Journalist
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Zcash posted a 30% Santa rally despite Bitcoin’s sideways structure and flipped Solana in speculative interest.
Notably, on the 27th of December, ZEC surged 17% to $515, marking a 43% monthly recovery and erasing half of its Q4 losses.
In the Futures market, Zcash [ZEC] effectively surpassed SOL in global perpetual volumes, indicating that more people were speculating on ZEC than SOL.
Source: Laevitas
Over the past 24 hours, ZEC’s global perp volume reached $2.9 billion, about 7% total market share, ranking it third, behind Ethereum [ETH] and Bitcoin [BTC]. SOL came in fourth at $2.65 billion.
However, ZEC dominance extends beyond speculation on the perps markets.
Privacy flips memecoin narrative
Per Artemis data, the privacy meta emerged as the best-performing narrative in 2025, dominated by ZEC, Monero [XMR], and the rest. Collectively, the privacy narrative yielded an average annual return of over 250%.
Source: Artemis
In contrast, memecoins, primarily dominated by the Solana chain, ranked ninth with an average annual loss of 62%. In other words, this was a brutal memecoin lull that also weighed down on SOL’s performance.
Beyond price performance, Zcash also showed steady usage. As of late 2025, the total number of shield ZEC supply has jumped to 5 million ZEC, nearly doubling over the past few months.
Source: CoinMetrics
Reacting to the explosive growth in shield ZEC, analyst Peter Costi said,
“The world is realising that the system is broken and more of our privacy is being stolen each day, this is why the shielded pool continues to grow.”
Costi called the ZEC’s price rally a ‘second-order effect’ of the growing interest in private ‘shield’ transactions.
What’s next for ZEC?
That said, there was also considerable accumulation during the past seven days, as illustrated by overall exchange outflows (more ZEC leaving exchanges than in, red).
Source: Coinglass
On the recovery targets, over $600 or $750 could be on the cards if the momentum continues. The recent December upswing has effectively reclaimed the 50-day Moving Average, suggesting a bullish tilt.
However, another dip below the short-term support of $450 could derail the recovery.
Source:Source: ZEC/USDT, TradingView
Final Thoughts
- ZEC has dominated the privacy narrative in 2025, outperforming SOL in investor returns and speculative interest.
- ZEC could climb higher above $600 after reclaiming a key dynamic support level.
