On September 17, the price of Zcash (ZEC) soared to $1380, marking a 20% increase over the past day.
15-minute chart of ZEC/USDT on Binance. Source: TradingView.The cryptocurrency climbed to the ninth position among the largest digital currencies, with a market capitalization exceeding $22 billion.
At the time of writing, Zcash is trading around $1360.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies also experienced gains overnight, although with more moderate increases. This market growth occurs despite the Federal Reserve's recent hike in key interest rates.
Source: CoinMarketCap.The surge in ZEC's price coincided with comments from Matt Huang, co-founder of Paradigm, who discussed the coin's role as a "privacy-preserving asset that complements digital gold."
A few thoughts on ZCash (disclosure: Paradigm is an investor in ZEC and ZODL):
- All blockchain ecosystems struggle with long-term funding, especially of public goods, and an inflation-funded developer fund is an elegant mechanism to do so. How this fund is allocated is a fair…
— Matt Huang (@matthuang) September 16, 2026
Huang indicated that Paradigm holds Zcash and backs the ZODL team.
He also advocated for ongoing developer funding while emphasizing that holders' voting should be combined with other decision-making processes regarding network changes.
This last point likely refers to the recently approved ZIPs. On September 16, a significant majority of the ZEC community voted to accelerate block times and maintain halving events.
It’s worth noting that on July 28, Zcash activated the Ironwood upgrade after a critical vulnerability was found in Orchard. This upgrade introduced a new secure pool and limited the operations of the previous one.