Wang Chun Slams Zcash: Wall Street Hype or a Better Bitcoin?

TL;DR:

·ZEC broke above $1,000 intraday on Sept. 4, 2026, and hit a high of about $1,256.92 on Sept. 7, closing that day up about 41% from Sept. 2. Around $34.5 million in ZEC short positions were liquidated in the prior 24 hours, and the short squeeze may have amplified the rally.

·Investors including Barry Silbert, the Winklevoss twins, Multicoin, and Naval have publicly supported or positioned in Zcash, with the core logic being that financial privacy is increasingly scarce, and the growth of public ledgers and AI data analysis may drive demand for privacy assets.

·Institutional positioning has extended to investment products and corporate treasuries: Grayscale's ZCSH was upgraded to an exchange-traded product on Aug. 25, 2026; Cypherpunk, backed by Winklevoss Capital, had already spent about $50 million to buy 203,775 ZEC when it launched its treasury strategy.

·Arthur Hayes had made Zcash a key privacy investment, but disclosed on June 5 that he had sold his entire position due to the Orchard vulnerability, while leaving open the possibility of buying back. His earlier bullish statements cannot be taken as representing his current holdings.

·F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun criticized on Sept. 8 that Zcash's rally was driven mainly by "narrative buying," arguing that market cap ranking cannot substitute for actual usage demand, and questioned its initial distribution, development funding mechanism, governance, and security history.

·In its first four years, Zcash allocated 20% of block rewards as the Founders' Reward, totaling about 10% of the eventual supply cap; in January 2026, the ECC team resigned en masse due to governance conflicts, but subsequently continued developing Zcash rather than abandoning the project.

·The Orchard vulnerability could theoretically allow undetectable counterfeit ZEC issuance, and emergency remediation was completed on June 2; the Ironwood upgrade activated on July 28 constrains circulating supply by restricting old pools and publicly accounting for migrated funds, but this does not prove the historical vulnerability was never exploited.

·Whether Zcash can sustain long-term monetary value still depends on whether privacy demand translates into sustained usage, and whether supply security and governance can earn trust; celebrity endorsements, investment products, and treasury purchases do not by themselves equate to growth in on-chain payment demand.

On Sept. 4, 2026, Zcash (ZEC) broke above $1,000 intraday; on Sept. 7, it hit a high of about $1,256.92 and closed at about $1,146.61, up about 41% from the Sept. 2 close of about $814.84. Zcash once again became one of the most watched assets in the crypto market.

According to a CoinDesk report on Sept. 4, ZEC had risen about 94% over the previous month and more than 2,300% over the past year.

Behind the rally was both renewed attention on privacy assets and the fuel of leveraged trading. CoinDesk, citing data in the same report, said that in the prior 24 hours, ZEC leveraged position liquidations totaled about $36.6 million, of which shorts accounted for about $34.5 million. The buying pressure from forced short covering may have further amplified the rise. However, these figures only show that a short squeeze was a factor in the market; they cannot be used to conclude that the entire rally came from short covering.

Just as the market was debating whether Zcash could become a "better Bitcoin," F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun posted criticism on Sept. 8, saying the recent rally was driven more by "narrative buying," and that a rising market cap does not mean the project has earned a status commensurate with its ranking. He pointed to Zcash's initial distribution, development funding, governance conflicts, and security history.

On one side are well-known investors reinforcing the privacy narrative; on the other are veteran mining figures resurfacing historical issues. The core of this debate is what value the market is actually paying for.

Who is backing Zcash? From crypto investors to institutional investment channels

Over the past year, several well-known investors and institutions have publicly supported or positioned in Zcash, including DCG founder Barry Silbert, Gemini co-founders the Winklevoss twins, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, Multicoin Capital, and Silicon Valley investor Naval Ravikant. Their bullish logic has different emphases, and some support has been translated into token investments and corporate treasury positioning, but the stances and holdings of various parties have not always remained unchanged.

Barry Silbert: Privacy assets may absorb some Bitcoin capital.

DCG founder Barry Silbert is one of the most prominent supporters of Zcash. In February 2026, he said at Bitcoin Investor Week in New York that funds equivalent to 5% to 10% of Bitcoin's capital size could shift to privacy assets like Zcash in the future. He remains bullish on Bitcoin but believes privacy coins offer another asymmetric opportunity.

