Privacy Back in the Spotlight

gm Bankless Nation,
A speculative frenzy around ZEC is being put to good use pushing forward an important narrative at a key time.

Today's Issue ⬇️

1. ☀️ Need to Know: Kraken Is Going Public
   Plus, Coinbase prediction markets?
2. 🗣️ Analysis: Zcash's Crypto Privacy Pump
   ZEC's pump serves a purpose.

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1. 💸 Kraken Confidently Files for U.S. Stock Market IPO. The number of shares to be offered and the proposed price range are yet to be announced.
2. 📉 Bullish Posts Record Profit Yet Shares Drop 5%. Despite record Q3 results, plus new options and a U.S. launch, Bullish has dropped +5% below its IPO price.
3. 📱 Coinbase Eyeing Prediction Markets + Stocks. Leaked app code points to Kalshi-powered prediction markets and tokenized stock trading ahead of the exchange's Dec. 17th “System Update” event.

	Crypto $3.16T	↘ 3.5%	↘ 10.7%
	BTC $90,473	↘ 3.1%	↘ 11.0%
	ETH $2,975	↘ 4.8%	↘ 12.9%

Privacy tech has been getting a speculative shot in the arm.

Since the end of September, Zcash's ZEC token has 10x’d, Crypto Twitter has been awash with takes on the reemergence of the privacy meta, and last week the Winklevoss twins launched their Zcash digital asset treasury with ambitions to accumulate at least 5% of overall supply.

While there’s definitely some mania at play here, don't write off this recent pump as speculative frenzy alone. All of the attention is bringing users to embrace the network's capabilities – Zcash's privacy-preserving shielded pool now holds nearly 29% of circulating supply, up from 8.7% a year ago.

When buyers find a token that combines clear utility with profits, they tend to become staunch defenders – something privacy tech will likely need plenty of as it continues to face challenges from the state.

Why ZEC is Pumping

Founded in 2016 via a direct fork of Bitcoin, Zcash has aimed to solve digital gold’s privacy lapses. Just like its parent protocol, ZEC uses proof-of-work consensus, has a 21M supply cap, and follows a halving schedule roughly every four years.

Each ZEC can exist in either a transparent or shielded state: 

• Transparent transactions work like Bitcoin, with addresses and amounts visible onchain.
• Shielded transactions use zero-knowledge proofs to hide sender, recipient, and amount while still allowing validators to confirm the transaction’s validity. 

Users can move between these states freely.

As many have noted, there are a lot of factors converging to drive Zcash's rise. The tech has genuinely improved while privacy concerns have intensified across crypto and beyond. The parabolic price action is broadcasting these shifts.

Zcash Rally Melts Faces, Reaching Levels Unseen Since 2018 on Bankless

ZEC token price has ascended over 1,000% in the past six weeks.

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Among its technical upgrades are:

• Near Intents: Zcash has integrated with Near Intents, enabling ZEC to be used as sort of a “breaker,” where users convert “transparent blockchain” funds ($ETH, $SOL, etc.) into ZEC, shield the ZEC, then bridge-swap back to the original chain — breaking the link between addresses.
• Tachyon: A major performance upgrade comparable to Solana’s Firedancer is set to release next week, significantly improving the network’s speed and scalability.
• Zashi Wallet: Launched last year, Zashi has abstracted away the complexity that previously kept everyday users from shielded transactions. My colleague William M. Peaster published a great guide on using Zashi if you’re curious.
• Shielded Supply Growth: As previously noted, the amount of ZEC in the shielded pool has grown significantly over the past year, helping improve the network's overall privacy while acting as a sort of “deflationary” pressure to token supply.

While all of these advances have been shipping, we’ve also been seeing a long-overdue crypto cultural push for privacy, reflected in rising onchain behavior and broader industry sentiment. Institutions are moving onchain and need privacy to transact and remain competitive, pushing privacy from an ideological stance to a technical requirement.

As the broader crypto market seems to turn sour, it remains to be seen how ZEC will fare in its continued pump, but with privacy continuing to reign as a hot topic in tech circles, ZEC remains a premier productive crypto asset to watch here.

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*We’re being compensated by Bit Digital (NASDAQ: BTBT) for this ad promoting their company and BTBT. The compensation is paid in cash as a one-time payment. You can find additional information about Bit Digital and BTBT on their Investor page at bit-digital.com/investors. Not investment advice.