XRP Is Down 50% in a Year and Zcash Is Up 2,361%. Can Zcash Hold $1,000?

XRP Is Down 50% in a Year and Zcash Is Up 2,361%. Can Zcash Hold $1,000? Sam Daodu Sat, September 5, 2026 at 11:20 PM GMT+9 6 min read ZEC-USD +11.33% XRP-USD -0.85% BTC-USD -0.08% ZCASH-USD 0.00% Quick Read Zcash closed at $1,024 on September 4, its first close above $1,000, and held near $1,013 on September 5.

Grayscale's spot Zcash ETF began trading on NYSE Arca on August 25 and grew from $304 million to $414.7 million by September 4, while the coin ran from $569 to above $1,000 in two weeks.

Zcash has gained 2,361% from $41 in September 2025, and the XRP price is down 50% over the same stretch while it waits on the September 15 CLARITY Act vote.

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The XRP (CRYPTO:XRP) price trades at $1.41, down 50% in the twelve months to September 5, while Zcash (CRYPTO:ZEC) has climbed 2,361% over the same period and cleared $1,000 for the first time on September 4.

Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) is also down 28% over the year at $79,657, so two of the biggest coins in the market have fallen while a coin built to hide transactions has exploded. So what does Zcash have that XRP and Bitcoin don't, and would it hold $1,000?

Zcash is a privacy-based cryptocurrency that hides who sent a payment, who received it and how much it was. Most blockchains publish every transaction, so anyone can read the amounts and the addresses involved. XRP and Bitcoin work that way, but Zcash doesn't, which is what sets it apart.

Moreover, the SEC closed a two-year investigation into the Zcash Foundation on January 14, 2026, without taking any action. That's a regulator closing its file on a coin built to hide transactions, and it came after years of pressure on privacy tools in the U.S. that had prosecutors treating them as money-laundering software.

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That decision came seven months before Grayscale's spot Zcash ETF began trading on NYSE Arca on August 25. The fund is a conversion of a trust Grayscale has run since 2017, and it launched with $304 million in assets that had grown to $414.7 million by September 4. In November 2025 the same trust held $137 million.

So the listing changed who is allowed to buy Zcash, because pensions, advisors and family offices can hold an ETF where many of them can't hold tokens directly.

The Zcash price closed at $1,024 on September 4 after reaching $1,051 during the day, and $34.5 million of shorts got squeezed on the way up, since traders who bet on a fall have to buy the coin back when the price goes against them.

Zcash closed at $569 on August 20 and $734 on August 21, and the run from there to $1,024 took just two weeks. In the 30 days to September 5 the coin is up 103%, and in the seven days to September 5 it is up 21%, so the buying picked up into the coin's ETF debut on August 25 and didn't stop after it.

That said, most of the 2,361% growth already happened in October and November 2025, not in the two weeks to September 4. Zcash traded at $41 in early September 2025 and had already surged over 1,000% to $540 by November 2025. It then traded mostly between $500 and $570 for the next nine months, so the coin's climb from $569 on August 20 to $1,024 on September 4 was an 80% gain on top of a rally that had largely ended ten months earlier.

XRP fell with the rest of the market, and it fell harder. The XRP price usually drops way lower than Bitcoin does whenever BTC falls, and over the twelve months to September 5 Bitcoin lost 28% while XRP lost 50%. Zcash is a $17 billion coin against XRP's $88 billion, so the same money moving in or out moves Zcash's price a lot further.

The drop came despite XRP having the two things that just lifted Zcash. The SEC and the CFTC jointly classified XRP as a digital commodity on March 17, 2026, which ended the legal uncertainty that began with the SEC's lawsuit against Ripple in 2020.

XRP has also had U.S. spot ETFs since November 2025, and they have taken in $1.66 billion, including a record $110 million in the week to August 28. But the ruling and the ETF inflows together aren't enough against a falling market.

Meanwhile, the Bitcoin price has followed interest rates. The Fed has held rates at 3.50% to 3.75% since December 2025, and the 10-year Treasury yield reached 4.82% on September 4, which is its highest since January 2025. Savers can earn 4.8% on a government bond at that yield, and Bitcoin pays nothing, so some of them move money out of Bitcoin when yields climb.

The Zcash price could hold above $1,000 through September if investors keep buying the Grayscale fund, since the fund brought new buyers to the coin. But a new ETF that gets attention at launch doesn't always keep it, so the Zcash price is unlikely to hold if the fund stops growing.

A daily close above $1,100 with the fund still adding assets would show the ETF buyers are still in control. But a daily close below $850 could see Zcash drop back to where it traded on August 25—the day the fund listed—and would mean the buyers have wound down. Zcash could give some of that gain back through September, as most coins usually do after climbing higher, but it could also keep climbing.

Meanwhile, if you hold XRP, the Senate's CLARITY Act vote on September 15 could turn the coin's commodity status into permanent law. Zcash shows what a new fund can do for a coin, and one could wonder if the vote does the same for XRP.

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