Privacy coins are making their way into mainstream investment markets. This week, 21Shares launched a Zcash exchange-traded product on Euronext Paris and Euronext Amsterdam, giving European investors a new way to gain exposure to the privacy-focused cryptocurrency without holding it directly.
The move follows Grayscale’s launch of a Zcash ETF on the NYSE last month, marking a rapid expansion of regulated investment products tied to privacy coins.
Privacy coins allow users to keep their balances and transfers hidden from public view. Often described as “Bitcoin, but private,” Zcash uses technology that conceals identifying information from the public blockchain, enabling users to make transactions with greater privacy.
A Surge in Privacy Coins
Zcash has become the largest privacy-focused cryptocurrency by market value, reaching a capitalization of $21.75 billion, according to 24/7 Wall St. Additionally, more than $23 billion worth of transfers moved across the network last week, per crypto research firm Messari, marking its highest weekly transfer volume since 2021.
“The immediate catalyst has been clever marketing and renewed demand for privacy tokens, but I think something that has been overlooked is the growth of AI agents and the demand for private transactions,” said Joel Hugentobler, Cryptocurrency Analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research. “That’ll be a long-term driver. Plus, when whales and other large participants allocate, it adds fuel to the fire in an almost ‘follow the leader’ sort of way.”
The Hurdles to Mainstream Adoption
Privacy coins as a group are up more than 200% since October 2025, making them the only crypto sector still trading above its 2025 highs. But their path toward broader adoption has been complicated by regulatory scrutiny, particularly because their technology is designed to make transactions harder to trace.
The SEC’s announcement in January that it was closing a nearly two-year investigation into the Zcash Foundation without taking enforcement action removed one source of regulatory uncertainty surrounding the project. Grayscale’s listing of its Zcash ETF on a public exchange now brings the asset further into traditional financial markets, where it will face additional regulatory and investor scrutiny.
Security has presented another challenge. Earlier this year, a researcher using Anthropic’s Claude Opus model uncovered a vulnerability in Zcash that could have enabled the creation of unlimited counterfeit tokens. Zcash’s value fell by nearly half after the flaw was disclosed, but developers subsequently released an upgrade aimed at strengthening the network’s security and accounting mechanisms.
