I zodl a small stack (it's a small % of my overall portfolio) but would like to give a somewhat level-headed view of the coin for anyone else interested in diversifying (obviously I have some bias to favor ZEC, as does everyone who holds any coin in this space). Let's start with the bad first?
The bad:
- Most people don't seem to care about privacy (at least now, for the most part). In fact, most people willingly give their privacy away, every day. There's also privacy options in the future from larger coins like BTC and ETH which some would argue are "good enough" privacy. At the same time, it seems that as time goes on, privacy becomes more and more important. So this may change the view towards Zcash. Privacy topics are highly opinionated, and this is my opinion. I have a few friends that would argue that privacy is the most important thing, while others who don't feel it's important at all. We can debate this one all day.
- Bad UX/UI, limited overall usage.
- Small community (but there are diamond hand zodlers like myself that don't plan to sell any time soon, if at all).
- Late to the game/lack of network effect. First mover advantage is hugely important.
- Hugely down in BTC price and USD price from ATH. ZEC is listed as down over 92% from ATH on many exchanges, but this is misleading. Zcash's ATH was roughly $2200, but that's because when it was first released there was an extremely low supply (developers did this intentionally to reduce risk for a bug crippling the protocol. See here: https://electriccoin.co/blog/slow-start-and-mining-ecosystem/) If we use the high from 2018 instead, ZEC is actually down 75% from ATH. Still not good, but keep in mind that this is also due in large part to ZEC's high inflation (BTC was the same in it's early days). Inflation will go down over time, and as I say below, ZEC has the same limited supply as BTC.
The good:
- Economics. Zcash has a limited supply (it's supply and supply schedule is identical to Bitcoin, since it's a fork of Bitcoin), and Zcash halved in November of last year. That means it's halving was ~6 months behind BTC. We know from history that halvings put upward pressure on price. That's just laws of economics there. In a way, Zcash is 6 months "behind" BTC in terms of this upward pressure. So in my opinion, Zcash's tokenomics are quite good and very similar to BTC's. Many see BTC as a digital, better version of Gold, could Zcash be the private version of this?
- Legitimacy. Zcash has some institutional acceptance, and Zcash is far more compliant with regulators/laws than something like Monero. Everyone knows who the developers are, and they have great reputations in their field. Institutional money prefers this, not projects that have anonymous developers like Monero. Zcash has optional privacy with a view key, which in my opinion fits far better with governments than something like Monero (do note that I hold both XMR and ZEC, not knocking XMR at all). Institutional acceptance so far is through Grayscale ZEC Trust, Winklevoss twins (they've been big fans of ZEC for a while), and a few other big names like Balaji Srinivasan, Vitalik Buterin (he has said on numerous occasions that he loves the project and most recently said he believes it is valuable). These are all big players in the space, and just having their stamp of approval puts Zcash far above many other coins with higher market caps. I know there's an attitude of "F the institutions!" around here, but let's be honest, if we want to see big gains in a coin, your coin needs to be seen as legitimate in the eyes of big money. I think Zcash is one of the most legitimate projects out there, and going back to privacy, one could argue that big money values privacy more than the little guy. Therefore, they might see some value in ZEC. Even just a tiny, tiny allocation would massively increase ZEC's price.
- ZRC-20s/UDA (user defined assets) around the corner (summer 2021 through the Halo upgrade: https://electriccoin.co/blog/announcing-zip-224-bringing-halo-2-to-zcash/). Think private versions for all your favorite coins. zBTC, zETH, zUSDC, etc.
- Truly brilliant scientists and developers working on the protocol, with a defined plan for development funding over the next four years (development funding comes from a portion of the block reward).
- Gemini offers ZEC to lend out. They also just lowered their lending rate from 2.25% APY to 1.75% APY. This could be a sign that more people are lending out and less willing to short (more could be zodl'ing their ZEC, but please correct me if I'm wrong here).
- It's stood the test of time, so far.
For what it's worth, I've been investing in this space since early 2014 and have held a range of coins. Over time I have consolidated my holdings, moving away from higher risk coins. I pretty much now exclusively hold BTC, ETH, and small amounts of XMR and ZEC. No intention of ever selling any of my coins (unless I somehow become a multi-millionaire overnight lol!)
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