Zcash traded above $1,300 this week as the privacy coin held a top-10 market ranking, with Grayscale’s ZEC fund pulling in $41.1 million last week and the network’s NU7 upgrade — which retires the original Sprout pool for good — set to activate on November 5.
Summary
- ZEC rose 7.09% to $1,355.87 on Monday, reaching a $22.91 billion market capitalization and ninth place among all cryptocurrencies.
- The Grayscale Zcash ETF took in $20.5 million on October 23 alone, and $41.1 million across that week.
- NU7 activates November 5 at block 3,543,405, cutting target block time from 75 seconds to 25 seconds.
- NU7 retires the Sprout privacy pool — ZEC left in Sprout cannot be moved after activation.
Zcash was again among the leaders of the major coins on Wednesday, adding about 5% to hold around $1,300. Monday’s session saw volume of $1.26 billion against a circulating supply of 16.93 million ZEC.
An ETF bid behind the move
Institutional money has followed the price. The Grayscale Zcash ETF recorded $20.5 million of inflows on October 23, taking its total for the week of October 19–23 to $41.1 million — a reversal from the $10.4 million that left the fund on October 19.
On-chain tracker Lookonchain has been tracking large leveraged positions building in ZEC on X.
November 5 carries a hard deadline
The NU7 upgrade, targeted for November 5 at activation block 3,543,405, cuts Zcash’s target block time from 75 seconds to 25 seconds and routes 60% of transaction fees to a protocol sustainability balance. Zebra 7.0.0 already supports NU7 on mainnet, and node operators are instructed to upgrade before the activation block.
The deadline that matters most for holders is Sprout: NU7 retires Zcash’s original privacy pool, and coins left in Sprout will not be movable after activation. Anyone who has held ZEC untouched since the Sprout era has days, not weeks, to move it. Network fundamentals have been building into the upgrade — September’s average hashrate reached 27.8 GSol/s, up 13% from August.
