Completed investment and a separate proposal
Grayscale's SEC disclosures identify the buyer as DCG International Investments, a wholly owned subsidiary of Barry Silbert's Digital Currency Group. On September 8, it exchanged 85,705 ZEC through an authorized participant for trust shares valued at roughly $100 million.
The size of the investment stands out against the trust's existing business: its assets totaled just over $260 million as of August, and other investors had contributed a combined $70 million since inception.
A second potential contribution remains unresolved. Grayscale disclosed discussions about DCG providing approximately 200,000 more ZEC, valued at close to $110 million at the time. Those discussions are non-binding, and the separate arrangement has not been finalized.
The proposed ETF's terms and regulatory hurdle
Grayscale is seeking to turn the trust into The Zcash ETF, with shares listed on NYSE Arca under the ticker ZCH. Its fifth amendment to the S-3 registration statement was submitted August 21. Approval would make the product the first US spot ETF offering direct exposure to a privacy-focused digital asset.
Under the proposal, Coinbase Custody Trust Company would hold the assets as custodian, while The Bank of New York Mellon would act as transfer agent. The annual sponsor fee would be 2.5%.
Privacy coins have faced greater SEC scrutiny than Bitcoin or Ethereum because of concerns about money laundering. Allowing a spot Zcash ETF would mark a change in that regulatory approach, but the proposal has not yet received approval.
The commercial risks also remain. ZEC has undergone a roughly 30% retreat from a recent high despite its large annual gain. Grayscale's fee revenue would depend on attracting substantial assets; the trust's August asset total was small compared with the billions that entered spot Bitcoin ETFs during their first year.
A volatile rally draws more investors
Startup Fortune reports that Zcash has risen more than 2,400% in 2026. After approaching $700 in late October, ZEC traded between $460 and $510 by November 1. Data cited by KuCoin Research puts the broader privacy coin market at $33.6 billion, with ZEC representing more than 60% of the total.
Investment products tied to Zcash are already available in Europe. According to Fortune, 21Shares launched a Zcash exchange-traded product on Euronext Paris and Euronext Amsterdam on September 22, 2026. Maximiliaan Michielsen, the firm's senior investment strategist, described the launch as a response to professional fund managers' growing demand for on-chain confidentiality.
Fortune also reported on September 23 that Cypherpunk Technologies had accumulated ZEC and invested in Zcash mining. The publicly traded Zcash treasury company is backed by the Winklevoss twins.
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes said his family office, Maelstrom, established a ZEC position in the third quarter of 2025 at prices he considered excellent. He has since identified Zcash as his second-largest liquid holding after Bitcoin. Hayes argues that Bitcoin's institutional adoption and traceability create an opening for an asset centered on privacy.
Privacy technology and proposed network changes
Zcash allows users to shield blockchain transaction details through zk-SNARKs, a form of zero-knowledge cryptography. Bitcoin and Ethereum were not designed to provide that capability. The privacy investment narrative helped take ZEC to its highest price since 2016, according to market data from Cointelegraph.
The network reached its 10th anniversary on October 28, 2026, having launched its mainnet on that date in 2016. Crypto Briefing reported that an anniversary post shared by Grayscale credited Zcash with ten network upgrades and described it as the largest privacy-preserving digital asset, with a market capitalization of about $21 billion.
One of those upgrades, NU5 in 2022, introduced the Halo 2 proving system and eliminated the need for a trusted setup, according to the anniversary post.
The next proposed upgrade, NU7, would shorten the interval between blocks from 75 seconds to 25 seconds. It would also direct 60% of transaction fees back to miners beginning in February 2031, according to an October 30, 2026, report from 24/7 Wall St.
NU7 would discontinue support for older version-4 transactions, affecting 22,309 ZEC, valued at about $27 million, in the original Sprout privacy pool. Although block 3,543,405 is designated for activation, the upgrade remains labeled "Proposed" and has no activation date.
