Zcash mining activity has risen more than 2.5 times in 2026 as stronger ZEC prices have pushed estimated revenue per megawatt-hour to about four times the level generated by Bitcoin miners.

Zcash mining returns have outpaced Bitcoin per machine

Grayscale Research Director Zach Pandl said Zcash miners currently generate about $2 million in total revenue each day, compared with approximately $35 million earned across the Bitcoin network.

Bitcoin’s total remains far higher because its mining network contains much more computing power. On an individual-machine basis, however, Grayscale estimated that a Zcash miner earns about twice the daily revenue of a Bitcoin miner.

Power-based comparisons create an even larger gap. Pandl estimated that Zcash mining produces approximately four times as much revenue per megawatt-hour as Bitcoin mining. Under the assumptions used in Grayscale’s analysis, ZEC mining revenue per unit of electricity also exceeds the income offered by some artificial intelligence and high-performance computing cloud services.

Zcash uses a proof-of-work consensus system, so miners compete to process transactions and add blocks to the chain. Successful miners receive newly issued ZEC and transaction fees, making token prices, network difficulty, equipment efficiency and electricity costs central to their earnings.

Unlike Bitcoin miners, Zcash operators use equipment designed for the Equihash mining algorithm. Bitcoin relies on SHA-256 machines, which means operators cannot move the same hardware between the two networks simply because one becomes more profitable.

Grayscale’s estimates compare revenue rather than net profit. Actual earnings for any operator can vary after accounting for power rates, equipment prices, cooling, maintenance, facility costs, and mining-pool fees.

Zcash hash rate has grown more than 2.5 times

Rising ZEC prices have encouraged miners to add computing power, pushing total Zcash mining activity to more than 2.5 times its level at the beginning of the year, according to Pandl.

Hash rate measures the computing power dedicated to mining and securing a proof-of-work chain. As more machines compete, the network gains additional resources for validating blocks, while individual miners face more competition for the same block rewards.

Pandl described the increase as a reinforcing cycle in which a higher ZEC price makes mining more attractive, fresh machines raise the network’s hash rate, and added computing power strengthens the cost of attacking the chain. Grayscale believes improved security can then support investor confidence in the asset, although the cycle depends partly on ZEC retaining enough value to cover miners’ operating expenses.

The economics can change as mining participation rises. Zcash adjusts its mining difficulty to match the computing power on the network, so adding machines eventually makes each unit of hash rate less productive unless ZEC prices or transaction-fee revenue rise at the same time.

Supply issuance also affects the calculation. Zcash follows a Bitcoin-like scarcity model with a maximum supply of 21 million coins and scheduled reductions in block rewards. Lower issuance reduces the number of new tokens available to miners, requiring price gains, fee growth, or more efficient machines to offset the decline.

ZEC’s price rally has changed the mining equation

Improved mining revenue has followed a sharp rise in ZEC’s market value during 2026. On Sep. 4, the token climbed above $1,000 for the first time after gaining 20% in one session, while about $34.5 million in short positions were liquidated over 24 hours.

As crypto.news reported earlier, ZEC had advanced roughly 2,300% year over year from about $42 in September 2025. Trading volume reached $1.2 billion during the move above $1,000, while its market capitalization rose to approximately $16.8 billion.

Price gains directly affect miners because block rewards are paid in ZEC. A miner producing the same number of coins earns more in dollar terms when the token rises, even if its equipment and electricity use remain unchanged.

The rally has also made Zcash mining more sensitive to price reversals. CoinGecko data showed ZEC trading near $1,093 on Sep. 11 after falling close to 11% over 24 hours. Although the level remained far above its price a year earlier, the daily loss showed how quickly the dollar value of mining rewards can change.

Network growth may also reduce revenue per machine if additional hash rate raises mining difficulty faster than prices recover. Grayscale nonetheless considers Zcash mining attractive at its current valuation, according to Pandl, who said the new computing power continues to reinforce network security.

