From Collapse to Rebound: How ZEC Turned the Tide in One Week

ZEC (Zcash) has completed a shift from deep correction to a strong rebound within one week. According to the latest data, as of January 15, 2026, ZEC is priced at $438.91, up 6.17% in 24 hours, with a market capitalization of approximately $7.236 billion, a $421 million increase from yesterday. This rebound is not accidental but the result of multiple positive factors working together.

Regulatory Certainty Eliminates Uncertainty

The SEC ending its investigation into the Zcash Foundation was the key trigger for this rebound. This regulatory development has alleviated the market’s long-standing concerns about the compliance of privacy coins. The Zcash Foundation subsequently strengthened network resilience by deploying five new DNS seed nodes, located in South Carolina and Oregon in the US, as well as in Belgium, Germany, and Finland in Europe. This move not only enhanced the geographic diversity of the network but also sent a clear signal to the market: despite internal governance changes, Zcash’s infrastructure development as a decentralized protocol is progressing steadily.

Technical Continuity Dissolves Long-term Concerns

The main reason for prior market confidence setbacks in Zcash was the departure of the core development team due to disagreements between Electric Coin Company (ECC) and the Bootstrap board. However, relevant personnel quickly announced the formation of a new company to continue Zcash development and launched a new wallet product called cashZ, expected to go live within weeks. This rapid organizational and product response indicates that, although personnel changes occurred, Zcash’s technical roadmap and development commitments remain continuous. The original team stated they will maintain 100% focus on full-stack Zcash development, and existing users can seamlessly migrate from Zashi to the new wallet, alleviating market concerns about “development interruption.”

On-chain Funds Have Quietly Shifted

On-chain data from January 8 to January 15 shows a shift in market participants’ attitudes. A newly created wallet deposited $3.6 million USDC on a trading platform and opened a 10x leveraged long position on ZEC, reflecting institutional-level capital entering in a contrarian manner. Meanwhile, large traders, including Huang Licheng and Strategy counterparties, began rebuilding or adding to ZEC long positions after experiencing earlier losses. A whale marked as “ZEC’s largest short” also partially took profits on its short positions after gains, indicating high short exposure is easing. Large addresses increased their holdings by nearly 13% over the past week, totaling about 9,962 ZEC. This shift in large transactions reflects a new consensus on ZEC’s medium-term value.

Long-term Narrative Support in the Privacy Sector

ZEC’s rebound is not an isolated event but part of the overall warming of the privacy coin sector. Although Monero (XMR) recently performed even better, reaching a new high of $608 with a 56% annual increase, this did not lead to a withdrawal of funds from the privacy sector but rather an internal rotation. The total market cap of privacy coins has surpassed $24 billion, with trading share increasing from 9.7% to 11.4%. Industry experts generally believe that privacy will become a key differentiator in blockchain competition by 2026, with many infrastructure teams reconstructing privacy capabilities as a default layer rather than optional features. Against the backdrop of ongoing global regulation and on-chain surveillance, demand for on-chain anonymity and transaction privacy is rising.

Technical Indicators Show Rebound Momentum Still Exists

From a technical perspective, ZEC’s rebound still has room to grow. The MACD indicator is approaching a golden cross, with the bearish histogram converging significantly, indicating diminishing downward momentum. Since rebounding from the $363 level, ZEC has formed higher lows, with a short-term rebound of about 13%. The $403 level has been validated as short-term support, and $443 as a key resistance. The highest intraday price reached $481.40, with a low of $364.32, showing significant volatility. This amplitude creates conditions for subsequent breakthroughs.

Summary

ZEC’s rebound is driven by multiple positive factors: regulatory certainty, technical continuity, market sentiment shifts, and long-term value support from the privacy sector. From the crash in early January to the current rebound, the market has transitioned from panic to strategic positioning. Although ZEC still needs to break through the $443 resistance to confirm an upward trend, the current market structure and on-chain activity indicate that participants have formed a new long-term outlook on privacy coins. The key will be whether the sector can maintain enthusiasm in its long-term narrative and avoid further governance-related negative shocks.