifiable.
For a while, it was treated as a kind of “science project with a price,” backed by heavyweight cryptographers and privacy advocates.
Then the spotlight moved on. As regulators increased scrutiny of privacy coins, several major exchanges delisted or restricted them, and Monero (XMR) gradually became the default choice for die-hard privacy users.
ZEC slid down the market capitalization rankings, daily volumes thinned out, and social chatter faded. By early 2024, despite having survived two halving events and multiple network upgrades, it looked more like a legacy token from an earlier era than a contender for a new narrative.
The slow turnaround: Halvings, shielded usage and a governance reset
The November spike did not come out of nowhere. Zcash spent the past two years quietly reshaping its underlying story, while most of the market was not paying attention.
On the monetary side, the most recent halving on Nov. 23, 2024, cut the block reward from 3.125 ZEC to 1.5625 ZEC, reducing daily new issuance from roughly 3,600 coins to about 1,800. With a fixed supply of 21 million and halving cycles now running on a tighter post-Blossom schedule, ZEC began to be discussed in “sound money” terms by parts of the community.
Under the hood, actual usage was shifting as well. Coinbase research notes that the amount of ZEC held in shielded addresses climbed from about 1.7 million coins to roughly 4.5 million over the past year, with more than 1 million coins moving into shielded pools within a three-week window.
Overall, more than 27% of the circulating supply is now shielded, and other trackers show the peak shielded supply briefly rising above 5 million coins. This suggests that users are not just trading the ticker.
At the same time, the new funding and governance structure went live. The NU6.1 upgrade, activated on Nov. 24, 2025, allocates 8% of block rewards to community grants and 12% to a coinholder-controlled fund. This gives ZEC holders a formal say in how millions of dollars in development capital are deployed between now and the next halving in 2028.
Together, these changes laid the groundwork for a rerating long before search volumes surged.
Did you know? The Electric Coin Company commissioned Rand Europe to study criminal use of Zcash. The researchers found that ZEC had only a minor presence on the dark web and that Bitcoin remained the dominant currency for illicit activity.
Privacy revival, Monero exploit and new AML rules
The spark for all this was a mix of narrative and timing.
Privacy suddenly returned to focus after a high-profile exploit in Monero shook confidence in the sector’s default choice. Commentators began looking for an alternative with active governance and a clear upgrade path. With a scheduled network update underway and a halving narrative in the background, Zcash positioned itself as a candidate to fill that vacuum.
At the same time, regulators continued tightening oversight on opaque money flows. New Anti-Money Laundering (AML) rules, stronger Travel Rule enforcement and increased scrutiny of mixers made “total darkness” harder to defend, whereas Zcash’s model of optional privacy and auditable view keys appeared more compatible with compliance-minded institutions.
A rival stumbling, a returning theme and a protocol that could be positioned as a “responsible” privacy coin gave ZEC a fresh story just as traders were looking for the next big narrative.
About the Coinbase surge: What 52,000 searches really mean
According to figures shared by Zcash adviser Torrens, ZEC logged around 52,000 individual searches on Coinbase in mid-November, compared with roughly 41,000 for XRP and 39,000 for Bitcoin.
That is a clear snapshot of retail curiosity, with tens of thousands of users typing “Zcash” into the search bar on one of the largest fiat on-ramps in the world.
Off-exchange, social data from X and Reddit showed a similar rise in mentions. Taken together, November was the month Zcash reentered retail consciousness.
Blow-off top or real repricing
Look only at the chart, and it is easy to call this a blow-off top. From late September to early November, ZEC climbed from the mid-$70s to more than $700, at one point rising over 1,000% this fall and more than 500% in a single month, before sliding about 30% from its local high.
Coinbase notes that Zcash futures volume approached $10 billion on Nov. 7, and derivatives platforms have reported rising open interest as traders piled into the move. For anyone who has lived through past altcoin manias, those indicators often appear in periods of heavy speculative positioning.
But there is also a case that November was more of a repricing rather than a pure mania spike. Supply growth has already been cut in half by the 2024 halving, shielded usage now accounts for more than a quarter of the circulating supply, and NU6.1 has introduced a clearer and more transparent funding model through the next halving cycle.
If those fundamentals hold, some analysts argue that any sharp correction could represent a reset within a higher range, although outcomes remain uncertain. The hard part, as always, is separating narrative from lasting change in real time.
Did you know? Before Zcash launched in October 2016, futures contracts tied to the coin on over-the-counter (OTC) platforms jumped from about $18 to $261 in six weeks, a roughly 1,300% gain driven purely by anticipation of its privacy technology.
What Zcash’s November moment tells us about crypto narratives
Zcash’s November moment says as much about the broader crypto market as it does about one older token.
Markets have a habit of rediscovering assets that quietly improve their economics, strengthen governance and wait for the right macro story to catch up. In this case, the story centered on privacy. Rising concern over data exposure, tighter AML enforcement and fatigue with fully transparent chains created space for a “partial privacy” alternative that did not appear to be an immediate regulatory target.
For readers, the takeaway is twofold.
First, exchange search data is a useful early signal for where retail attention is drifting, but it often appears just as fear of missing out (FOMO) peaks.
Second, themes never truly disappear in crypto; they cycle. If Zcash can turn a legacy reputation into a fresh narrative, other forgotten categories may not be as dead as their charts suggest.