US investors gained ZEC access through ZCSH

American investors received a new route to Zcash exposure on Aug. 25 when Grayscale converted its existing Zcash Trust into an exchange-traded product listed on NYSE Arca under the ticker ZCSH.

The Zcash ETF launch allowed brokerage-account investors to track the value of ZEC without buying the cryptocurrency directly or operating mining equipment. Grayscale set the product’s annual sponsor fee at 2.5% and said fee revenue would support network development, marketing and other Zcash-related work.

ZCSH holds ZEC while its shares trade through the traditional securities market. Grayscale’s regulatory filings provide for authorized participants to create and redeem baskets of shares, a process intended to keep the fund’s market price close to the net asset value of its holdings.

Before the conversion, the product traded on OTCQX as the Grayscale Zcash Trust. The fund held more than $313.5 million in assets shortly before its exchange listing, while Grayscale’s earlier filings identified Coinbase Custody as custodian and BNY Mellon as administrator.

An August filing amendment also disclosed that DCG International Investments, a subsidiary of Grayscale parent Digital Currency Group, was considering an investment tied to approximately 200,000 ZEC. The discussions were nonbinding, and Grayscale said the subsidiary could purchase more shares, fewer shares or none.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission closed an investigation into the Zcash Foundation in January without recommending enforcement action. The inquiry began with an August 2023 subpoena concerning crypto asset offerings, according to the foundation.

Bitcoin has rebounded above $78,000 after U.S. consumer inflation met forecasts in August, although prediction-market traders have raised the chance of a Federal Reserve rate hike to 81%.

US CPI has held at 3.4% in August

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that the Consumer Price Index rose by a seasonally adjusted 0.4% in August after increasing 0.1% in July. Consumer prices climbed 3.4% over the preceding 12 months, unchanged from July’s annual rate.

Both figures matched the forecasts cited in the original report. Still, inflation remained above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target as officials prepared for their Sept. 15–16 policy meeting.

Energy costs accounted for much of the monthly increase. According to the BLS, the energy index advanced 2.1% in August, while gasoline prices rose 3.9% and contributed more than one-third of the increase in the headline index. Shelter costs added 0.3%, and food prices gained 0.1%.

Annual energy inflation reached 16.3%, driven partly by a 27.4% increase in gasoline prices and a 52% rise in fuel oil. Food costs were 2.7% higher than a year earlier, while the food-at-home index rose 2.2%.

Excluding food and energy, core CPI increased by 0.3% from July. The monthly reading exceeded the 0.2% forecast cited in the source report, giving policymakers another sign that underlying price pressure has not fully eased.

On an annual basis, however, core inflation slowed from 2.5% in July to 2.4% in August, its lowest reading since 2021. Shelter prices rose 3% over the year, while services excluding energy services also increased 3%.

Several components helped push core prices higher during August. The BLS recorded monthly increases of 2.7% in airfares, 2.4% in lodging away from home, and 2.3% in communication costs. Used vehicle prices gained 0.4%, while new vehicle prices rose 0.3%.

Medical care costs fell 0.2%, with dental services dropping 0.6%. Motor vehicle insurance declined 0.8%, while recreation and apparel prices were unchanged.

Bitcoin price has recovered above $78,000

Following the 8:30 a.m. Eastern release, TradingView data cited in the source report showed Bitcoin recovering from below $77,000 and moving above $78,000. The rebound followed a sell-off tied to the previous day’s hotter producer inflation reading.

Ether also returned above $2,500, while Solana reclaimed $100, according to the same TradingView data. Both levels had acted as psychological thresholds during the preceding market decline.

The CPI reaction reversed part of the weakness recorded after the August Producer Price Index came in at 5.4% annually, slightly above the 5.3% estimate cited in the source report. Crypto prices fell after the PPI release as traders increased their bets on tighter U.S. monetary policy.

Bitcoin entered the latest inflation reports under pressure from strong employment data as well. As crypto.news previously reported in September, U.S. employers added 162,000 jobs in August, far above the 56,000 forecast cited by Reuters, while unemployment held at 4.1%.

