Benefiting from Grayscale’s active push to convert its Zcash trust fund into an ETF, Zcash (ZEC) surged early this morning on the 24th, once spiking to $885.42, the highest level since 2018. Not only did it outperform the broader market in the week, but the futures market also saw an astonishing record of trading volume.

According to CoinGecko market data, Zcash (ZEC) had pulled back to $844.24 at the time of writing, but its gain over the past 7 days still reached 71.4%. Fueled by this fierce rally, ZEC’s total market capitalization jumped to $14.28 billion, moving into the position of the world’s 11th-largest cryptocurrency.

The core catalyst behind this strong surge in ZEC is asset manager Grayscale. Last Friday, Grayscale filed its 5th amendment to its registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), planning to convert its existing Zcash trust fund into "The Zcash ETF" and setting the annual management fee at 2.5%. Once approved for listing, it would become the first U.S. crypto spot ETF that directly tracks ZEC. Before this bullish filing was released, ZEC’s week-over-week gain had already surpassed 30%, lifted alongside Bitcoin and the broader market.

Although there are already multiple competing coin ETFs in the market—such as Solana (SOL), Ripple (XRP), Litecoin, Dogecoin (Doge), and BNB—there remains a significant gap in their ability to attract capital. According to SoSoValue data, over the past week, the Ripple ETF and the Solana ETF only saw net inflows of $40 million and $28 million, respectively, far less than the size of Bitcoin ETFs, which have been aggressively pulling in nearly $2 billion. Whether a Zcash ETF can break through remains to be tested by the market.

It’s worth noting that behind ZEC’s explosive rally, the momentum from the derivatives market has been especially strong. According to Coinglass data, within the 24 hours when ZEC prices surged wildly, futures trading volume reached an astonishing $9.5 billion—far exceeding the spot market’s trading volume of only $1.06 billion.

In addition, ZEC’s open interest has climbed further to $1.8 billion, accounting for about 13% of the total market cap, indicating that a large amount of leveraged capital is participating in this long-versus-short game.

Besides the ETF’s new developments, another potential tailwind comes from Grayscale’s parent company, Digital Currency Group (DCG). Earlier amended documents revealed that a DCG subsidiary is considering using that trust fund to buy as many as 200,000 ZEC, worth about $164 million. Although the relevant discussions are still non-binding arrangements, they are already enough to give the market limitless room for imagination.

The strong rebound since the weekend also suggests that Zcash has fully shaken off the shadow of this year’s June crash. At the time, the market panicked after the development team disclosed a serious "token forgery" vulnerability in Orchard Shielded Pool—the core mechanism used in the Zcash network to encrypt and hide transaction details. This led to the ZEC price collapsing from around $630 by more than 60% to $250. Fortunately, the development team later successfully patched the vulnerability through the NU6.2 network upgrade.

Compared with the trough in June, ZEC’s price has now risen more than 3x, even about 35% higher than its level before the crash. However, despite the fierce performance recently, compared with ZEC’s all-time high of $3,191.93 set in 2016, it still remains roughly 75% away.

"Grayscale Pushes Zcash ETF Rumor to Boost Price: ZEC Rockets Past $880, Reaching a New 8-Year High" This article was first published by (BlockBeats).