What Is Zcash (ZEC)? Supply, Liquidity and Market Structure

What is Zcash? It is a proof-of-work cryptocurrency, launched in 2016, built around optional privacy: ZEC can sit in transparent addresses, which work like Bitcoin's, or in shielded addresses that keep amounts and balances hidden with zero-knowledge proofs. For a trader the working facts are different: over the 90 days to 12 October 2026 ZEC's average daily range was 8.49%, 3.1 times Bitcoin's 2.70%, the coin gained 107% against Bitcoin's 26%, and its correlation with BTC fell to 0.35 on the rolling 30-day measure.

Below: what the project says it is, the supply and block-reward rules from its own pages, our 90-day hourly profile, where ZEC trades, how it moves with BTC, a 1h structure read and the risks. Every number is computed from dated data or taken from a source we fetched on 13 October 2026.

What is Zcash and how does its privacy work

Zcash describes itself as the first cryptocurrency to develop zero-knowledge encryption for private peer-to-peer payments (z.cash, checked 13 October 2026). The key point is that privacy is a choice. The Zcash docs list transparent addresses (starting with "t"), which expose values and fees like Bitcoin, and shielded addresses (Sapling "zs" addresses), which use zero-knowledge proofs to hide transaction details except for the fee.

CoinGecko (13 October 2026) files ZEC under "Privacy Coins", "Zero Knowledge (ZK)", "Proof of Work (PoW)" and "Layer 1 (L1)", ranks it 10th by market cap and gives a genesis date of 28 October 2016.

How ZEC trades: the 90-day fingerprint

We took every 1h ZECUSDT candle on Binance from 15 July to 12 October 2026 and averaged the high-to-low range for each UTC hour.

• Average daily range: 8.49%. Bitcoin's was 2.70% over the same 90 daily candles, so ZEC's range is 3.1 times wider. The median day was 7.10%, 68 of the 90 days (76%) ranged above 5%, and 23 days (26%) ranged above 10%.
• Busiest hour: 14:00 UTC (17:00 MSK), averaging 2.13% per hour, then 15:00 (1.98%), 16:00 (1.92%) and 13:00 (1.90%).
• Quietest hours: 03:00 and 06:00 UTC (06:00 and 09:00 MSK) at 1.26%. The peak is 1.7 times the quietest hour.
• By session (our UTC buckets): 13:00 to 21:00 averages 1.80% per hour, against 1.45% for 00:00 to 08:00, 1.43% for 08:00 to 13:00 and 1.46% for 21:00 to midnight. There is also a 01:00 UTC bump at 1.77%, in the early Asia session.

The busy window is the European afternoon running into the US open. Use the trading sessions tool to see those hours in your own time zone, and the best time to trade crypto study for the same method on majors.

By UTC weekday, Thursday was widest at 9.77% average range, then Friday (9.49%) and Wednesday (9.18%). Saturday was narrowest at 6.49%. Weekend days (Saturday and Sunday) averaged 7.27% against 8.98% on weekdays, so the weekend is calmer but not quiet (see weekend crypto trading). The three widest days were 21 August (31.3% range, closing 29.1% above the open), 16 September (25.5%, +20.5%) and 6 September (22.8%, +19.7%). We do not attach news to those days, because we have no dated source that ties them to an event.

Over the 90 days ZEC went from an open of 564.4 to a close of 1,167.2, +106.8% against +25.8% for BTC, which puts the ZEC/BTC ratio up about 64%. Over the full year (14 October 2025 to 12 October 2026) ZEC opened at 249.2 and rose 368%, while BTC fell 29%. The path was not smooth: the deepest drop from a running peak to a daily close was 71.8%, bottoming at the year's lowest close of 197.3 on 7 March 2026. The highest close, 1,653.1, came on 26 September 2026, and the last close of 1,167.2 sits 29.4% below it.

ZEC supply, block reward and issuance

CoinGecko on 13 October 2026: 16.98 million ZEC circulating, equal to the total supply, a 21 million maximum, a $20.71 billion market cap, and a fully diluted valuation (FDV) equal to market cap. 81% of the cap circulates, so about 4.0 million ZEC remain to be issued.

The issuance rule comes from the Zcash economics page (checked 13 October 2026): a fixed supply of 21 million ZEC, a new block every 75 seconds with a block reward of 1.5625 ZEC, and a reward that halves about every four years. The page carries no date, so we confirmed the era from ZIP 1015, which refers to "Zcash's second halving in November 2024" and splits the block subsidy after it: 12% to a lockbox and 8% to Zcash Community Grants.

