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Sunday Nov 16 2025 19:30
2 min
The debate between the Bitcoin (BTC) and Zcash (ZEC) communities intensified recently, coinciding with a surge in Zcash price, recovering to over $700 after briefly dipping to $598. This price action ignited discussions surrounding the value and relevance of privacy-focused cryptocurrencies.
Hunter Horsley, CEO of investment firm Bitwise, sparked the initial controversy with a post on X stating, "The ‘Bitcoin only, everything else is a scam’ crowd is going to get really twisted trying to figure out what to say about Zcash."
A swift response came from Bit Paine, who labeled the Zcash price surge as "an obviously coordinated pump and dump of a VC coin," referencing the 1,500% rally Zcash experienced since October.
Mert Mumtaz, CEO of remote procedure call (RPC) node provider Helius and a vocal Zcash supporter, sided with Horsley, dismissing the Bitcoin community's criticisms of the privacy coin as mere conspiracy theories.
Zcash surpassed its eight-year highs in October and overtook Monero (XMR) to become the leading privacy coin by market capitalization, boasting a market cap exceeding $11.2 billion. This resurgence re-ignited the broader conversation about privacy within the cryptocurrency industry.
Currently, Zcash ranks as the 12th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, according to CoinMarketCap, nearing the top 10 and potentially unseating Cardano's native token ADA, which has a market cap of over $17 billion.
In November, Arthur Hayes, founder of the BitMEX crypto exchange, revealed that Zcash is now the second-largest liquid investment held by his family office, Maelstrom, with Bitcoin being the primary liquid asset.
Notably, Leap Therapeutics, a biotech company, recently rebranded to Cypherpunk Technologies, a Zcash treasury company, with backing from Winklevoss Capital, leading to a surge of over 170% in its share price following the announcement.
The significant price rally has also fueled discussions about incorporating privacy features directly into the Bitcoin protocol through the reactivation of OP_CAT, a Bitcoin opcode. This could enable native privacy functionality and other advanced features on the Bitcoin network.
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