Company: ZCSH
Filing Date: 2025-03-07
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-035469
Chunk: 43

Company: Grayscale Zcash Trust (ZEC)
Filing Date: 2025-03-07
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 43
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Overview of the Trust and the Shares

Grayscale Zcash Trust (ZEC) (the “Trust”) is a Delaware Statutory Trust that was formed on October 23, 2017 by the filing of the Certificate of Trust with the Delaware Secretary of State in accordance with the provisions of the Delaware Statutory Trust Act. 

The Trust’s purpose is to hold Zcash (“ZEC”). Zcash, an alternative software implementation of Bitcoin, was created in 2016 by a group of scientists, cryptographers, and engineers. Although Zcash is similar to Bitcoin, there are several key differences between the Zcash Network and the Bitcoin Network. The fundamental difference between Bitcoin and Zcash is that Zcash offers selective privacy-preserving features as described below. In addition, Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 algorithm, which is preferred for parallel processing, but is also easily used to build application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) to mine the network more efficiently. In contrast, Zcash employs the Equihash algorithm. The Equihash algorithm relies on different technology than the SHA-256 algorithm and does not require miners to have access to ASICs, which is expensive, and therefore results in less centralized mining hash power. Zcash has a current block size of 2MB compared to 1MB on the Bitcoin Network. Zcash blocks are generated every 1.3 minutes, which is approximately 8 times faster than Bitcoin’s block production. Due to a similar monetary supply curve to Bitcoin, Zcash halvings also take place approximately every four years, occurring every 210,000 blocks. Zcash’s mining difficulty is lower than Bitcoin’s, making it easier to mine blocks and earn rewards. Additionally, Zcash and Bitcoin both have a maximum supply of 21 million coins. As of December 31, 2024, Zcash had a circulating supply of 16.3 million coins which is less than Bitcoin’s current circulating supply of 19.8 million coins. As of December 31, 2024, the 24-hour trading volume of Zcash and Bitcoin were approximately $29.4 million and $17.7 billion, respectively. As of December 31, 2024, the aggregate market value of Zcash was $916.4 million as compared to the $1,850.3 billion aggregate value of Bitcoin. As of December 31, 2024, ZEC was the 104th largest digital asset by market capitalization as tracked by CoinMarketCap.com.

The Zcash