Zcash Surges 25% After Paradigm Founder Confirms Firm’s ZEC Investment

Zcash jumped roughly 25% over 24 hours after Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang confirmed the crypto investment firm made a direct purchase of ZEC, extending the privacy token’s outperformance against the broader crypto market.

Huang’s Disclosure Fuels the Rally

Zcash, which uses zero knowledge proofs to let users shield transaction addresses and amounts, traded around $1,338 on Thursday following Huang’s Wednesday post revealing that Paradigm holds ZEC tokens directly and is also an investor in the Zcash Open Development Lab. The latest surge pushed Zcash’s one-month gain to approximately 160%, far outpacing Bitcoin’s 18.2% rise over the same stretch, according to Blockto data.

Huang called Zcash a private complement to Bitcoin and voiced support for its inflation-funded developer program, arguing that sustained funding matters as AI-driven cyber threats and quantum computing capabilities continue advancing. He also said combining ZEC’s coin based voting system with other governance methods could help reduce unpredictability for it as a monetary asset. Paradigm’s broader involvement in the Zcash ecosystem wasn’t new the firm had already participated in a $25 million seed round for the Zcash Open Development Lab back in March, alongside a16z crypto, Coinbase Ventures and Winklevoss Capital.