Zcash's ZEC Hits $1,600, a 10-Year High
A $20,199 vote took the Cosmos Hub offline for a day, Blockchain.com and NYSE explore 24/7 tokenized stocks, and Ondo opens in-kind minting
gm, Defiers!
- Zcash cleared $1,600 for the first time since 2016 after 21Shares listed a physically backed ZEC ETP in Paris and Amsterdam.
- The Cosmos Hub restarted after a 24-hour, 48-minute halt, and the restart moved 1.23 million ATOM out of the attacker's wallet.
- Blockchain.com and NYSE agreed to explore round-the-clock trading of tokenized U.S. stocks through NYSE's planned digital venue.
- Ondo opened in-kind minting for tokenized U.S. stocks, letting approved institutions swap shares held at Alpaca for tokens.
- Galaxy put $100 million of sUSDS in its treasury and approved the yield-bearing stablecoin as loan collateral.
Zcash traded above $1,500 this week after 21Shares listed Europe's first ZEC exchange-traded product on Euronext.
The ETP trades in Paris and Amsterdam under the ticker ZCASH at a 2.5% management fee, and it landed in a market already running. ZEC is up more than 70% over 30 days and roughly 2,500% over the past year, climbing from 82nd to seventh by market cap. It's the second wrapper in a month. Grayscale converted its Zcash Trust into a spot ETF on NYSE Arca in August after the SEC signed off on Aug. 24, and that fund pulled in $32.8M on Monday to reach $979M.
The groundwork went in earlier. The SEC closed its Zcash review in January without recommending enforcement. Cypherpunk Technologies, the Winklevoss-backed treasury company, now holds 323,394 ZEC, or 1.92% of circulating supply, at an average cost of $341.83. Shielded transactions hit 62,379 last week, the most since 2022.
Getting here was ugly in places. On May 29, security researcher Taylor Hornby found a soundness flaw in the Orchard pool that could have let an attacker mint counterfeit ZEC undetected. It had been live since Orchard activated in May 2022. Developers shipped an emergency patch on June 1 and hard-forked on June 3, and Shielded Labs disclosed the bug publicly on June 5. ZEC dropped 38% in a day to $442, roughly halving over 48 hours from $624 to $309, and Arthur Hayes exited his position. Late June brought another 28% slide to $391 on a broad market drawdown. Both were recovered inside a quarter.
The float explains a lot of that. About 5 million ZEC, more than 30% of supply, now sits in shielded pools, up from 8% in early 2024 and 23% last November. Those coins move slowly and most exchanges won't accept them directly, which puts tradable supply closer to 11.7 million than the 16.9 million headline figure. The vehicles bidding for ZEC can't reach that side of the ledger at all. Coinbase Custody holds the Grayscale ETF's coins in transparent addresses, because shielded ones break sanctions screening and audit workflows, and a European ETP faces the same constraint. Institutional demand and actual privacy usage are pulling on opposite ends of the same supply, and the transparent end keeps getting thinner. A 38% crash round-tripping in three months is what that looks like on a chart.
The mechanic runs both directions. Futures open interest sits at $2.3 billion against that float, which is the setup for the kind of two-day unwind June already produced. ZEC's October 2016 high of $3,191 is still about 60% above spot, the number bulls keep pointing at. Next scheduled catalyst is NU7 on Nov. 5, cutting block times from 75 seconds to 25.
Read more below!
Synthetic vs. Direct Tokenized Stocks: Who Wins After The SEC Exemption?
Ondo's head of global regulatory affairs Peter Curley said the company's main product cannot use the SEC's innovation exemption: Ondo Global Markets tokens are equity-linked notes, and the order requires full rights equivalence while excluding synthetic linked securities. Dinari co-founder Gabriel Otte said the order reaffirmed red lines he has argued for, and pressed Curley on whether Ondo's tokens trade without KYC after issuance. Cooley partner Rodrigo Seira called the order a five-year proof of concept built to survive the challenges coming "from the Citadels of the world." Ondo holds $880.8 million of tokenized stocks. Dinari holds $13 million.
Zcash Clears $1,600 After 21Shares Launches European ETP
Zcash crossed $1,600 for the first time since 2016, a day after 21Shares listed a physically backed ZEC exchange-traded product on Euronext Paris in euros and Euronext Amsterdam in dollars under the ticker ZCASH, at a 2.5% fee. The issuer called it the first Zcash ETP available to European investors, and the wrapper lets brokerage customers hold exposure without an exchange account or private keys, with the ZEC held by third-party custodians. ZEC was already climbing: The Defiant recorded a $1,383.30 high on Coinbase on Sept. 16 and $1,284.42 on Sept. 9. ZecStats, using CipherScan data, counted 4.91 million ZEC across the Sprout, Sapling, Orchard and Ironwood shielded pools at 3:42 p.m. ET, or 29.0% of supply, with a net 5,094 ZEC leaving the pools over the prior 24 hours.
Geo’s Curator Points Program Just Launched
Imagine Reddit-style communities teaming up to make sense of the news and figure out what’s true.
