Bitcoin ‘Has Lost Its Way’: Whales Shift to Zcash as Token Surges 50% in a Month

As crypto moves deeper into mainstream finance, some of Bitcoin’s earliest backers are turning to Zcash, a privacy-focused token.

The Wall Street Journal reported on May 15 that early Bitcoin whales, including Digital Currency Group founder Barry Silbert and twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, are pouring large sums into Zcash. The token has jumped 50% over the past month and 1,140% over the past year as prominent investors piled in. Bitcoin, by contrast, has fallen 24% over the past year. Zcash’s market capitalization has risen to about $8.9 billion.

Zcash was developed in 2016 by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University to address Bitcoin’s privacy shortcomings. It uses zero-knowledge proofs to encrypt sensitive transaction data, including the sender, recipient and transaction amount. “Zcash is what Bitcoin was originally supposed to be,” Multicoin Capital co-founder Tushar Jain said.

Industry heavyweights have moved early. Silbert said Zcash today reminds him of Bitcoin around 2013 and has made it a core holding at DCG. Grayscale, DCG’s asset-management unit, helped fuel the rally after filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in November 2025 to convert its Zcash trust into an exchange-traded fund.

The Winklevoss twins also invested $50 million in Cypherpunk Technologies, a company launched to accumulate Zcash. Cameron Winklevoss called it more than a new project built for marketing. The company, with Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn serving as a strategic adviser, has stockpiled more than 300,000 Zcash.

Regulatory risk, once seen as the biggest obstacle, also appears to have eased somewhat. Zcash had long faced concerns that its privacy features could be used for crimes such as terrorist financing. But investor sentiment improved sharply after the SEC formally closed its related investigation earlier this year. Zcash was trading at $503 on Binance’s Tether market on May 15, down 8% from a day earlier.