Behind this round of market action, there are names, positions, and clear vested interests: Multicoin’s early accumulation, Cypherpunk’s continued buildup, Winklevoss Capital’s mining-related trades, and the fund subscriptions by Grayscale and DCG.
Compressing all of this into “the market discovered the value of privacy” would erase the most crucial details in how prices are formed. What’s truly worth tracking is when the coins changed hands, whose hands they entered, when the information was made public, and what the numbers packaged as “capital inflows” actually represent.
Starting in April: listed companies continue to buy crypto; their procurement records are more concrete than slogans
Cypherpunk’s official website lists the following purchase records. The dates are the dates shown in the website’s trading history; they do not necessarily mean that all trades occurred on those days. The average purchase price is also not the closing price on the day.
On the official website, disclosures of the disclosed average purchase cost for ZEC by date show: April 15: 9,163.32 ZEC at $234.63, totaling $2.15 million. May 14: 10,279.30 ZEC at $486.41, totaling $5.0 million. June 17: 6,846.37 ZEC at $496.61, totaling $3.40 million. August 12: 2,362.31 ZEC at $420.97, about $1.0 million.
In total, the four orders amount to about 28,651 ZEC and $11.55 million. This is identifiable institutional buy flow; it can’t be treated as alternative evidence of countless independent users naturally flooding in.
Source: Cypherpunk official trading history
These records do not disclose the full execution venues or each individual trade, so it’s impossible to calculate exactly how much price each purchase pushed up. But one point is clear: in the market, some of the demand came from publicly listed companies that actively established token reserves. May 6: institutions first build positions, and then the market hears the story.
According to CoinDesk’s report, Multicoin accumulated large ZEC positions starting in February. At the time of the public disclosure, the report said the 24-hour market was up nearly 30%, with the price at about $543. The 30-day gain exceeded 110%, and trading volume over the same period was more than $1.3 billion. Source: CoinDesk, May 6
The timeline is clear: institutions first have price exposure, and then explain their bullish logic to the public. After that, incoming buy orders can raise the book value of existing holdings.
This is not the same as insider trading, but it does show that the promotion has an economic-interest background. The investment thesis of the position holders can’t be treated as an independent valuation conclusion.
On May 7, CryptoSlate, citing CoinGlass data, said that ZEC open contracts exceeded $1 billion and that 24-hour derivatives trading volume exceeded $7 billion. This reflects the scale of speculative trading; it can’t be explained as an equal amount of newly added cash, and it also can’t be explained as demand for privacy payments. Source: CryptoSlate
May 29 to June 5: a six-day information window, followed by a crash
Shielded Labs’ original disclosure confirms: on May 29, the researchers found a serious vulnerability in Orchard and reported it to ZODL; a public statement was released on June 4. The vulnerability allows token forgery within Orchard. The team believes the possibility that it had been exploited earlier was low, but at the time they couldn’t rule it out cryptographically. Source: Shielded Labs original announcement
On June 5, (The Wall Street Journal) reported that ZEC had fallen by about 40% over the prior 24 hours. BIT’s later recap notes that Arthur Hayes announced on June 5 that he had liquidated his ZEC position. Source: The Wall Street Journal, BIT recap
Finding the vulnerability, disclosing the vulnerability, and actually selling were three different points in time.
**From May 29 to June 4, there was a window in which information had not yet been fully made public; this is not evidence that someone used the window to trade.** Security fixes typically require coordinated disclosure. The existing materials do not connect specific accounts, the times when messages were obtained, and sell records, nor can they treat Hayes’s announcement time as the actual transaction time.
What this drop can prove is that technical risk can quickly pierce market pricing. As for so-called long-term conviction, it does not guarantee that large holders will stay in the game after major risks appear. The asset opened at $1,110.10, touched a high of $1,383.30 intraday, and closed the period described in the report at about $1,320.12—an increase of about 18.9%. Cross-exchange trading volume was about $2.19 billion. Source: The Defiant, September 16
These data prove that the market was strongly moving, but they can’t identify who placed the orders. The existing materials do not provide evidence that this surge can be attributed to a specific institution’s newly added purchases.
Trading volume can show activity, but it can’t prove that independent investors continue to have net inflows, let alone justify labeling buy-side demand as “long-term capital.”
Insider trading and BlackRock: you can’t fill in the story with missing evidence
As of this search, no disclosures have been found that can verify the quantity of ZEC BlackRock directly holds and the time of its purchase.
The participating parties that can be verified among the events described above include Multicoin, Cypherpunk, Winklevoss Capital, and Grayscale/DCG. It is not possible to transfer Grayscale’s fund holdings to BlackRock, nor can asset-management institutions’ holdings of related companies’ stock be automatically explained as their direct purchase of ZEC.
Insider trading has also not been confirmed. The information window before the vulnerability disclosure, institutions moving in early to build positions, and related parties subscribing respectively relate to information management, investment decision-making, and capital relationships. To prove trading using non-public information, specific accounts, the times when the insiders gained knowledge, and transaction records are still required.
The criticism supported by this timeline is already sharp enough: ZEC’s price can’t be explained by technical value alone. Institutional purchases, affiliated parties’ promotion, fund channels, and forced liquidation all contributed to market pricing.
The cost for large holders isn’t the cost for retail investors; the fund size isn’t spot buying pressure; and affiliated parties’ subscriptions aren’t an independent endorsement of capital. Hiding these differences behind the four words “price discovery” is the most revealing narrative to expose this round of行情.