Arthur Hayes put Zcash at the center of his cryptocurrency thesis, saying in an interview with Unchained founder Laura Shin that ZEC is now “probably my biggest position outside of Bitcoin.” The BitMEX co-founder framed the trade as a bet on the growing demand for financial privacy as artificial intelligence, big tech companies and governments make public chain activity easier to analyze.
Hayes said he considers Zcash the strongest privacy asset in the cryptocurrency space, while acknowledging that the debate between Zcash and 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 who work directly on privacy systems.
His argument was not that Bitcoin should become completely private. Bitcoin, Hayes said Transparent ledger It still has the benefits of accountability, but argued that transparency comes with an increased trade-off as monitoring tools improve. “With AI, big tech and big government, it’s become very easy to de-anonymize transactions,” he said.
Related reading
This, in Hayes’ view, creates room for separate privacy assets to accumulate value alongside Bitcoin rather than within it. He described Zcash and Monero as trading at very low relative values against BTC, and described the setup as asymmetric if the demand for privacy becomes clearer for investors. The incentive, he sees, is not just regulatory pressure or user preference, but the vast improvement of AI systems that can correlate activity across public data sets.
Arthur on why the Zcash and NEAR integration is the quiet building mechanism that flips NEAR from inflation to deflation
“Shielded Zcash allows you to swap and send any currency, USDT on Tron, Bitcoin, whatever, and that transaction will not refer to you. Absolutely… https://t.co/AOWKNsDRbc pic.twitter.com/tytoAgM5q0
-Laura Shen (@lorashen) May 12, 2026
Hayes links Zcash to NEAR in the latest article
Hayes expanded on this thesis in his recent Crypto Trader Digest article, “The Butterfly Touch,” dated May 11 on his Substack site. In the article, Hayes argued Rising dollar and yuan liquidity, driven by AI infrastructure spending, geopolitical strife and renewed credit, has reopened the risk window for cryptocurrency markets. He said bitcoin bottomed at $60,000 earlier this year, and argued that a return to $126,000 is a “foreigned conclusion” if fiat liquidity continues to expand.
Related reading
The altcoins section of the article was more clear. “It’s time for bullshit coins,” Hayes wrote, saying Hyperliquid and Zcash are already large enough positions for Maelstrom, while NEAR is the “next favorite” trade. He said his next article would explain why the “privacy narrative” was incorporated. Close intentions It can create a “positive cash flow situation” for the protocol.
This framework links Zcash and NEAR within a broader thesis of privacy and utility. Zcash represents Hayes’ preferred exposure to pure privacy, while NEAR appears to be the next asset he wants to tie into this theme through intent-based execution and potential protocol-level cash flow. Such a setup could help reverse the NEAR token’s weak performance and perhaps push it back towards old cycle highs, he said.
For Zcash, Hayes’ case is more straightforward. Privacy is likely to become more valuable as it becomes easier to interrogate public blockchains using increasingly capable AI systems, he said. “People want that privacy,” he said. “And there will be a special alternative.”
At press time, Zcash was trading at $541.75.
Featured image created with DALL.E, a chart from TradingView.com
