Grayscale Moves Toward First Spot ETF for a Privacy Coin as Zcash Gains Institutional Attention

Grayscale is taking another swing at turning a crypto trust into a listed exchange-traded fund, this time with Zcash. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the asset manager said it wants to convert its Zcash Trust into a spot ETF and, if the registration becomes effective and the shares are listed on NYSE Arca, rename it the Grayscale Zcash Trust ETF. The filing says the trust is designed to hold ZEC and track the coin’s market price, less fees and expenses. It also spells out one of the biggest reasons Zcash keeps drawing attention: unlike Bitcoin’s fully transparent ledger, Zcash offers selective privacy-preserving features built on cryptographic protocols.

If approved, the product would be a notable first for the U.S. market. CoinDesk and The Block both reported that Grayscale’s move would create the first spot ETF tied to a privacy-focused cryptocurrency, a category that has long faced more skepticism from regulators and exchanges than mainstream digital assets like Bitcoin or Ethereum. The filing does not guarantee approval, of course, but it shows how far the conversation has shifted since the early days of crypto ETFs, when even Bitcoin spot products faced years of resistance.

Privacy Coin Exposure

The timing matters. In January, the Zcash Foundation said the SEC had concluded its review and did not intend to recommend enforcement action or other changes against the organization. That development removed a major legal cloud hanging over the privacy coin and gave the project a cleaner regulatory backdrop just as institutional interest began to build again. While that SEC outcome was specific to the Zcash Foundation and not a blanket endorsement of Zcash itself, it clearly eased one of the biggest overhangs surrounding the asset.

The renewed attention was reinforced this week by Tushar Jain, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, who said in a post on X that the firm had built a significant ZEC position since February. Jain described Zcash as a return to the cypherpunk ideals that helped inspire crypto in the first place, framing the trade as a macro hedge rather than a short-term speculation. That is not a small signal coming from a fund known for making concentrated, thesis-driven bets in the digital asset space.

Taken together, the filing, the SEC’s decision not to pursue enforcement against the Zcash Foundation, and Multicoin’s disclosed position point to a broader change in how privacy coins are being viewed. For years, privacy-focused tokens were often treated as regulatory outliers, with exchanges, institutions, and policymakers wary of anything that could be linked to anonymity or compliance risk. Zcash, however, has increasingly been discussed not as a niche experiment but as a technical answer to a growing demand for financial privacy in an age of constant surveillance and data collection. Grayscale’s move suggests it believes that demand is now strong enough to support a mainstream investment product.

Still, there is a long way to go before investors can buy a Zcash spot ETF on a major U.S. exchange. The SEC must review the filing, and the agency has not yet approved a privacy coin ETF. But even without approval in hand, the message from the market is becoming harder to ignore: privacy is no longer being pushed to the margins of crypto. It is starting to look like a theme institutions are willing to take seriously.