Geo is a network for organizing knowledge we can trust. It’s composed of independent communities called Spaces that govern themselves.
Spaces have started forming around Crypto, AI, Health, US Politics, and World Affairs. Our points program is live where Curators can earn points for adding news stories, fact checking, and ranking the most interesting topics of the day.
Check out the crypto space. Start voting and add content to rack up points! Together we can get organized and help shape what comes next.
Cosmos Hub Restarts; 1.23 Million ATOM Moved From Neutron Attacker Wallet
The Cosmos Hub resumed producing blocks at 8:06 a.m. ET Wednesday after a gap of 24 hours and 48 minutes, and the finalization events of its last block moved 1,227,121.374688 ATOM out of the attacker's wallet into an address with no registered public key and a sequence of zero. Validators coordinated the halt and the restart among themselves. Contributors are moving the stolen ATOM to a validator multisig so it can go back to the original addresses once Neutron is online. Neutron has produced nothing since 07:43:55 UTC on Sept. 22, and the attacker's Neutron address is frozen with the chain, holding 1.67 million USDC, 96.2 million NTRN and 370 million ASTRO. A THORChain vault refunded 168,991 ATOM to the attacker 75 seconds after the Hub restarted; two attempts to move ATOM to Osmosis failed.
Blockchain.com and NYSE Explore 24/7 Tokenized Stock Trading
Blockchain.com and NYSE Group signed an agreement Sept. 23 to explore round-the-clock access to tokenized U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs through NYSE's planned digital venue. The agreement covers joint product development, and neither company has said which countries will be eligible. NYSE announced the venue in January, pairing its Pillar matching engine with blockchain-based post-trade systems, and chief product officer Jon Herrick said in February that the back half of 2026 was a “very realistic” rollout window, with the timeline driven by work with the SEC and FINRA. The deal runs data both ways: ICE Data Services will distribute Blockchain.com's crypto market data, and Blockchain.com plans to add ICE and NYSE feeds to an app it says has more than 44 million confirmed accounts.
Ondo Opens In-Kind Minting for Tokenized US Stocks
Ondo Finance opened an in-kind creation and redemption route for Ondo Stocks on Sept. 21, letting approved institutions exchange U.S. stocks and ETFs held at Alpaca for tokens on Ethereum or BNB Chain. Shares move from the institution's Alpaca account to Ondo's through an internal book transfer, and Ondo issues the tokens; redemption reverses the trip. The cash-funded route stays open, where tokens are minted against stablecoins and Ondo sources the underlying security through a U.S.-registered broker-dealer, an arrangement that made a market maker finance both the shares and the cash during a conversion. Access is granted case by case to institutions approved on both platforms, and Alpaca says tokenized assets generally carry economic exposure, with holders owning no shares in the underlying company unless stated otherwise.
Galaxy Adds $100 Million of sUSDS to Treasury, Approves It as Loan Collateral
Galaxy Digital added $100 million of Sky Protocol's sUSDS to its corporate treasury and approved the token as collateral across an institutional trading business that serves more than 1,600 counterparties and carries a $1.4 billion average loan book, Sky said. Clients who pledge sUSDS keep accruing the Sky Savings Rate on the full position for as long as the loan is outstanding. Sky listed that rate at 3.6% APY against a total supply of 4.37 billion sUSDS. The rate is variable, funded from Sky's aggregate surplus and set through SKY token-holder governance, so it can move during the life of a Galaxy loan. Galaxy and Grove separately run a $500 million warehouse facility that has financed $375 million in overcollateralized loans since its July 15 launch and sits at 75% utilization.
Other Stories Worth Your Time
Six Canadian Banks Outline First Phase of Tokenized Deposit Project — the exploratory project would first move deposits among participating institutions, while a U.S. counterpart has already named its operator and payment rails.
KB Securities, Securitize and Optimism Sign Exploratory Korea Tokenization MOU — Optimism's X post names a tokenized bond as the first product while its same-day blog names two tokenized funds, and Korea's first regulatory phase starts in February 2027.
MoonPay Agrees to Buy North Capital, Adding Securities Infrastructure — sources told CoinDesk the all-stock deal is worth more than $60 million, and it remains subject to regulatory approval.
Brazil Tops Redesigned Crypto Adoption Index as Latin America Defies Global Slump — Chainalysis measured $593.8 billion in regional activity, up 9.8%, while the global crypto economy contracted 1.6% over the same period.
Trending on The Defiant
Coinbase Opens IPO Allocations to US Retail Investors With Oura · TRADFI
World Liberty Opens WLFI Vote on 180-Day Governance Rewards · DEFI
OCC Gives Catena Preliminary Conditional Approval for National Trust Bank · TRADFI
ZetaChain Votes to Wind Down Layer 1 and Move ZETA to Solana · BLOCKCHAINS
Fairshake Plans $30 Million Ad Blitz Against Sherrod Brown in Ohio · REGULATION
Free newsletters
Good reporting. Delivered.
Choose your coverage: crypto and DeFi, the future of finance, or both.
Free. Unsubscribe anytime.