This logic does not require Zcash to fully replace Bitcoin: as long as financial privacy creates an independent asset allocation demand, it could attract some funds originally concentrated in BTC. However, the 5% to 10% is his forecast, not a capital flow that has already occurred, nor a commitment that all of it will go to ZEC.

Institutional investment channels are also changing. Grayscale's website shows that ZCSH was upgraded to an exchange-traded product on Aug. 25, 2026. It provides investors with a way to gain ZEC exposure through securities accounts, but the product's listing itself cannot be equated with sustained net inflows, nor can it directly prove growth in on-chain privacy payment demand.

Winklevoss twins: Treating privacy as a scarce asset and betting through a corporate treasury.

Gemini co-founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss's support combines ideology and capital action. Tyler, speaking about Cypherpunk, emphasized that privacy is a prerequisite for personal freedom and autonomy, and as life moves online, it is becoming increasingly scarce. In September 2026, Tyler quoted a Cypherpunk video and commented that AI is accelerating the loss of privacy in society, and "Zcash is the antidote."

In November 2025, Cypherpunk Technologies, backed by Winklevoss Capital, announced its Zcash treasury strategy, having already spent about $50 million to buy 203,775 ZEC at an average cost of about $245 per coin. These figures reflect its holdings at the launch of the strategy and cannot be taken as today's latest data.

For such supporters, ZEC is not just a payment tool but also a privacy asset that can be held long-term. A public company treasury turns this view into an executable buying strategy.

Arthur Hayes: Once bet on privacy demand, later sold out due to vulnerability issues.

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes had placed Zcash at the center of his privacy investment logic. In May 2026, in an interview with The Rollup, he linked ZEC with NEAR, arguing that the former is the asset people first think of when seeking privacy, while the latter's cross-chain trading tools can help facilitate asset flows. He connected this demand to the surveillance capabilities brought by AI, big tech companies, and governments.

Hayes also said at the time that even though he expected higher potential upside for NEAR, his Zcash position was still larger, because higher potential returns come with higher risk.

However, on June 5, 2026, Hayes publicly stated that he had sold his entire ZEC position due to the Orchard vulnerability. He believed that even if the probability of unauthorized issuance was very low, the inability to cryptographically rule out that risk still undermined his investment logic; he also said he would reconsider buying if the concerns proved unfounded. Therefore, his bullish statements in May cannot directly represent his stance in September, and the disclosure of selling in June cannot be inferred to mean he currently holds zero.

Tushar Jain and Multicoin: From "privacy is just a feature" to holding privacy assets.

Multicoin's shift is particularly noteworthy. In 2019, the firm published an article arguing that privacy should be a feature of valuable crypto assets, and users should not be forced to sell BTC or ETH and take on the risk of holding another token just to gain privacy.

But by May 2026, co-founder Tushar Jain had publicly stated that Multicoin had built a large ZEC position since February of that year. He argued that while Bitcoin can resist protocol-level freezing, if outside parties can link assets to real owners, holders may still face off-chain pressure; therefore, privacy-preserving stores of value have independent demand.

This means that, at least in this firm's judgment, privacy has shifted from an add-on feature to an attribute sufficient to support a standalone investment target.

Naval Ravikant: Zcash is insurance beyond Bitcoin.

Around October 2025, Silicon Valley investor Naval Ravikant summed up another bullish logic in one sentence: "Bitcoin is insurance against fiat, Zcash is insurance against Bitcoin." This is not the same as claiming Bitcoin will inevitably fail; it is more like keeping another path for needs that BTC cannot fully satisfy.

Combining these views, the common bet among supporters is: the more assets on public ledgers and the stronger data analysis capabilities become, the more valuable financial privacy will be. But going from "privacy has value" to "ZEC is worth today's price" still requires validation through usage demand, security, and market acceptance.

Wang Chun's counterattack: Does "better Bitcoin" obscure historical issues?

Wang Chun's criticism first targets the relationship between market cap and fundamentals. He argues that being close to Solana and Hyperliquid in rankings does not mean Zcash has actual usage demand comparable to those networks. The privacy narrative can attract buying, but it cannot automatically resolve the problems a project has accumulated over the long term.

