Zcash Co-Founder Stakes His $5,000 Year-End Bet

Zcash co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson says he still feels on track for ZEC above $5,000 by Dec. 31, after an earlier $1,200 call already cleared.

ZecStats had ZEC trading at $1,531.33 on Sept. 26. Reaching his number from that print still takes a 3.27 times jump, and he says he cannot explain the tape that got him here.

Ben-Sasson Already Banked the $1,200 Call

Ben-Sasson, who co-wrote the Zerocash paper and now runs StarkWare, put both tickets on the same Sept. 9 post. He said he had already been right that ZEC would trade above $1,200 by Sept. 25, then raised the next mark in public.

Putting money where Mouth: I predicted that ZEC > $1200 by Sept. 25. Result: I was right. Now, time for EoY prediction: ZEC > $5000. Let’s see if I’m right again. (I’m not in it for the 27X reward, I just like being right) Not investment advice, DYOR.

Eli Ben-Sasson, Zcash co-founder, on X, Sept. 9, 2026

The first checkpoint was not a stretch by the day he posted it. ZEC had already pushed through $1,200 before Sept. 25 arrived, which is why he could stamp “right” on the same morning he floated $5,000. The second number is the wager that still sits open.

THE TWO PUBLIC CALLS

1. Sept. 9, 2026: Posts that the $1,200-by-Sept. 25 call has hit and sets ZEC above $5,000 by year-end.
2. Sept. 24, 2026: Says he feels on track for that $5,000 print, then asks whales, and everyone else, why the surge is happening.
3. Sept. 24, 2026: Grayscale posts that ZCSH, the U.S. Zcash fund, has reached $1 billion in assets.
4. Sept. 25, 2026: Grayscale says it has filed for The ZCSH High Income ETF.
5. Sept. 26, 2026: ZEC prints $1,531.33; ZCSH sits at $995.68 million.

He keeps repeating that none of this is investment advice. The market is treating the posts as a price path anyway, because the first date already paid.

The $5,000 Target Still Needs a 3.27 Times Jump

From $1,531.33, $5,000 is a 226% gain, not a grind. ZecStats puts circulating supply at 16.95 million ZEC of a 21 million cap, so that target implies about $84.8 billion of market value, or $105 billion if the full cap is used. The token already ranks ninth, with a $26.06 billion cap on Sept. 26.

The recent run is real. ZEC is up 89.1% over 30 days, 306.8% over 90 days, and 191.1% year to date, with a 24-hour range of $1,518.32 to $1,622.95 and about $1.14 billion changing hands. August closed at $848.10. The 2026 high sits near $1,649. That still leaves most of the $5,000 ticket unearned.

THE MULTIPLE STILL LEFT ON THE TABLE

A listed options market on ZCSH now sits on top of that same jump. If ZEC did go to $5,000, the December calls on the fund would reprice in a straight line with the coin, which is why the $5,000 figure is being used as a strike story as much as a protocol story.

Grayscale’s $1 Billion Is Mostly Mark-to-Market

The institutional wrapper is the other half of the bet. Grayscale converted its old Zcash Trust into The Zcash ETF, ticker ZCSH, and began trading on NYSE Arca on Aug. 25. ETF Llama records $313.53 million of assets that day. On Sept. 8, a Grayscale exhibit to the SEC said assets had grown to more than $500 million, coinciding with options on the fund, and that the jump included DCG’s $100 million in-kind subscription of 85,705.32563297 ZEC.

The latest AUM milestone includes ZCSH seeing cumulative inflows of more than $70 million in the two weeks since launching as an ETP, in addition to the Investor’s $100 million investment.

Steve Vanourny, Head of Index, Grayscale, Sept. 8, 2026 SEC exhibit

DCG International Investments is a wholly owned indirect subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, the indirect parent of Grayscale Investments Sponsors. The $100 million was an affiliate moving coins into shares, not a new outside buyer walking in off the street. Flow trackers later put cumulative net inflows at $306.12 million, so even the full inflow total is about 31% of the $1.00 billion asset print. The rest is the coin going up.

ZCSH IN FOUR FIGURES

• Sept. 25 assets: $1.00 billion, the print Grayscale celebrated as a milestone.
• Sept. 26 assets: ZCSH assets at $995.68 million, with the share price at $123.47 and NAV at $123.54.
• Share count and fee: 8.06 million shares outstanding, and a 2.50% expense ratio.
• Thirty-day move: the fund itself is up 96.05% over 30 days, in line with ZEC’s tape.

Grayscale said the quiet part on its own account the evening of Sept. 24.

$1B in AUM.

The world's first Zcash fund $ZCSH just hit a new milestone.

Grayscale is committed to providing investors with exposure to the assets defining the next era of digital finance. $ZEC is one of them. pic.twitter.com/AKxxNAA2gJ

— Grayscale (@Grayscale) September 24, 2026

The exhibit is blunt about what the product is not. ZCSH is not a 1940 Act fund, an investment in the shares is not a direct holding of ZEC, and the sponsor says a buyer should be able to lose the entire stake. Coinbase Custody is named in later product summaries as the keeper of the coins. On Sept. 25 Grayscale added another wrapper, posting that it had filed for The ZCSH High Income ETF, a product that is not live.

