Zcash explodes into the crypto top 10
Zcash (ZEC) surged roughly 15 per cent in 24 hours to around $1,170, with the rally extending into Sunday's session — data on Sunday morning showed ZEC trading near $1,135–$1,170 with a market capitalisation of about $19.8 billion, securing its place inside the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market value. The move came as total crypto liquidations hit approximately $212 million over the same period, and ZEC sat at the centre of the storm: about $45.32 million of those liquidations were ZEC positions, the highest of any cryptocurrency, according to CoinGlass data.
Short sellers took the worst of it. Of the $212 million in liquidations, roughly $156 million came from short positions being wiped out as prices ripped higher. Ethereum saw $35.16 million in liquidations, Bitcoin $16.79 million and Arbitrum $12.94 million — but ZEC's squeeze dwarfed them all. The sharp price movement confirmed a remarkable reordering of the crypto leaderboard: ZEC, Hyperliquid (HYPE) and Monero (XMR) have broken into the top 10, displacing Cardano (ADA) and Chainlink (LINK). Over the past year, ZEC is up around 441 per cent, HYPE 127 per cent and XMR 77 per cent, while ADA and LINK fell 61 and 25 per cent respectively — a rotation toward privacy coins and faster-growing assets as Bitcoin and Ethereum declined between 27 and 42 per cent.
The "$230 million whale" and a $38 million short gone wrong
The human story inside the numbers belongs to a trader known as Garrett Bullish — previously nicknamed the "October 10 whale" after an earlier episode in which he liquidated roughly $230 million. This time, he held a 2x leveraged short position of 32,759.57 ZEC, worth approximately $38.18 million, opened at an average price near $444 with a liquidation level of $2,566. When ZEC ripped higher, the position was left nursing an unrealised loss of approximately $23.57 million.
Ironically, the same trader held a long position of 1,331.88 BTC that had earned roughly $3.6 million in unrealised profit — the classic tale of leveraged crypto trading, where being right on the biggest asset does not save you from being spectacularly wrong on a squeezed altcoin. The whale's short was opened far below current prices, suggesting the position was built on a bet that ZEC's autumn rally was overextended. The market disagreed.
A wild month: from $1,600 to a liquidation crash and back
ZEC's recent history is a study in volatility. The token climbed from under $500 in mid-August to above $1,600 in late September — a better-than-triple in six weeks. Then came the whiplash. On 15 October, amid a broader crypto selloff triggered by hotter-than-expected US inflation data, ZEC slid 13 per cent in 24 hours to an intraday trough of $1,087, accelerated by cascading margin liquidations. About $20 million of ZEC futures positions were closed automatically by exchanges, and 89 per cent of those — $17.8 million — were traders betting on a rise. ZEC was the fourth-worst performer in the top 100 that day.
The bounce was just as violent. On 16 October, ZEC rebounded 8.5 per cent to $1,235, recovering most of its losses without any new announcement from Zcash's developers. Market structure remains tightly wound as traders position ahead of an official review on 20 October to schedule the mainnet activation of the Network Upgrade 7 (NU7) — a catalyst many speculators are watching. Through it all, ZEC held roughly a 4 per cent gain over the past seven days and kept its seat in the top 10.
The privacy-coin rotation
Zcash's rise is part of a broader narrative that investors are rediscovering privacy coins. Zcash uses zero-knowledge cryptography — the famous zk-SNARKs — to let users transact with shielded, private addresses, and it has spent years as a respected but lagging project while meme coins and layer-1s took the spotlight. This year, that changed. Both ZEC and Monero have surged, suggesting capital is rotating toward assets with privacy utility and scarcity narratives as the majors consolidate.
Bitcoin, by contrast, was trading near $81,749, with analysts predicting it will trade in a range of $80,000 to $95,000 for months in a consolidation phase rather than an immediate breakout. Ethereum briefly pushed back above $4,400, while XRP tapped $3. The total crypto market capitalisation stood around $2.37 trillion with Bitcoin dominance at 56.7 per cent — the majors grinding sideways while privacy coins and exchange tokens absorb the speculative energy. For Pakistani investors watching global markets, a rough ZEC conversion through a currency converter puts a single coin at well over PKR 300,000 at current exchange rates — a reminder of both the opportunity and the risk in assets that can move 15 per cent in a day.