Our arithmetic on that rate: 1.5625 ZEC every 75 seconds is 1,152 blocks and 1,800 ZEC a day. At CoinGecko's $1,218.64 that is about $2.2 million a day, under 1% of the $583 million of 24-hour spot volume we measured below. Held constant, 1,800 a day is about 657,000 ZEC a year, 3.9% of today's circulating count. That is not a forecast, because the rate steps down at each halving. We do not state a date for the next halving: we found no source that gives one. We also found no unlock calendar in the sources we checked, so we publish none. The z.cash homepage shows a "shielded ZEC" figure, but its two stat blocks disagreed on the day, so we publish none of that either.

Where ZEC trades

We read 24-hour spot volume from the public tickers of eight venues on 13 October 2026 at about 21:17 UTC. Bybit's spot ticker returned no ZECUSDT pair, so it is not in the chart. Kraken and Coinbase report volume in ZEC, which we converted at Kraken's 24h average price and Coinbase's last price, so those two are approximate.

Binance printed $208.8 million, 36% of the $583 million across the eight. Coinbase followed at $125.5 million (22%), then OKX ($89.0 million, 15%), KuCoin, Kraken, Bitget, Gate and MEXC. The order differs from Bittensor, where KuCoin led.

Derivatives dwarf spot. The Binance ZECUSDT perpetual traded $2.03 billion in 24 hours, 9.7 times Binance spot, and the Bybit perpetual turned over $494 million with $173 million of open interest.

ZEC vs BTC

Over the 90 days, ZEC's daily returns correlated 0.53 with Bitcoin's, and a regression slope (beta) of 1.75 says a 1% BTC move came with a 1.75% ZEC move on average. The split by direction is not symmetric. On the 48 days BTC closed up it averaged +1.47% and ZEC +3.42%. On the 41 days BTC closed down it averaged -1.11% and ZEC -1.80%. ZEC moved in the same direction as BTC on 61 of 89 days (69%) and beat it on 46 (52%).

0.53 is a loose link: roughly a quarter of the variance of ZEC's daily move (0.53 squared is 0.28) lines up with BTC. The rolling line shows how much that changed. Compare the Bitcoin guide for the benchmark itself.

The 30-day correlation peaked at 0.83 on 19 August, held near 0.6 through early September, dropped to 0.36 by 21 September and reached a low of 0.25 on 3 October. It ended the window at 0.35. The link to BTC has loosened since August.

Reading ZEC's structure

The chart shows ZECUSDT on the 1h timeframe from 11 to 13 October 2026, with the BiasNex engine's structure events and the previous-day levels of 12 October: high 1,349.3 and low 1,157.65.

At 04:00 UTC on 12 October the engine marked an external bullish break of structure at 1,299.66, and price printed the 1,349.3 high later that day. At 23:00 UTC it marked an external bearish change of character at 1,195.86, and price made a low of 1,123.43 early on 13 October, then a lower high at 1,233.37 and a higher low at 1,174.8. At 20:00 UTC on 13 October it marked an internal bullish BOS at 1,218.94. At about 21:17 UTC the engine's 1h label read bias neutral, context range, with ATR at 1.50% of price, volatility HIGH. Read it against market structure: the 1,349 high is the level the market failed to hold, and the live read is on the Zcash markets page.

Risks

• Range. At 8.49% a day, with a 31.3% day in the sample, stops sized from other coins get hit. Size from the stop with the position size calculator.
• Large drawdowns. The year's deepest peak-to-trough fall was 72%, and the coin is 29% below its September high.
• Derivatives dominate. Binance's perpetual alone is 9.7 times its spot volume, so liquidation cascades can drive price in either direction.
• Falling BTC link. A 0.35 rolling correlation means BTC hedges are weaker than they were in August.

More coins in the same format are in the Coin Library.

FAQ

What is Zcash used for? Zcash is used for payments where the user can choose between transparent and shielded addresses. Shielded transactions hide amounts and balances with zero-knowledge proofs, according to the project's pages.

How many ZEC will there ever be? 21 million. CoinGecko lists 16.98 million as circulating on 13 October 2026, so about 81% is already issued.

Does Zcash have a halving? Yes. The block reward halves about every four years, and ZIP 1015 refers to a second halving in November 2024. We do not state a date for the next one.

Is ZEC a good hedge against Bitcoin? Not on our data. The 90-day correlation was 0.53 and the 30-day reading was 0.35, but ZEC moved 1.75 times as far as BTC on average, so it adds risk, not cover.