What Europe’s First Zcash ETP Holds

Two days before Ben-Sasson’s “on track” post, Europe got its own wrapper. 21Shares listed the physically backed 21shares Zcash ETP on Euronext Paris and Euronext Amsterdam on Sept. 22, with an inception date of Sept. 21. The ticker is ZCASH and the ISIN is CH1608218801. It is a small fund. That is the point.

THE EUROPEAN WRAPPER

• Assets: $103,594.57, with 5,000 securities outstanding and a NAV of $20.71 a unit.
• Fee: 2.50% a year, the same headline rate as ZCSH, and far above typical bitcoin products on those venues.
• Backing: physical ZEC held with institutional custodians, BitGo named on the current product page, and authorized participants Flow Traders and Virtu Financial Ireland.
• Start size: 0.013154347 ZEC per product at inception, per the final terms.

At $103,594.57, the European product is a listing, not a bid. It gives brokerage accounts a way to hold ZEC without keys, and it does it at a fee that prices privacy as a niche. If Ben-Sasson’s $5,000 path needs a second wave of regulated demand, this vehicle has not supplied it yet.

Whales Keep Asking, and He Has No Answer

On Sept. 24 he quoted his own $5,000 ticket and declined to dress it up as a model. Whales were asking him why the coin was rising. He said he had no idea, then turned the question around.

Why do I feel on track to my $5K EoY prediction? More and more whales asking me: Why price surge? Me: No fucking clue. What’s your explanation? Not investment advice, DYOR.

Eli Ben-Sasson, Zcash co-founder, on X, Sept. 24, 2026

Why do I feel on track to my $5K EoY zcash:native prediction?

More and more whales asking me: Why price surge?

Me: No fucking clue.

What's your explanation?

Not investment advice, DYOR. https://t.co/E7J6YzYq4M

— Eli Ben-Sasson | Starknet.io (@EliBenSasson) September 24, 2026

That honesty cuts both ways. It keeps him from pretending the last 90 days were a forecast he timed. It also means the $5,000 call is a stance, not a map. A week earlier he had offered a structural guess that part of the rise came from a fear that Bitcoin had become too ossified, a line he said Bitcoin holders would dislike. On Sept. 21 he added a separate market call, that ZEC flips SOL before SOL flips ETH. None of those posts is a supply-and-demand sheet for December.

The same week he cheered a plan that would put Zcash-style privacy on Bitcoin itself. Alloc Init published the Shielded Bitcoin paper from Alloc Init on Sept. 24, with authors Misha Komarov, Aleksei Moskvin, and Clara Shikhelma. Ben-Sasson said he had not read it, then wrote that the original Zerocash intent was to bring privacy to Bitcoin and that he would love to see that vision land on Bitcoin’s base layer. If that design works, ZEC’s scarcity story has to compete with private transfers on the larger chain, not only with transparent bitcoin.

The objection that follows him is older than this rally. Zcash launched with a founding company, a founder’s reward, and years of subsidized development, and critics still call that a marketed coin rather than a grassroots monetary good. Shielded supply is no longer a rounding error, ZecStats puts 28.9% of coins, about $7.50 billion, in shielded pools, but the brokerage products hold transparent exposure. Buyers of ZCSH and ZCASH get price, not privacy.

A $5,000 Print Would Clear the 2016 Record

ZecStats records the all-time high at $3,191.93 on Oct. 28, 2016, 3,619 days before the Sept. 26 print, with the coin 51.8% below that peak. Launch week printed even higher four-digit prices against a few thousand coins, which is why some tapes still show a $5,941 figure that describes scarcity, not a deep market. Against the $3,191.93 record, $5,000 is a new high. Against the launch-window prints, it is still a catch-up.

The other bound is the July 4, 2024 low of $16.08. A year of tape turned that into a 2,621.4% gain, which is the base the $5,000 call is standing on. Emission is still running at 1,800 ZEC a day toward the 21 million cap, with 80.7% already issued. None of that math forces a December print. It only shows how far the coin has already traveled to make a co-founder’s second ticket sound almost ordinary.

ZCSH tagged $1 billion, then slipped to $995.68 million. Europe’s ETP holds $103,594.57. Ben-Sasson has a $1,200 call in the win column and a $5,000 call that still needs 3.27 times from $1,531.33 by Dec. 31. He has asked the market for an explanation. The year-end close is the only date left on the ticket.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of public market prices, listed fund figures, and statements by named people. It is informational only and is not investment advice, a solicitation, or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold ZEC, ZCSH, ZCASH, or any other digital asset or fund. Cryptocurrency and crypto exchange-traded products can lose all of their value, and readers should consult a licensed financial adviser who understands digital-asset risk before acting. Figures and product statuses reflect the cited pages and posts as of Sept. 26, 2026 and can change with the next session.