Zcash drops 12% overnight: what happened and how it differs from past crashes

What happened

Zcash started to slide during the day on September 28, and the selling sped up overnight. The main wave hit in the three hours after midnight UTC: on Binance the price fell from $1,483 to $1,376, down 7%. The 01:00 hour saw the biggest trading volume of the day. The low was $1,356, between 04:00 and 05:00 UTC.

By morning, CoinDesk summed it up: ZEC lost 12% in 24 hours, more than any other major coin. Over the same time, bitcoin slipped less than 1%, to $83,100, and ether barely moved.

By midday, some of the losses were won back, but this was already the third day of decline in a row.

The main cause: liquidations

Many traders bought ZEC not with their own money but with leverage. The exchange adds borrowed funds to the trader's collateral, so the position ends up 5 or 10 times larger than what was put in. If the price moves against the position and the collateral is no longer enough, the exchange closes it on its own by selling the coins at market price. That is a liquidation. Every forced sale pushes the price lower, the lower price hits the next positions, and you get a cascade. None of this applies to buying with your own money: if you got ZEC through a cryptocurrency exchange and keep it in your own wallet, nobody can force-sell it.

That is exactly what happened overnight:

• $28.7 million in 12 hours. According to CoinGlass, that is how much was liquidated in ZEC positions, more than in any other coin, including ether ($15.6 million) and bitcoin ($15.1 million).
• 90% were bets on a rise. By 10:45 UTC, the 24-hour total had grown to $36.2 million, and $32.8 million of it was long positions.
• 5,258 traders. That is how many traders lost their positions. The largest single liquidation was almost $900,000. The biggest amounts were closed on Binance ($15.8 million) and Hyperliquid ($10.3 million).
• Open interest shrank. The total value of all open ZEC futures fell 7% in 24 hours, to $2.93 billion, and 14% on Hyperliquid. Leveraged traders are leaving the market: some were closed out by force, others got out on their own.

CoinDesk points to one more sign: over the day, aggressive selling of ZEC outweighed buying by a wider margin than for any other major coin.

Why now

There was no news against Zcash itself. Three things came together.

• A rise that was too fast. In early August, ZEC cost less than $500. On September 22 it climbed above $1,600 for the first time since 2016, and on September 26 it reached $1,698. Over the year, the coin went up about 20x. Vertical rallies like this lean heavily on borrowed money, and the very first pullback sets off liquidations.
• Profit-taking. After a twentyfold rise, some holders sell at least part of their coins. That explains three days of decline in a row before the overnight drop.
• Expensive money. The 10-year US Treasury yield is 5.25%, the highest since 2007. Brent crude is around $107 a barrel. On September 16, the Fed raised rates for the first time since 2023, to 3.75–4%. On days like these, the market gets rid of the riskiest assets first, and a coin that has gone up 20x is at the top of that list.

A technical event also lined up with the drop: shares of Grayscale's Zcash ETF (ticker ZCSH) are splitting 3-for-1. Anyone holding shares at the close on September 28 gets two extra shares for each one, and trading at the new price starts on September 30. The value of the investment does not change: there are three times as many shares, and each is worth a third as much. The split has nothing to do with the coin's drop.

How this differs from past crashes

Zcash has had sharp pullbacks after rallies before, and they looked much scarier.

• November 2025. After peaking at $750 on November 7, ZEC lost 41% in four days and 59% by December 2.
• June 2026. The coin lost more than half its price, falling from about $630 to $250. That time there was real bad news: a critical vulnerability was found in the Orchard shielded pool, and investor Arthur Hayes sold his entire position. Liquidations topped $116 million in a day.
• September 10, 2026. Down 13% in a day, and after that the rise went on to a new high.

This pullback came with no protocol news and no high-profile selling. By every sign, the market is simply shedding excess leverage. Nobody knows what the price will do next, and we don't make forecasts. But ZEC's history shows that after a vertical rise, days like this are the norm, not the exception.

What's going on with Zcash itself

• The NU7 upgrade is on schedule. Under the plan developer Sean Bowe posted on the Zcash forum on September 17, the code will be ready by September 30, the testnet will launch on October 6, the mainnet decision is due on October 20, and activation is tentatively set for November 5. Among other changes, blocks will come every 25 seconds instead of the current 75.
• Nodes are updated. On September 24, the Zcash Foundation released Zebra 6.4.0 and 6.4.1, versions of its node software that fix three vulnerabilities.
• Shielded addresses. Shielded pools hold 4.89 million ZEC, or 28.8% of all coins. The sender, receiver and amount of these transfers are hidden. For more, see our guide on how Zcash privacy works and how it compares to Monero.
• The ETF is growing. The Zcash ETF has traded on NYSE Arca since August 25, and Grayscale calls it the world's first exchange-traded product on ZEC. On September 8, DCG put about $100 million worth of coins into the fund, and by September 24 the fund's assets had reached $1 billion, according to SoSoValue.

By market cap, ZEC now ranks ninth among all cryptocurrencies.

Monero and other privacy coins

The sector went different ways that day. Monero rose 2% to $541, while Dash lost 5.7% to $61. At the same time, Zcash's market cap is almost two and a half times Monero's: $24 billion versus $10 billion. We looked at why privacy coins tripled in six months and who is buying them when ZEC had just broken above $1,600 on a wave of interest in privacy.

What this means for ZEC holders

Coins in your own wallet can't be liquidated. If the price falls, you still have exactly as many coins as before. Liquidation only threatens leveraged positions on an exchange: there, you can lose your whole collateral in one night.

If you decide to act, you don't need an exchange account: on VertEXchange you can take any of these steps with no sign-up, email or phone number.

• Buy more. If you've been waiting for a pullback, you can buy Zcash with Bitcoin or with USDT, and the coins go straight to your address.
• Lock in the value. If you'd rather wait it out, you can convert ZEC to USDT TRC20 and come back when the market calms down.
• Split your privacy across two coins. Take part of your holdings and swap ZEC for Monero: XMR was rising that day.

This is not investment advice: the decision is yours, we only show the options.

Dates to watch

• September 30: ZCSH shares start trading after the split. At 12:30 UTC, the US releases its August PCE index, the Fed's main inflation gauge.
• October 6: NU7 testnet launch.
• October 20: decision on launching NU7 on mainnet.
• November 5: tentative NU7 activation date.