Zcash to Surpass XRP? Arthur Hayes Makes Bold Claim Amid ZEC’s 45% Rally

BitMEX co-founder has continued to make bullish comments on Zcash, which he recently revealed his fund’s second-largest liquid holding after Bitcoin. This time around, he has declared that ZEC is a better altcoin than XRP, indicating that the former could overtake the latter in market cap at some point.

Arthur Hayes Says ZEC Greater Than XRP

In an X post, the BitMEX co-founder said that Zcash is greater than XRP, suggesting that it could overtake XRP in market cap. Zcash is currently the 12th-largest crypto asset, with a market cap of $10 billion, while XRP has a market cap of $ 135 billion.

Meanwhile, Hayes also revealed that he had bought more ZEC amid its recent uptrend. As CoinGape reported earlier, Zcash is the second-largest liquid holding in the BitMEX founder’s fund, after Bitcoin.

Hayes has also predicted that Zcash could rally to as high as $0.2 against its BTC pair. This translates to a price of around $19,200 for the privacy coin. At $19,200, Zcash would have a market cap of $313 billion, potentially ranking as the third-largest crypto by market cap behind Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The ZEC price continues to defy the current crypto market downtrend, rallying over 16% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap data. The privacy coin broke above $700 during this period, recording gains of up to 45%.

This rally comes amid the Zcash treasury company Cypherpunk’s initial purchase. The company announced that its initial acquisition totaled 203,775 ZEC, purchased for almost $50 million at an average price of $245 per ZEC. The company now holds 1.25% of the coin’s supply.

Leading The Privacy Sector And Comparison To Solana and XRP

Research firm Delphi Digital noted that Zcash continues to hold a dominant lead in the privacy sector. With the privacy narrative gaining real adoption, ZEC is said to have captured nearly all the upside with a 10x move from its lows, while other privacy tokens lag in comparison.

The research firm cited TORN, which recently hit a new total value locked (TVL) of $1.23 billion but has underperformed the Zcash price in terms of price action. Meanwhile, Delphi Digital also compared ZEC’s popularity with that of other major altcoins.

The research firm noted that, despite the privacy coin’s rally, it still hasn’t caught the mainstream’s attention. The global search trends still show that ZEC is trailing behind Solana and XRP.