Hi investors, let's widly speculate about the future of ZCash.

Zcash.

First let me preface this by saying that I am currently in a ZCash long-term swing trade and that I am a fervent supporter of privacy coins in general... except for Verge which, in my humble opinion, is a despicable project. Also I've taken the liberty to recycle part of my old ZCAsh-in-a-nutshell post for this article.

With that out of the way, watch me speculate about why I think ZCash will be the next coin to be listed on Coinbase.

Accumulation.

ZCash has been accumulating since the beginning of the year and is still very much trading at the bottom of its range against BTC. The price action very much reminds me of Ripple before it went completely nuts last year. the XRP market was then one of the most boring to trade and the project was frequently trolled by the crypto community. Then the market started moving... and the rest is history.

Distribution.

ZCash is listed on over 40 exchanges in 100 trading pairs including multiple fiat currencies:

Its trading volume currently clocks just shy of 200B USD despite the fact that the coin has a ridiculously low circulating supply as only under 4m ZEC coins have been mined thus far.

Technology.

Unlike Bitcoin, ZEC is private which mean that transactions on the ZEC network can be verified by miners and committed to the blockchain "without requiring users to reveal any details about their identities, the transaction value or any other metadata".

Privacy is made possible through a cutting-edge cryptographic technique know as zk-SNARKs implemented on the block-chain by what is arguably one of the best team of cryptographers in the world.

Basically, zk-SNARKs allow for 4 types of transactions to take place on the network:

But why is privacy of transactions so important?

Being able to privately transact and maintain balances is important because it allows ZEC to be a fully fungible cryptocurrency.

Fungibility is an essential characteristic for cryptoassets assuming a financial function like money. Fungibility is this idea that any unit of exchange is as good as any other regardless of how it was used in the past: think for example of 2 dollar notes of the same value and how, barring very specific cases, each of them is indistinguishable from the other, can be credited to your bank account for the same amount and can be redeemed for an equal value of goods and services.

Just like dollars, ZCash coins are equally interchangeable because zk-snark cryptography unlinks each coin from its public history on the blockchain so that one unit is as good as any other unit.

In Bitcoin on the other hand, individual coins do have a public blockchain history which can lead them to be "earmarked" and possibly blacklisted from exchanges or merchants, effectively akin to being frozen and unusable. Bitcoin thus lacks fungibility and could, in the long run, perform very poorly as money.

To sum up, privacy is a big deal for a cryptocurrency because it allows it to behave like real money.

Backing.

ZCash has a long standing technology partnership with JP Morgan Chase and its own investment trust sponsored by Barry Silbert's Grayscale Investment LLC. The trust was launched in November 9, 2017 and accompanied by a very comprehensive investment thesis.

In this thesis, Grayscale argues that ZEC will be sold to investors as a private, decentralized alternative to private Swiss bank accounts to hedge off-shore investments. In the thesis (which we recommend you read) Grayscale goes into great details to explain the advantages ZEC possess over traditional off-shore solutions and how the value of the coins could accrue in case this strategy proved successful.

Although these price projections should be taken with a grain of salt, they make for a compelling case for investing in ZCash.

To add to this "Swiss bank account in your pocket" narrative, the Zero-Coin Electric company (the company behind Zcash) also announced in January 2018 the coming release of its Sapling upgrade which will allow for dramatic performance improvements on the network and the possibility to send shielded transactions from a mobile phone.

Compliance.

I believe there is no major legal barrier to listing ZCash on Coinbase. First, ZCash recently got added to Gemini which beside Coinbase is the most regulated cryptocurrency exchange in the USA. Prior to that the coin was also added to Goldman-backed Circle, which directly competes with Coinbase for the compliant sell of cryptocurrencies in the USA.

Finally, ZCash wasn't spawned from an ICO and its selective privacy technology allows it to protect the privacy of its users while retain compliance with regards to privacy protecting laws like the GDPR and anti-money laundering laws unlike completely private cryptocurrencies like Monero which is private by default.

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To summarize, my thesis is that ZCash is a sleeping giant that has been quietly accumulated by smart money for a while and is primed for a Coinbase listing for all the reasons I have listed above

So, what is your take investors? Are these just the ramblings of a degenerate madman or is the picture I've painted compelling enough to warrant entertaining the thoughts of a Coinbase listing?

I'd love to hear your thoughts.