It’s been nine years since the launch of the popular privacy coin, but whales have started to sell.
Zcash ZEC $394.1 24h volatility: 3.6% Market cap: $6.51 B Vol. 24h: $470.61 M , a privacy coin launched on Oct. 28, 2016, is seeing a sell-off from large players on its birthday.
ZEC dropped 8.5% in the past 24 hours and is currently trading at $325. Its market cap fell below $5.3 billion, with a trading volume of $784 million. On Oct. 27, Zcash became the 25th-largest cryptocurrency in the market. At the moment of writing, it is in the 26th position.
CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju pointed out that retail investors have been buying ZEC, and the spot activity is overheated at the moment.
Zcash is in distribution phase. pic.twitter.com/x3ZoXQ60o3
— Ki Young Ju (@ki_young_ju) October 28, 2025
In his case, small investors have been buying ZEC lately while the large players have been selling for profits.
ZEC would need a stronger interest from whales and institutional investors to neutralize the current sell-off.
Zcash Open Interest Still High
Zcash’s total open interest is still hovering above $520 million, close to its all-time high, according to data provided by CoinGlass.
The rising OI simply means that traders and short-term holders have been highly involved in ZEC’s latest price movements. And it also triggers higher price volatility for the asset when liquidations are triggered.
Data from Coinglass shows that traders have been consistently betting on the ZEC price correction over the past week. The short liquidations pushed the asset’s price to new local highs, but the start of long liquidations could trigger a deeper fall for the privacy coin.
Some investors have been expecting a new ATH for Zcash, but that target just seems unrealistic with the current market conditions.
At this point, ZEC would need a $97 billion market capitalization to break its 2016 ATH of $5,941. The token has a circulating supply of 16.28 million ZEC.
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