Zcash Enters Top 10 Cryptocurrencies By Market Cap

The privacy-oriented digital currency zcash became one of the 10 largest digital currencies by market capitalization on 4th April, a first in its short history.

The market cap of the digital currency, launched in 2016 to utilize zero-knowledge proofs called zk-SNARKS to help ensure the privacy of users, climbed to as much as $64.7m today to reach the number nine spot on the list, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

A major factor helping to push zcash's total market value is the rising supply of the protocol's ZEC tokens, with the supply recently passing 1m ZEC at the time of the report.

While the price of ZEC tokens surged to almost $6,000 shortly after going live, the digital currency's market cap rose to only $1.9m at the time because so few ZEC tokens were traded.

Adding interest to the move is that even though many alternative asset protocols have been experiencing sharp volatility over the last several weeks, zcash prices have been reasonably stable, trading between $60 and $80 since mid-March.

Disclosure: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership in Zerocoin Electric Coin Company, the network's founding company.

Colorful bleachers via Shutterstock