Zcash posted a 30% rally in Santa despite Bitcoin’s sideways structure and flipped Solana with speculative interest.
Notably, on December 27, ZEC rose 17% to $515, marking a 43% monthly rally and erasing half of its fourth-quarter losses.
In the futures market, Zcash [ZEC] It effectively surpassed SOL in global perpetual volumes, indicating that more people were speculating on ZEC than SOL.
Source: Levites
In the last 24 hours, the global volume of ZEC criminals reached $2.9 billion, around 7% total market share, ranking third, behind Ethereum [ETH] and bitcoin [BTC]. SOL came in fourth place with $2.65 billion.
However, the ZEC’s dominance extends beyond speculation in criminal markets.
Privacy changes the memecoin narrative
According to Artemis data, the privacy meta emerged as the best-performing narrative in 2025, dominated by ZEC and Monero. [XMR]and the rest. Altogether, the privacy narrative delivered an average annual return of more than 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 pause in memecoins that also affected SOL’s performance.
Beyond price performance, Zcash also showed consistent usage. By the end of 2025, the total number of ZEC supply in shield increased to 5 million ZEC, almost doubling in recent months.
Source: CoinMetrics
Reacting to the explosive growth of the ZEC shield, analyst Peter Costi saying,
“The world is realizing that the system is broken and that more of our privacy is being stolen every day; that is why the protected group continues to grow.”
Costi called the ZEC price rise a “second-order effect” of growing interest in private “shield” transactions.
What’s next for the ZEC?
That said, there was also considerable accumulation over the last seven days, as illustrated by FX outflows overall (more outflows from ZEC than into the red).
Source: Coinglass
As for recovery goals, more than $600 or $750 could be in play if momentum continues. The recent December rally has effectively reclaimed the 50-day moving average, suggesting a bullish tilt.
However, another drop below the short-term support at $450 could derail the recovery.
Fountain:Source: ZEC/USDT, TradingView
Final thoughts
- ZEC has dominated the privacy narrative in 2025, surpassing SOL in investor profitability and speculative interest.
- ZEC could rally above $600 after reclaiming a key dynamic support level.
