The Zcash ETF began trading Tuesday on NYSE Arca under the ticker ZCSH, the first exchange-traded product anywhere in the world offering spot exposure to a privacy-focused digital asset. Grayscale converted its existing Zcash Trust into the fund and renamed the registrant The Zcash ETF. The trust held nearly $305 million in assets as of Tuesday.

The predecessor vehicle launched as a private placement in October 2017, and Grayscale filed with the SEC last November to convert it, then submitted a fifth amended registration statement on Aug. 21. The fund carries a 2.5% fee with the revenue, at least, for the next 12 months earmarked for marketing and supporting the Zcash ecosystem, according to the most recent registration statement. The same statement disclosed that a subsidiary of parent company Digital Currency Group is considering acquiring roughly 200,000 ZEC through the trust.

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Grayscale is selling privacy as a macro theme rather than a crypto niche. Steve Vanourny, the firm’s head of index, tied demand directly to machine surveillance, saying that as AI reshapes how financial activity can be monitored, appetite for “genuine financial privacy” will grow.

ZEC, however, tanked roughly 8% on Tuesday, cooling off from a 66% rally to an eight-year high of $841 on Monday. Zcash launched in 2016 and lets users transact either transparently or by shielding the sender, recipient and amount while the network still verifies the transaction. Viewing keys allow holders to selectively disclose transaction details to auditors, counterparties or regulators, a feature Grayscale leans on when arguing the asset can coexist with compliance requirements.

The launch also lands less than three months after Zcash’s privacy stack nearly broke. Security researcher Taylor Hornby used Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 in late May to find a critical flaw in the Orchard shielded pool that could have minted undetectable counterfeit ZEC and had been live since 2022. Developers patched it in early June and activated the Ironwood upgrade in July, replacing Orchard with a new pool whose accounting rules trap any counterfeit coins in the retired one.

AI-assisted content: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by a member of the Unchained editorial team before publication.

Grayscale Launches First Spot Zcash ETF After ZEC Hits Eight-Year High

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