Zcash Hits Highest Price in Nearly a Decade, Crushing Short Bets — SkimNews
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- Zcash broke above $1,000 on Friday, touching an intraday high of $1,029 on Binance before easing to around $984, its highest price in nearly a decade, after starting the run near $500 a month ago.
- Short sellers got squeezed as approximately $34.5 million in bearish ZEC positions were force-closed on the break above $1,000, pushing total Zcash liquidations to roughly $36.6 million according to CoinGlass.
- Zcash's market cap climbed toward $17 billion, enough to push ZEC past Dogecoin and into the ten largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
- Fed Governor Christopher Waller said Thursday he was "inclined to support" holding rates steady, pulling September hike odds from 63.2% to 50.4% and sparking more than $415 million in short liquidations across the broader crypto market.
- August jobs data undercut that relief on Friday, with the U.S. adding 162,000 jobs against a 56,000 consensus estimate, sending Bitcoin back below $80,000 while Zcash held onto most of its gains.
- Grayscale's Zcash Trust began trading on NYSE Arca under ticker ZCSH on August 25, giving brokerage investors direct ZEC exposure for the first time.
- Technical indicators show the trend is stretched but intact: RSI sits at 78.6 (well past the 70 overbought threshold), while the ADX reads 48, above the 25 level traders use to confirm a real trend.
Why it matters: Zcash has gained roughly 94% over 30 days and more than 2,300% over the past year, outpacing every other large-cap crypto asset — yet its $1,029 high came on the same day a stronger-than-expected jobs report dragged Bitcoin back under $80,000. The divergence shows that short positioning, not macro sentiment, was the engine of ZEC's breakout, leaving the coin exposed if the squeeze exhausts.
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