How to Buy ZEC (ZEC)

While it is impossible to offer an accurate Zcash price prediction over any duration, several fundamentals could support a pick-up in the ZEC price in the future. The rising adoption of cryptocurrency as a payment method, the announcement of more partnerships, and more innovation could be the key driving factors of an uptrend in the Zcash value.

However, for the ZEC price to touch the critical level of $1,000 remains challenging owing to many factors. As of July 2022, the Zcash to USD holds close to $55, far lower than this target. A climb to $1000 would be a significant jump.

However, taking a look at the Zcash price history and past performance, we see that the ZEC coin has traded at an all-time high well above this level in the past, in October 2016. Considering this level has been breached in the past, strong support from fundamentals and positive market sentiment could likely take the ZEC price back above $1000 sometime in the future.

Zcash is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency that uses zk-SNARKs to encrypt transaction details, including information about the sender, amount, and recipient. However, this feature works only for transactions that involve shielded addresses - an additional feature users need to add on and unavailable by default within the network.

The use of shielded addresses gives such users the power to reveal details about transactions and make them traceable. Such an option can be exercised when sharing transaction data for audit or regulatory compliance.

In addition, the Zcash network does not encrypt multisig data, which means that transactions made when trading ZEC against other cryptocurrencies cannot be encrypted. Such transparent addresses and IP addresses can be traced.

Both Zcash and Monero are privacy-focused cryptocurrencies but have some key differences. Let’s look at some of the reasons why Zcash is better than Monero:

Flexible Anonymity

While Monero transactions are always anonymous, Zcash gives you more flexibility. You can send a typical transaction that can be traced or monitored, or you can opt to conduct a shielded transaction where key details are masked.

Regulatory Perspective

Monero has come under scrutiny from regulators over allegations that its network is used by criminals to send anonymous payments worldwide. However, Zcash lets you divulge transaction data for regulatory or audit purposes, giving you the option to make anonymous transactions but also report them if the need arises.

Mining Difficulty

As of August 2022, the block time for the Zcash network is lower than Monero. This means it takes less time to verify transactions and produce new blocks on Zcash than on Monero. This, in turn, indicates that it takes lesser effort and time to mine ZEC coins vs. XMR coins.

Dual mining is the process of using the same mining equipment to mine two or more cryptocurrencies, in this case, GPUs for dual mining Ethereum and Zcash. Both are proof of work cryptos that can be mined through contributing computing resources for validating transactions and creating new blocks on the respective networks. However, the Ethereum network is expected to go through a merge sometime in September 2022 and transition to Proof of Stake (POS) completely.

While Ethereum mining equipment can be used to dual mine some other cryptocurrencies, Zcash is not one of them. This is because the configuration of the mining equipment differs vastly for mining Zcash vs. mining Ethereum.

Here’s how you can mine Zcash:

1. Invest in mining equipment. Zcash can be mined on an ASIC miner, which stands for Application-Specific Integrated Circuit miner.

2. Connect your mining equipment to the network and configure the mining software.

3. You can also join a mining pool to maximize the likelihood of earning rewards and mining ZEC.

4. Connect a Zcash wallet to your ASIC mining rig to let the rewards you earn accumulate in the wallet.