His first question concerns distribution fairness. In the first four years after Zcash's launch, 20% of block rewards were allocated as the Founders' Reward to founders, employees, advisors, early investors, and other related parties, totaling about 2.1 million ZEC, or 10% of the 21 million supply cap. This mechanism was public before launch; the controversy is whether it aligns with the fair money philosophy emphasized by supporters.

A distinction is needed here: these tokens were distributed gradually with block production, not pre-mined in a one-time mint before launch. After the original Founders' Reward ended, Zcash continued to provide protocol-level funding for the ecosystem through mechanisms such as development funds, but the beneficiaries and governance rules of subsequent mechanisms changed, so it cannot be simply written as early investors continuing to take a cut at the original ratio.

This disagreement also has a practical resource allocation background: taking funds from block rewards to support development helps provide a budget for long-term R&D; at the same time, it makes "who has the right to decide where funds go and who should receive rewards" an ongoing governance issue.

The second question is organizational governance. In January 2026, the Electric Coin Company team resigned en masse due to conflicts with the board of its parent nonprofit, Bootstrap. Then-CEO Josh Swihart said changes in working conditions made it impossible for the team to perform effectively; Bootstrap attributed the dispute to governance and legal issues.

However, this was not developers collectively abandoning Zcash. Swihart made clear at the time that the team would form a new company to continue development, and the protocol itself would not be affected by this personnel change. Therefore, this event can illustrate a serious rift in governance relations, but it cannot be used to describe Zcash as a project no longer maintained.

The third question, and the one that most directly touches monetary credibility, is the Orchard privacy pool vulnerability.

According to Shielded Labs' disclosure, security researcher Taylor Hornby discovered a critical vulnerability on May 29, 2026. The issue had existed since Orchard was activated in May 2022, and could theoretically allow an attacker to create unlimited, undetectable counterfeit ZEC within the privacy pool. The Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) then coordinated an emergency fix across the ecosystem, and the emergency remediation was completed on June 2, 2026. Due to the privacy design and the nature of the vulnerability, the team could not determine through cryptographic methods alone whether exploitation had occurred before the fix; their assessment was that prior exploitation was unlikely.

For a currency that emphasizes a fixed supply cap, this issue is not just about whether transactions are confidential, but also about how holders can confirm they have not been silently diluted. But potential issuance risk and actual issuance are still two different things; the existing disclosure cannot be rewritten as "it has been proven that someone minted unlimited coins."

On July 28, Zcash activated the Ironwood upgrade, introducing a new privacy pool and restricting the old Orchard pool. Funds migrating out must pass through a publicly accounted turnstile mechanism, ensuring that the total ZEC leaving the old pool does not exceed the total that previously legally entered. This helps verify the integrity of circulating supply, but it cannot be used to assert that the historical vulnerability was never exploited.

Wang Chun thus raised a question that supporters cannot answer with price gains alone: if Zcash is to be positioned as a more credible private currency, it must also explain its distribution history, governance stability, and supply security. Dismissing all these issues as "not understanding privacy" is clearly insufficient to settle the debate.

Can privacy demand support independent monetary value?

From the above disagreements, what Zcash needs to prove next is first whether privacy demand can translate into sustained usage. What deserves observation is not just the price and asset balances in privacy pools, but also wallet usage, the persistence of private transactions, payment scenarios, and tool experience. Holders moving assets into privacy pools can indicate their privacy preference, but it cannot be directly equated with increased payment activity.

Second is whether security fixes can build long-term trust. The activation of Ironwood provides a concrete path to respond to the vulnerability, but independent audits, fund migration, and subsequent operational records still speak louder than any celebrity endorsement. For a project that attracts investors with monetary attributes, supply credibility is itself a fundamental.

Finally, there is the quality of institutional demand. Investment products and corporate treasuries lower the barrier to gaining ZEC exposure and may also concentrate buying. Going forward, it is necessary to distinguish whether funds are allocating to privacy assets for the long term or chasing short-term gains; and even more so, to distinguish between investment demand in securities accounts and actual usage demand on-chain.