Zcash (ZEC) fell below $1,000 on Wednesday for the first time since September, reaching a two-month low of $962.85 and extending a sharp decline that coincided with a wider crypto sell-off.
The privacy-focused cryptocurrency was down 13.5% over 24 hours as of 12:20 pm UTC, the largest 24-hour loss among the 100 biggest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. It had fallen 24.5% over seven days.
The move came a day after Grayscale pledged $1 million to nonprofits and projects supporting the Zcash network.
Broader market pressure
Zcash’s decline was part of a broader downturn. Bitcoin was down 5.8% and Ether 11.6% over the same period, according to CoinGecko. Crypto prices fell further Tuesday after US consumer prices rose 0.4% in October from the previous month, above economists’ 0.3% forecast.
The privacy-coin category’s combined market value fell about 7% over 24 hours. Zcash remains the largest privacy coin by market value, accounting for about 60% of the $28 billion category tracked by CoinGecko.
NU7 upgrade and ETF flows
ZEC traded above $1,370 as recently as Friday, when Zcash activated its NU7 upgrade. The upgrade cut the target time between blocks from 75 seconds to 25 seconds to speed transaction confirmations and made about 12,224 ZEC held in the network’s original privacy pool unspendable.
Grayscale converted its Zcash Trust into a US spot exchange-traded fund that began trading on NYSE Arca on Aug. 25. The fund recorded about $15 million in net outflows in November through Monday, following about $46 million in October, according to SoSoValue.
Zcash lets users send shielded payments that keep sender and recipient addresses and transaction amounts out of public view. The token had helped drive this year’s rally in privacy coins, gaining 138% in the 30 days to Sept. 7.
