The price of Zcash, the top privacy crypto by value, sank over 20% on Thursday after the entire development team seemingly quit.
Josh Swihart, formerly the head of the Electric Coin Company, the firm behind Zcash, said on X that the team “left after being constructively discharged.”
“In short, the terms of our employment were changed in ways that made it impossible for us to perform our duties effectively and with integrity,” he said.
Swihart said members of a non-profit board overseeing the Electric Coin Company “moved into clear misalignment with the mission of Zcash.”
The Electric Coin Company didn’t immediately return requests for comment.
Top performer
The dip seemingly punctures Zcash‘s momentum, which saw it rally 1,900% in 2025 to peak at $700, making it one of the top performers of last year. It currently trades at $406.
Zcash had been named as a top privacy project by leading institutions including Coinbase, Andreessen Horowitz, and Galaxy Digital as well as influential investors like Arthur Hayes.
The demand for privacy tokens will skyrocket, as “a growing global awareness of digital surveillance and data exploitation has raised the profile of privacy-first payment solutions,” Coinbase investment research head David Duong said in the firm’s 2026 outlook report.
And Wall Street backed that sentiment.
Cypherpunk, the crypto treasury company backed by twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and launched in November, deployed over $50 million into Zcash.
Grayscale filed for an exchange-traded fund backed by Zcash in November.
A slew of analysts told DL News last year they expect strong performance for the privacy coin, with some projecting a price of $1,000.
The Zcash team is now plotting a new course.
“We’re founding a new company, but we’re still the same team with the same mission: building unstoppable private money,” Swihart said.
To be sure, Swihart stressed that Zcash would be “unaffected” despite the price tanking.
“This decision is simply about protecting our team’s work from malicious governance actions that have made it impossible to honor ECC’s original mission.”