Bitcoin initially reached about $82,262 after the employment release but later fell below $80,000. The report also showed average hourly earnings rising 0.3% from July and 3.1% from a year earlier, adding wage data to the figures Fed officials must consider.

Fed funds futures placed the probability of a September increase at 61% after the jobs report, up from 52% beforehand. Two-year Treasury yields climbed five basis points to 4.38%, while the 10-year yield reached 4.776%.

Fed rate hike odds have climbed to 81%

After Friday’s CPI report, Polymarket traders assigned an 81% probability to a 25-basis-point rate increase at the September meeting, according to MarketWatch’s live coverage. The implied chance stood near 59% before the data, while the probability of no change fell from 41% to about 20%.

Polymarket prices represent wagers placed by participants and can change throughout a trading session. They are not an official Federal Reserve forecast or a direct measure of how Federal Open Market Committee members intend to vote.

The federal funds target range currently stands at 3.50% to 3.75%. A quarter-point increase would take it to 3.75% to 4% and would be the Fed’s first hike since July 2023.

A September policy analysis published before the CPI report found that CME FedWatch had placed the probability of a quarter-point hike at 66%. Polymarket odds had reached 72% after Fed Governor Michael Barr backed a decisive response if inflation failed to ease.

At the time, the analysis identified $75,000 as an important Bitcoin support area and $82,000 to $86,000 as resistance. Bitcoin had gained 25% in August, while U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds attracted $3.52 billion across 16 of 21 trading sessions.

American investors now face competition between crypto assets and rising yields on Treasury securities if the Fed increases borrowing costs. Higher rates raise the return available on government debt and money-market products, which can affect demand for assets without fixed yields.

Oil supply risks have kept inflation concerns elevated

Energy prices remain a key issue for the Fed after gasoline drove more than one-third of August’s monthly CPI increase. Middle East fighting has disrupted oil flows and increased concern that fuel costs could keep headline inflation above the central bank’s target.

Brent crude remained above $100 on Friday despite falling nearly 4%, according to market data cited in the source report. Folha reported that the benchmark slipped toward $104 after approaching $110 earlier in the session.

The decline followed reports of a possible meeting between Iran and Gulf states, but shipping risks remained after Iran-backed Houthi forces captured Perim Island in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. The island sits along a major route used for oil and commercial shipping between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

One day earlier, the European Central Bank raised its deposit rate by 25 basis points to 2.5%. The ECB attributed its decision to persistent inflation, including pressure from energy prices and the Middle East conflict, and projected that eurozone inflation would remain above its 2% target for an extended period.

The International Energy Agency said on Friday that attacks on oil tankers and facilities had contributed to supply disruptions, while Saudi output had fallen to 6 million barrels per day. The agency estimated that worldwide oil supply would decline by 5.7 million barrels per day in 2026.

India has issued 1,025 crore ($116 million) in tokenized corporate bonds using the Demat 2.0 pilot. The bonds were issued in three transactions and settled using the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) wholesale digital rupee.

According to a statement by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Demat 2.0 connects a distributed ledger owned by India’s statutory depositories with the RBI’s Unified Market Interface, moving the bond and associated payment via atomic settlements.

India Issues $116 Million Using Demat 2.0 Pilot

REC Limited completed the first issuance on September 7, raising 500 crore from 18 investors. Larsen & Toubro completed the second 500 crore issuance on September 9, with IIFL issuing 25 crore later in the day. SEBI Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey and RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra announced the Demat 2.0 pilot at the ongoing Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai.

Demat 2.0 changes how ownership, settlement, and bond servicing are recorded, but does not change repayment obligations or create a new category of security. The tokenized bond retains its legal rights, fixed interest rate, and maturity date. Other requirements, including debenture trustees, credit ratings, exchange listings, and company disclosures, were also retained. Ownership records are held on a distributed ledger maintained by India’s regulated depositories.

Additionally, investors don’t need separate securities accounts or identity tests, and can hold the securities using their existing demat accounts. However, investors must activate Demat 2.0 with the relevant depository to participate.

