Arthur Hayes Backs Zcash as ZEC Rises 136% in a Month

Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX, backed Zcash as ZEC rose 136% over the past month to $587, including a 36% gain in the past 24 hours. Hayes wrote on X: “Remember the $ZEC target is 10% of $BTC’s price.” He also posted, “We got a lot of pamping to go.”

With Bitcoin trading near $81,300, Hayes’s 10% target implies ZEC around $8,130. The 10% framework scales with Bitcoin’s dollar value; for example, a $100,000 Bitcoin would imply a $10,000 ZEC price at the same ratio.

Multicoin Capital co-founder Tushar Jain disclosed his firm built a significant ZEC position since February, calling Zcash “a return to the cypherpunk ideals crypto was founded on.” Open interest in ZEC futures rose above $813 million, approaching levels seen late last year, and data from one trading venue showed roughly 66% of positions were short.

On May 6 a large trader deposited $4.997 million in USDC on the HyperLiquid platform to avoid liquidation of an 18,286 ZEC short leveraged at 10x. That position had a floating loss exceeding $2.36 million and a revised liquidation price around $855.34. Forced liquidations require exchanges or platforms to buy the asset to cover positions, which can add buying pressure.

Quantum computing risks were discussed at a May 2 Bitcoin conference, where some attendees recommended leaving Satoshi-era Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK) addresses untouched to avoid exposing public keys. Zcash supports shielded transactions that hide addresses and keys; ZecHub data shows roughly 30% of ZEC is currently held in shielded pools, which are less likely to be moved to exchanges.

The Zcash Foundation released Zebra 4.4.0 on May 2, patching five vulnerabilities, including three consensus-critical bugs that could have split the network. The release followed a month in which industry security trackers recorded up to $651 million in losses from multiple exploits in April.

Market models and analysts offer a range of scenarios for future prices. Because Hayes framed ZEC as a percentage of Bitcoin, any change in Bitcoin’s dollar value changes ZEC’s implied target under that framework. ZEC has previously experienced rapid rallies followed by extended drawdowns.

Current market data shows increased institutional buying, elevated derivatives activity and renewed focus on cryptographic privacy and quantum risk as factors cited by market participants when explaining the recent ZEC price movement.