Grayscale has narrowed its Currencies sector down to four assets it considers genuine digital-currency use cases: Bitcoin, Litecoin, XRP and Zcash. The call, out of Grayscale Research, lands as Zcash posts the kind of year most altcoins only talk about — its market value climbed from about $4 billion in March to roughly $24.27 billion by late September.
That still puts it under 1% of Bitcoin's roughly $1.56 trillion valuation. But a year ago Zcash was sitting at about 0.1% of Bitcoin's market cap. It's now near 1.5%.
Why Zcash made the cut
The pitch is privacy. Bitcoin, XRP and Litecoin don't offer private transactions by default. Zcash does, through zero-knowledge proofs called zk-SNARKs that hide transaction amounts and wallet details from anyone watching the chain.
Usage has followed. By mid-2026, around 90% of Zcash transactions were shielded transfers, up from a base that had long been dominated by transparent ones. That shift is the number that matters — a privacy coin is only as good as the share of its users who actually turn privacy on.
Grayscale Research head Zach Pandl argues Zcash could gradually take part of Bitcoin's market share as demand for private digital payments grows. It's a notable thing to say about a coin that trades near $1,431, up almost 19-fold over the past year from roughly $60.
The long-running payment-coin problem
Litecoin and XRP have spent years pitching themselves as faster or cheaper ways to move money. Neither has seriously threatened Bitcoin's position. XRP remains one of crypto's largest assets by market cap, but that market cap is still a fraction of Bitcoin's.
The Currencies sector Grayscale is describing holds roughly 15 cryptocurrencies worth a combined $1.6 trillion. Bitcoin controls close to 90% of that total. So even a four-name shortlist is, in practice, a story about one asset and three much smaller ones.
What the Zcash numbers actually show
The move from 0.1% to 1.5% of Bitcoin's market cap in a single year is real growth, but it's growth off a very small base. Zcash's $24.27 billion valuation is still less than a tenth of what Bitcoin is worth, and Bitcoin's own share of the sector hasn't budged much.
Pandl's argument is a bet on the future, not a description of the present. If private payments become a larger slice of crypto activity, Zcash is one of the few assets already built for it. If they don't, the coin stays a niche product with a loud year.
The open question is whether shielded usage keeps climbing from that 90% mark, or whether it was a spike tied to this year's price run. Grayscale's sector breakdown doesn't answer that.