India’s First Native Distributed Ledger Issuance Of Corporate Bonds

SEBI described Demat 2.0’s structure as India’s first native distributed-ledger issuance of corporate bonds, in which statutory depositories maintain ownership records while settlements are completed using central bank digital currency. India’s National Institute of Securities Markets valued the country’s corporate bond market at 53.64 lakh crore ($627 billion). However, only 1,025 crore has been issued through Demat 2.0, while SEBI has not disclosed the amount that will move into the system.

How Demat 2.0 Works

Demat 2.0 uses the Unified Market Interface to connect the bond ledger to the RBI’s wholesale central bank digital currency. Since it uses atomic settlements, the delivery of the tokenized security and payment in digital rupee are completed in a single transaction. Traditional bond systems use separate systems for allocating securities and transferring funds, with users receiving funds two or three days after the bidding process. Issuers using Demat 2.0 receive payment on the bidding day itself.

According to the regulator, atomic settlements remove the risk of partial transaction failure. The pilot also streamlines delivery services. Interest payments and bond redemptions can be programmed and delivered directly into an investor’s wholesale digital rupee wallet on their respective due dates. Currently, issuers must obtain the list of bondholders, manually calculate each payment, and send the funds through traditional banking channels. The Demat 2.0 pilot allows authorized institutions to share access to the ownership record and program instructions to trigger payments.

SEBI expects the pilot to substantially reduce manual file sharing, reconciliation, and validation work.

Issuers On The Demat 2.0 System

Three issuers have already tested the Demat 2.0 system. REC completed a 500 crore issuance on September 7. The company initially offered 100 crore with a 400 crore greenshoe option. Investors submitted 796 crore in bids, substantially exceeding the final amount. Larsen & Toubro completed the second transaction on September 9, with four investors purchasing its 500 crore bond. The third transaction was also completed on September 9, with IIFL issuing a 25 crore bond to a single investor.

Trading And Retail Access

According to SEBI, Demat 2.0’s first phase will focus on corporate bond issuance, with plans to connect tokenized bonds with existing request-for-quote platforms in the country. This would allow eligible investors to buy and sell securities after issuance, and keep trading within the regulated market structure. SEBI said that secondary market sellers could receive digital rupee funds instantly, but did not state when this phase would launch.

Retail participation is also in the pipeline. Individual investors will be able to use their existing demat accounts, but would need to activate Demat 2.0 access and a compatible digital rupee wallet.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Coinbase has partnered with payments provider Moov to bring stablecoin payment acceptance, settlement and real-time funding to more than 1,000 community banks and credit unions, the company said Thursday in an announcement.

Moov will integrate Coinbase’s Payments API and Coinbase Developer Platform Custodial Wallet accounts into its existing payments platform, which serves the 1,000-plus institutions. That lets a bank or credit union add stablecoin services without building its own crypto technology stack. The infrastructure supports consumer payments, merchant acceptance, settlement and payouts, with fully disclosed custodial accounts available for business and merchant payments.

Why it matters for small banks

Community banks in the US typically hold less than $10 billion in total assets, and few have the resources to build crypto infrastructure themselves. The deal hands them stablecoin rails through a provider they already use. Coinbase’s head of corporate affairs, Ryan VanGrack, said community banks and credit unions “have witnessed their customers use digital assets for years.”

VanGrack added that “Modern tech should meet local institutions where they are, giving them the tools to compete with the largest players while preserving what makes them trusted pillars of their communities.”

Jill Castilla, CEO of Citizens Bank of Edmond, an Oklahoma community bank that has operated for 125 years, said her small business customers are looking to lower interchange costs and get paid faster.

The announcement lands amid a wave of bank stablecoin activity. U.S. Bank, the fifth-largest US commercial bank, completed a live cross-border payment using its proprietary USBDC stablecoin on the Stellar blockchain on Wednesday. Earlier this month, 21 financial institutions, including Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and UBS, plan to form a company to issue stablecoins, targeting a dollar stablecoin in the first half of 2027.

