Arthur Hayes Outlines Why Zcash Could Surge To | Crypto News
Arthur Hayes thinks Zcash can transfer an order of magnitude quicker than most traders count on—and he spelled out why in a Coin Bureau interview launched on November 3.
The former BitMEX CEO ties the new Zcash bull case to a three-part story that mixes technical maturation, seen shifts in on-chain conduct, and a looming provide inflection. “I think that 10% to 20% of the value of Bitcoin quite quickly is something that Zcash could achieve,” he said—an estimate that, at current Bitcoin costs, interprets to roughly $10,000–$20,000 per ZEC.
Why Zcash Could Skyrocket To $10,000-$20,000
For Hayes, the technology is no longer the 2016 experiment that divided the market over ceremony theater and cryptographic trust. He recounted being “deep into Zcash in 2016” when BitMEX listed a pre-genesis futures market and spot costs briefly printed around “$3,000 a coin on Poloniex” before provide stuffed in.
What’s modified, he argues, is the removing—by protocol upgrades—of the unique single largest credibility drag. “One of the big issues with Zcash back then was this trusted setup issue… but essentially, I think it was the Halo 2 upgrade recently removed or maybe a few years ago removed that trusted setup issue.” That, in his telling, reframes Zcash from a intelligent but encumbered R&D project into a privateness asset whose cryptography now clears the institutional sniff take a look at.
He {couples} that with direct user-level expertise. Hayes says he put in Zashi, Zcash’s flagship pockets, and used Near Intents flows to protect and swap, which he likened to an industrial-strength mixer. “When you do that, it’s essentially like Tornado Cash on steroids,” he said, emphasizing that the ensuing output asset “appears, but it’s not linked to any other transaction.”
Costs stay a friction—“It’s definitely not cheap yet”—but he factors to development data he has reviewed exhibiting a secular rise in precise privateness usage: “the amount of shielded transactions is approaching I think 30%, up from like a few percentage points when I cared about Zcash a long time ago.” In other phrases, the privateness characteristic set shouldn’t be just theoretically stronger; it’s getting used.
The demand narrative rests on a simple declare: in the age of on-chain forensics and AI-enabled sample recognition, true cash-like privateness is a product with differentiated utility. Hayes attracts a sharp line between pseudonymity and privateness. “I believe in privacy coins… I think Bitcoin being synonymous is actually a good thing because I want to be able to track Bitcoin, but I also want to have internet cash where there is no traceability of that.”
He contrasts Zcash with Monero’s latest headlines, citing reviews that “the Japanese authorities were able to deanonymize Monero by… linking together different disparate parts of some information.”
Scarcity is the third pillar. Hayes flags the Zcash halving “coming up in a few weeks, November,” framing it as the timing catalyst that may supercharge reflexivity if investor consideration and liquidity arrive in tandem. The provide cut shouldn’t be the whole story for him—he dismisses halving dogma in Bitcoin—but he does view a synchronous demand narrative plus a mechanical issuance drop as unusually potent for a small-float asset when a privateness bid is already rising on-chain.
Liquidity and access are exactly why he sees the setup as uneven. Zcash shouldn’t be broadly quotable, which is a risk and an alternative. “I hit up… eight or nine OTC brokers. Only two brokers would quote me Zcash,” he said, describing how laborious it was to purchase dimension through conventional venues. He expects that, if the price begins to development, the trail will run through permissionless rails slightly than regulated exchanges. “If the price rises high enough… I can buy it on one of these decentralized exchanges and that’ll be how you really get access… just like how Bitcoin was back [then].”
Hayes also addresses the change in his own posture, including what catalyzed it. He credit a dinner during Token2049 with Naval Ravikant, who “started shilling me on Zcash,” prompting him to push past his 2016-era objections and re-underwrite the protocol. “I bought a few million bucks on the spot at that point,” he said, including that he saved shopping for “even though I bought it after the 80% pump when Naval sent out that tweet.”
Hayes believes the upside can compress into weeks slightly than years. In his phrases: “I’ve bought a lot of it… I’m still buying it. I think that this is probably going to be one of my better trades of the cycle.”
At press time, ZEC traded at $464.
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