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Crypto 09 OCT 2026 · 14:50 ET

Zcash Keeps Climbing as Privacy Coin Cracks Top 10

A once-dormant privacy token is suddenly one of the hottest trades in crypto, up more than 5% in a day and sitting atop CoinGecko's gainer list among major coins.

Reporting by LoopWire
Zcash Keeps Climbing as Privacy Coin Cracks Top 10

Zcash (ZEC) traded at $1,211.37 Thursday, up 5.38% in 24 hours and now ranked the 10th-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. The move puts ZEC among trending searches alongside the broader market's gainer list, where it logged a 5.47% advance by CoinGecko's separate tracking — a modest discrepancy typical of real-time price feeds but one that underscores how fast the coin is moving. Zcash's rise comes even as the overall market cooled: total crypto market capitalization slipped 0.66% over the same period to $2.79 trillion, with Bitcoin's dominance holding at 59.2%.

The trending list told a louder story than the headline gainers. Treasure (MAGIC) rocketed 89.1% in 24 hours to $0.118, the single largest move in the dataset, while Basic Attention Token (BAT) jumped 37.4% to $0.133. Starknet (STRK) gained 26.8% to $0.073 and Derive (DRV) climbed 26.4% to $0.507. Exchange token Backpack (BP) added 22.6% to reach $1.26. None of these ranked among CoinGecko's formal top-gainers list, which was dominated instead by Bitway (BTW), up 13.1% to $1.57, and Gram, formerly Toncoin (GRAM), up 5.7% to $1.46.

On the losing side, declines were comparatively tame. Pump.fun (PUMP) fell 3.6% to $0.00533, the steepest drop among major tokens, while Ondo (ONDO) slid 2.6% to $0.474 and MemeCore (M) dropped 2.4% to $1.02. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) eased 1.7% to $274.59. BlackRock's tokenized fund BUIDL, as expected for a dollar-pegged instrument, held flat at $1.00.

Elsewhere in trending markets, Sui (SUI) rose 3.6% to $1.06, Jupiter (JUP) gained 8.1% to $0.375, and Pudgy Penguins (PENGU) added 3.3% to $0.0081. On the extreme end, Quantus (QTC), a low-ranked token outside the top 600, plunged 27.6% to $118.45 — the day's sharpest decline anywhere in the dataset, though its small market-cap ranking limits its broader significance.

Total 24-hour trading volume across crypto markets came in at $80.4 billion, with 22,118 active cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinGecko. Ethereum's market dominance stood at 10.8%, essentially unchanged, as capital rotation favored mid-cap privacy and infrastructure tokens over the two largest assets.

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