Zcash (SEC)—one of the space’s premier privacy coins, able to confirm transactions without recording participating addresses—has had one of its most successful months to date. It competes in the space with the similarly privacy concious Monero.
The untraceable cryptocurrency backed by zk-SNARKs zero-proof cryptography is making waves for good reason. To get your finger on the pulse of this promising coin, let’s review some of Zcash’s biggest developments over the past few weeks.
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Zcash Investment Trust enters the daylight, files with SEC
The newest and perhaps biggest development of all is the Zcash Investment Trust’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), dated October 25, 2017.
This is bullish news for the Zcash project and Zcash investors, as this filing will immediately allow institutional investors to make investments in the Zcash Investment Trust starting at $10,000 each.
This move will undoubtedly go a long way in opening up the Zcash cryptocurrency to mainstream, institutional interest.
The Zcash coin itself is trading at approximately $248 at press time.
JPMorgan integrates Zcash into Quorum
JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon may be no fan of Bitcoin, but JPMorgan itself is more than happy to make use of Zcash’s innovative tech in Quorum, JPMorgan’s in-house blockchain.
That’s because Zcash developers are now teaming up with JPMorgan blockchain team to bring Zcash’s zero-knowledge security layer (ZSL) tech to Quorum.
Per Zcash co-founder Zooko Wilcox, the Zcash team has just what JPMorgan’s looking for:
What we have now done through our partnership with JPMorgan is use zcash technology previously pioneered in the open zcash cryptocurrency to create protected and auditable transfer of token ownership on the JPMorgan blockchain
Umar Farooq, director of JPMorgan’s blockchain projects, was just as bullish and said “Today's announcement is a prime example of how big banks and fintechs can work side-by-side to build groundbreaking technology for the financial markets”.
Zcash follows Bitcoin in cybercrime
Untraceable digital currency … just what the crime lord ordered?
Per a new report out of Europol, Bitcoin is still the bellwether currency when it comes to online illicit “dark markets,” but privacy coins like Zcash and Monero are gaining in usage in these same markets because they’re explicitly designed to be more private than, say, Bitcoin or Ethereum.
As the report indicates, Zcash is ideal for hiding identities—an unsurprisingly attractive trait for the less-than-noble:
Transactions cannot be attributed to any particular user/address, all coins used in a transaction are ‘hidden' by default, and transaction histories are kept private
What's your favorite #privacy coin? #Zcash or #Monero? Other?
— William M. Peaster 🦇🔊 (@WPeaster) October 27, 2017
Snowden endorses Zcash one month ago
Speaking of criminals—at least technically—American NSA rogue Edward Snowden gave Zcash a ringing endorsement a few weeks ago.
The fugitive hacker knows a thing or two about privacy, so when Twitter user @masonic_tweets wrote, “Zcash is the only altcoin (that I know of) designed and built by professional and academic cryptographers. Hard to ignore,” Snowden emphatically interjected as chorus:
Agree. Zcash's privacy tech makes it the most interesting Bitcoin alternative. Bitcoin is great, but "if it's not private, it's not safe." https://t.co/HqwQOvSCiz
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 28, 2017
If nothing else, then, it’s clear Zcash does what it’s designed to do very well. And that’s why this cryptocurrency’s had such a great month—with many more surely to come.
There’s a genuine yearning for privacy in the post-modern world.
And Zcash is a 21st-century solution that can answer that call exceedingly well.
