Zcash (ZEC) has climbed from about $40 in early September to roughly $750, a 1,700% jump that few saw coming. Such explosive moves are usually seen in meme coins, not privacy-focused projects from the mid-2010s. So what exactly is happening with Zcash?
Even more intriguingly, recent discussions in the crypto community have linked Zcash not only to Bitcoin (BTC) but also to Satoshi Nakamoto himself.
Zcash Correction Following Founder Rumors
On Nov. 8, Zcash price suddenly dropped from about $720 to $513, a nearly 30% decline. While that pullback is modest compared to the coin’s seventeenfold rise, it coincided with social media controversy surrounding one of the project’s early developers.
A rumor began circulating on X (formerly Twitter) claiming that the Zcash founder was a transgender person. The viral post included an old interview clip, which quickly drew mixed reactions and, in some cases, transphobic comments.
It was later revealed that the person in the video was not Zcash founder but Daira-Emma Hopwood, a cryptographer and longtime Zcash developer. The interview, originally published in August 2024, resurfaced amid the project’s sudden rise in popularity.
The Satoshi Connection
The controversy took an unexpected turn when users pointed out that Daira-Emma Hopwood might have ties to Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s mysterious creator.
Rumors connecting Hopwood to Satoshi stem from overlapping cryptographic research and early academic references. Before joining Zcash, Hopwood published several papers on privacy-enhancing techniques such as key blinding and group signatures. These same concepts appeared in Satoshi’s forum discussions around 2010, and one archived post even cited Hopwood’s academic work.