ZEC jumps past $500 as open interest hits record high

ZCash (ZEC) continued its climb on Thursday, once again breaking above $500. ZEC peaked at $519.72 as volumes and hype continued growing.

ZCash (ZEC) recovered above $500, extending its rally from the past month. The token is now within the top 20 of assets by market capitalization, aiming to reclaim its status as a blue-chip coin.

ZEC continued its climb, returning to levels not seen since its first bull market in 2018. The asset trades on a mix of true conviction and spot buying, as well as aggressive shorting, betting on a reversal. | Source: CoinGecko.

ZEC peaked at $519.72 after another day of active trading. As of November 6, the leading pairs for ZEC are on Binance and Coinbase, reawakening after years of low activity. The legacy listings are more important for ZEC than the current rise in decentralized activity.

ZEC grows the supply of its tokenized versions

Despite the claims of ZCash to be an anonymous coin, some of the ZEC trades are relying on its tokenized form. A big part of the ZEC decentralized activity depends on tokens bridged to Solana.

Since October 16, ZEC also has a Binance pegged version, which is available as a token on BNB Chain. The tokenized version is now held by over 16,000 wallets, and is not anonymized. The asset is traded on the PancakeSwap and Uniswap DEXs, still with relatively low volumes and liquidity.

The BNB Chain and Solana versions will allow ZEC to become a part of the DeFi landscape, but adoption may not be immediate. For now, ZEC relies on speculative trading on derivative markets, as well as its legacy pairs.

The activity around ZCash remains a mix of derivative bets and true conviction. On the one side, a growing community is accumulating ZEC with claims of true conviction. A total of 4.96M ZEC has been accumulated and shielded in anonymous pools.

True believers see ZEC as replacing BTC, or at least repricing to a much higher range. ZEC is now moving closer to its peak from 2018, when the token briefly traded above $700.

On the other hand, ZEC is seen as an asset that can correct, leading to attempts at holding short positions.

ZEC is still aggressively shorted

ZEC open interest has grown to an all-time peak, above $674M. Traders are still aggressively shorting the coin, expecting the current rally to break down. However, ZCash keeps breaking the liquidation levels to a new price range.

ZEC funding rates are growing deeper into negative territory, as short traders pay to retain their positions. The funding rates have been expanding in the past week, pressuring some of the short sellers.

ZEC short traders led to growing negative funding, now paying to retain their positions. | Source: CoinGlass.

As of November 6, ZEC liquidity was available up to $529. In the past days, the coin rallies were often cut short as liquidity ran out, but resumed soon after that.

On Hyperliquid, ZEC is seeing a more positive expectation, with 53% of traders going long. One wallet reached unrealized profits of over $2.8M after longing ZEC, even from its previous local peak.

Despite the trend to FOMO and trust in ZEC, the history of funding rates shows that short sellers also hold a strong conviction.