Gemini, co-founder, believes that the current market sentiment surrounding Zcash ( ZEC ) is similar to the atmosphere of the crypto market in 2019.
This judgment emerged after this privacy-focused cryptocurrency became the focus of the market due to its sharp rise.
Comparison in 2019
Bitcoin faced an exceptionally difficult start in 2019. Prior to that, it had just endured the harsh blows of a bear market in 2018, which followed a period of speculative fervor in 2017. With prices low and retail investor enthusiasm waning, Bitcoin faced a challenging beginning to the new year.
According to the retrospective data of CoinGecko, the price of Bitcoin on January 1, 2019, was approximately $3,693. Subsequently, it rose to around $13,000 in late June, then retracted some of that gain, and finally returned to around $7,195 at the beginning of 2020.
Despite the intense volatility, those who closely follow Bitcoin are discussing topics such as institutional infrastructure and custody. The same is true for the entire industry.
The article implies that Zcash currently also has a similar level of popularity.
Why is the situation with Zcash so different?
Zcash is not a new cryptocurrency; this network was launched in 2016.
Zcash Utilizes zero-knowledge proofs to enable transactions to be verified in a more private manner.
However, for many years, privacy coins have been in an awkward position within the cryptocurrency industry.
This technology has received strong support from privacy advocates, but due to regulatory scrutiny, some exchanges have simply removed privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies from their platforms.
By 2026, Zcash has seen a significant recovery. Privacy once again becomes part of the investment and technological narrative.
Zcash once hovered around $511 at the beginning of January, followed by a significant pullback.
In February, there was another decline, with ZEC falling by about 27% that month and at one point trading around $191.
However, May became the first significant breakthrough phase. ZEC rose by more than 60% that month, reaching above $680 at its peak, and ultimately closed at around $565.
In August, Zcash rose by another approximately 85%, from around $457 to around $848.
In September, there was another significant upward trend. CoinGecko data shows that ZEC surpassed $1,000 at the beginning of September and reached $1,335.51 on September 16th.
The relationship between Gemini and Zcash
It is worth noting that after obtaining approval from the New York State Department of Financial Services in 2018, Gemini became the first licensed exchange to provide Zcash trading and custody services.
In August 2025, the exchange added support for Zcash Unified Addresses. Three months later, Gemini also added support for Orchard, which is a newer privacy protocol than Zcash.
On January 27th, Gemini launched a specialized Zcash credit card.
On September 29th, Gemini announced that its infrastructure for interacting with the Zcash blockchain is now running on Zakura; Zakura is a newer open-source full node written in Rust.
