Altcoins News

Story: Zcash Soars 82% on Grayscale’s $304M ETF as Monero Reaches $10B Market Cap

By Maheen Hernandez

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Monero's $10 Billion Comeback. Monero's story is different. No ETF, no institutional product.

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Regulatory Pressure Isn't Letting Up. Neither coin is operating in a friendly regulatory environment, and that's worth being direct about.

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What August's Numbers Actually Mean. Zcash returning to 2018 price levels set the stage for the August surge.

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Privacy coins had a wild August. Zcash jumped 82% and Monero climbed 40%, both blowing past the broader crypto market by a mile.

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Zcash's run started building before the big news even dropped. On August 25, Grayscale announced it was converting its existing fund into a spot ETF — ticker ZCSH — listed on…

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The price peaked in late August, but the upward move was already underway before the ETF formally launched. Markets front-ran it. That's not unusual.

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Monero's story is different. No ETF, no institutional product. XMR climbed steadily across the whole month, ending August with a 40% gain and a market cap close to $10 billion.

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That matters more than it might sound. A growing number of exchanges have quietly delisted XMR over the past couple of years, citing compliance headaches.

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But it's early. Liquidity on those XMR swap pairs is still thin, and it's unclear how fast that changes. The infrastructure is there; the depth isn't yet.

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Read also: Bitwises XRP ETF Surges to $500M as Franklin Templetons XRPZ Gains $28.7M in a Week

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For Zcash, the ETF creates an interesting wrinkle. Institutional money coming in through ZCSH means regulated entities are now holding ZEC exposure.

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Monero doesn't have that tension — at least not yet. Its growth is coming from decentralized rails, not institutional products.

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Zcash returning to 2018 price levels set the stage for the August surge. Historical price ceilings matter to traders, and breaking through them tends to accelerate moves.

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Monero's 40% gain without any institutional product is arguably the more interesting data point.

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Both coins face the same long-term tension: the features that make them valuable to privacy-focused users are exactly the features that make regulators uncomfortable.

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