Arthur Hayes' Warning to Zcash Investors About Privacy

In recent days, the price of Zcash (ZEC) has shown significant fluctuations, prompting Arthur Hayes, the founder of BitMEX, to warn investors. Hayes called on investors to withdraw their ZEC assets from exchange accounts and store them privately.

Especially, ZEC, which dropped to $653, experienced a rapid rise to $723 over the following weekend. However, in the days that followed, after this surge, it fell back to $504, closing the day again at $677. These tumultuous price movements indicate that ZEC has lost %37 of its value in just three days.

Hayes shared a striking message about Zcash's shield feature on his social media account: “If you are holding ZEC assets on an exchange, withdraw them to your own wallet and shield them.” This recommendation stands out as an important step in preserving Zcash's privacy-focused structure.

Zcash offers a unique structure that supports both transparent (t-address) and private (z-address) transactions. However, centralized exchanges typically only allow transactions with transparent addresses, making the transactions traceable. This situation raises criticisms that ZECs held on exchanges lose their privacy feature.

Hayes emphasized that keeping one's assets in private wallets not only protects privacy but also serves as a safeguard against regulatory risks and potential exchange bankruptcies. The current market value of Zcash is around $7.4 billion and has shown an approximately %5 increase on a weekly basis.

Among other privacy-focused projects, Monero (XMR) continues its rise with a $7 billion value. However, other projects like Dash (DASH), Decred (DCR), and ZKsync (ZK) have observed value losses ranging from %13 to %42 in the past week. Hayes' statements indicate that interest in privacy coins may rise again and that investors are adopting the “own your keys” mentality.