Cypherpunk Expands Zcash Bet With $33M Mining Deal

Cypherpunk Technologies is expanding its footprint in the Zcash ecosystem, launching what it says is the world’s largest Zcash mining operation after acquiring a mining fleet from Winklevoss Capital, signaling growing institutional interest in the privacy-focused network.

Cypherpunk said Tuesday that it acquired the fleet through an equity-based transaction valued at $33.33 million. The mining operation is already online at facilities across the United States, producing roughly 4.2 GSol/s, or about 18% of the Zcash network’s current hashrate.

If the company’s figures are accurate, the transaction gives a single publicly traded company a significant share of Zcash’s mining capacity.

The expansion adds mining to Cypherpunk’s existing Zcash holdings, which currently stand at 323,394 ZEC, representing about 1.9% of the cryptocurrency’s circulating supply. The company has set a target of eventually holding 5% of the ZEC supply.

Cypherpunk has pitched Zcash mining as offering more attractive economics than Bitcoin mining or AI data center workloads at current market conditions. However, those economics depend heavily on factors including ZEC’s price, network hashrate, mining difficulty and operating costs.

The push follows a sharp rise in ZEC during the second half of 2025, when renewed interest in privacy-focused cryptocurrencies helped propel the asset higher. The rally brought greater attention to Zcash and other privacy-preserving technologies after years of comparatively muted market interest.

Despite its correction, Zcash (ZEC) is up more than 1,300% over the past 12 months. Source: CoinMarketCap

Related: Zcash’s Ironwood upgrade faces possible delay over infrastructure readiness

Ironwood upgrade addresses risk in Zcash shielded pool

The Zcash network underwent its Ironwood upgrade on July 28, introducing a new shielded transaction protocol to replace the Orchard pool and improve the network’s security architecture.

The upgrade followed the discovery of a flaw affecting Orchard that, under certain conditions, could have allowed an attacker to create counterfeit ZEC within the shielded pool without immediate detection.

While there was no evidence the vulnerability had been exploited, the potential for undetected ZEC creation posed a risk to the integrity of the cryptocurrency’s supply and highlighted the security challenges associated with privacy-preserving transactions.

Related: Crypto Biz: The cost of stacking sats