Arthur Hayes Says Zcash Is His Largest Crypto Position Outside Bitcoin

Arthur Hayes has put Zcash at the center of his crypto thesis, saying in an interview with Unchained founder Laura Shin that ZEC is now “probably my largest position outside of Bitcoin.” The BitMEX co-founder framed the trade as a bet on rising demand for financial privacy as AI, Big Tech and governments make public-chain activity easier to analyze.

Hayes said he views Zcash as the strongest privacy asset in crypto, while acknowledging that the debate between Zcash, Monero and other privacy coins remains unsettled. “I think Zcash is the best,” Hayes said. He added that he is “not a cryptographer,” but said his view was shaped by reading competing arguments and speaking with developers working directly on privacy systems.

That, in Hayes’ view, creates room for a separate privacy asset to accrue value alongside Bitcoin rather than inside it. He described Zcash and Monero as trading at very low relative values versus BTC and called the setup asymmetric if privacy demand becomes more obvious to investors. The catalyst, as he sees it, is not merely regulatory pressure or user preference, but the exponential improvement of AI systems that can link activity across public data sets.

Arthur on why the Zcash and NEAR integration is the quietly building mechanism that flips NEAR from inflationary to deflationary

That framing links Zcash and NEAR under a broader privacy-and-utility thesis. Zcash represents Hayes’ preferred pure-play privacy exposure, while NEAR appears to be the next asset he wants to connect to that theme through intent-based execution and potential protocol-level cash flow. He argued that such a setup could help reverse NEAR’s weak token performance and potentially push it back toward older cycle highs.

For Zcash, Hayes’ case is more direct. He said privacy is likely to become more valuable as public blockchains become easier to interrogate with increasingly capable AI systems. “People want that privacy,” he said. “And there will be a private alternative.”

At press time, Zcash traded at $541.75.