Bitcoin Whales Privately Urged Early Investor to Buy Zcash Before $1,000 Rally

Dan Held, an early Bitcoin investor, said in a recent interview that some of the oldest Bitcoin whales privately urged him for months to buy Zcash (ZEC) before the token rallied past $1,000.

The messages came from investors with eight- to nine-figure net worths who have been trading Bitcoin since 2013, according to Held, a former Kraken marketing head who purchased his first Bitcoin in 2012.

Whales Touted Zcash to a Bitcoin Purist

Over a period of about three to six months, these investors pushed Held to buy ZEC in the $100 to $400 range, he said. Many of them funded the purchase by cutting their long-term Bitcoin holdings by between a fifth and an eighth.

Zcash topped $1,000 last week for the first time in nearly a decade since its launch. The rally has been boosted by growing inflows into Grayscale’s Zcash ETF, the ZCSH fund.

Held remains skeptical of the timing. He argued that in crypto, narratives usually emerge after an asset has already moved, not beforehand, and that Zcash appears to follow that pattern.

Held Still Not Convinced

Held drew a contrast between Zcash and Bitcoin’s fixed 21 million supply cap. He noted that the Zcash community accepted a trade-off between privacy and supply auditability that the Bitcoin community rejected.

He referenced an incident from around six months to a year earlier, when confusion about a possible exploit temporarily made it unclear how much ZEC was in circulation. Held said such uncertainty would be unacceptable for an asset promoted as digital gold.

Held said he typically stays away from what the market already embraces. His best investments, such as Bitcoin and SpaceX, were in assets nobody wanted at the time, he said, adding that Zcash no longer fits that description.

The rally has also squeezed some Zcash short sellers, signaling how quickly sentiment shifted.

It will probably take a full market cycle to determine whether the whales’ early timing was correct.