Here’s Why Zcash (ZEC) Has Surged Over 30% in the Past 24 hours

Zcash (ZEC), a privacy-centered altcoin has surged over 30% in the past 24-hours, rising from a daily low of $154 to $188. The sudden spike in price in the altcoin at a time when the majority of the market is still recovering from last week’s correction is being attributed to the major mining consensus upgrade and to some extent Barry Silbert, the CEO of the Digital Currency Group which is the parent company of world’s largest digital asset manager Grayscale.

Electric Coin Company, the development company behind Zcash released a new roadmap yesterday with a plan to focus on developing a native wallet, integrating interoperability features, and moving from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-Of-Stake (PoS). While PoW is considered highly secure and decentralized in comparison to PoS, the recent controversy and focus around the energy consumption by the Bitcoin network has made several blockchains move towards the PoS.

While PoS claims to help with scalability and energy consumption, Bitcoin proponents believe only PoW fulfil the true sense of decentralization. Thus, the announcement caused a huge uproar on social media. Silbert only added fuel to fire by comparing it with the likes of Bitcoin given ZEC also has a limited supply of 21 million tokens.

$BTC max supply: 21 million$ZEC max supply: 21 million$ZEN max supply: 21 million

— Barry Silbert (@BarrySilbert) November 20, 2021

Silbert went on to add a follow-up tweet reflecting upon the negative comments that his last tweet got, and said since people are hating on ZEC so much, he will buy some more.

Wow, you all hate $ZEC. I’m going to buy more

— Barry Silbert (@BarrySilbert) November 20, 2021

Can Major Upgrades on ZEC Help it Climb Out of Price Slumber?

ZEC might have spiked sharply in the wake of the new development roadmap, but it is still very far from its all-time-high above $5,000. The privacy coin is currently trading at $178.94 and hasn’t crossed the $1,000 mark in five years. While the majority of the cryptocurrencies have set new ATHs breaking the 2017 bull run high, ZEC seems to be in a long price slumber.

The move to PoS has helped Ethereum to rise to new highs, and ZEC proponents believe the major upgrade plan for the upcoming three years would help the privacy coin further.