Co-founder of Zcash Eli Ben-Sasson supported the Shielded Bitcoin initiative — a proposal to implement private transfers in Bitcoin’s base layer. He also believes that by the end of the year the price of Zcash (ZEC) will reach $5000.
Ben-Sasson, one of the founders of StarkWare, participated in writing the Zerocash paper, which formed the basis of Zcash. According to him, the original authors wanted to provide the same level of privacy to Bitcoin itself.
Shielded Bitcoin offers Zcash privacy
The Alloc Init research team published a proposal on September 24. Its authors are Misha Komarov, Alexey Moskovin, and Klara Shikhelma.
The whitepaper says the scheme combines encrypted notes, public nullifiers, and zero-knowledge proofs (ZK proofs). Nullifiers prevent spending the same hidden coin twice. The scheme does not require a soft fork, BitVM, or changes to the consensus mechanism.
Instead, it uses the Bitcoin PIPEs tool based on encrypted witnesses. According to the developers, all protocol data remains in the Bitcoin itself. This matters because regular Bitcoin payments are fully visible on the blockchain and may reveal sensitive details of business transfers to outsiders.
Ben-Sasson admitted that he hasn’t read this paper yet, but he considers the idea itself promising. He hopes that privacy through ZK proofs and scaling solutions will appear on Bitcoin’s base layer.
Ben-Sasson expects ZEC at $5,000
A few weeks ago, Ben-Sasson suggested that by September 25, ZEC would rise above $1,200. The forecast came true. Today, Zcash is trading at $1,545, and over the past day the rate has increased by 1.5%. Over three months, the token is up almost 291% and ranks ninth among cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
To reach $5,000, the token price needs to gain another roughly 223%. Meanwhile, as Ben-Sasson himself says, more and more large holders are reaching out to find out the reason for the bull rally. There’s no explanation, so he asks subscribers to share their theories.
In September, several reasons emerged for ZEC price growth. A week before September 18, spot Zcash funds attracted $98.2 million—this was the largest inflow among 14 crypto products. Ledger added support for Zcash private balances to its desktop application. And the bull rally itself likely hit short sellers: one major deal closed with a loss of $10.68 million.
Ben-Sasson calls his forecast a “personal bet, not an investment recommendation.” Whether ZEC will get close to its target largely depends on whether ETF demand holds until December.