The partnership follows Coinbase deals with PNC in July 2025, and later with Citi and JPMorgan, moving the exchange from serving banks as a crypto venue toward providing embeddable infrastructure.

Which stablecoins the integration supports, along with pricing and a rollout timeline, was not disclosed.

Robinhood Chain has turned tokenized stocks into just another building block for decentralized trading—sometimes with genuinely odd consequences. A memecoin-and-equities liquidity pool built around BONER and tokenized healthcare shares of Hims & Hers (HIMS) briefly drove the onchain token far away from the underlying NYSE reference price.

According to a report cited in the original coverage from The Defiant, the BONER/HIMS liquidity pool at one point held 31,198 HIMS tokens—more than half of the 58,714 tokenized HIMS shares circulating. That imbalance coincided with a spike of the tokenized HIMS price to $132.64, compared with a $28.84 closing price for the real HIMS stock on the NYSE, based on historical pricing referenced from the source.

Key takeaways

• A liquidity pool’s token distribution can temporarily overpower the “reference” price of tokenized stocks, especially when onchain reserves are thin.
• Tokenized equities on DEX-style markets can trade like programmable assets, but the price signals may be unreliable when arbitrage and issuance mechanics are constrained.
• DEX automated market makers (AMMs) enable pairing tokenized stocks with almost anything that has liquidity—whether or not the pairing makes intuitive sense.
• Even skeptics view tokenized equities as a stepping stone toward broader DeFi utility, though traditional venues may still dominate price discovery.
• Demand for tokenized stock liquidity is already being generated, but it remains unclear whether onchain markets will become the primary benchmark for equities.

Bizarre pairings become possible when stocks go onchain

The core idea behind Robinhood Chain’s stock-token markets is straightforward: rather than trading a tokenized stock only against fiat or conventional financial instruments, users can deposit the tokenized share into a liquidity pool and trade it against other tokens. In this model, traders swap between assets using the pool’s pricing algorithm rather than an order book.

That flexibility is exactly what made the BONER/HIMS episode notable. The memecoin was paired with tokenized Hims & Hers shares, allowing traders to exchange between a purely crypto-native token and an onchain representation of a listed healthcare company. The episode offered a snapshot of how “real-world assets” can behave when they become composable components inside DeFi.

Thomas Probst, a research analyst at Kaiko, emphasized the scale and composability angle: “A listed stock effectively becomes a composable DeFi asset at an unprecedented scale, in the same way Ether did.”

The larger trend is that tokenized equities are increasingly being treated like generic liquidity—something that can be plugged into diverse onchain strategies. In less than three months after its launch, the original reporting pointed to Robinhood users creating a range of unusual pairings beyond memecoins, including combinations involving AI-related themes and other crypto-native assets.

Why BONER/HIMS diverged from the underlying stock

While the idea of swapping a stock token against a memecoin may look nonsensical, DeFi markets can move in ways that don’t require an economic “reason” beyond the mechanics of the pool itself. The critical difference is that the onchain market does not automatically behave like traditional stock trading—particularly when liquidity conditions are stretched.

According to commentary attributed in the original article, the extreme gap between tokenized HIMS and the real NYSE-listed HIMS share price was largely tied to “thin reserves” and “temporarily restricted issuance.” That combination can create circumstances where token prices move sharply and stay disconnected from the reference asset.

Aspris, described in the source as a finance academic at the University of Sydney, warned that these conditions can “increase the potential for strategic exploitation or manipulation.” In other words, when the onchain market is under-resourced relative to trading demand, it may not reliably reflect the real-world price it is supposed to track.

Probst added an important nuance about arbitrage. In traditional markets, multiple participants and continuous trading work together to keep prices aligned. In the tokenized-stock AMM setup, arbitrage may depend on fewer actors and can be disrupted when the real-world market is closed:

“Arbitrage relies here on a single actor rather than a continuous competitive mechanism like the one seen in traditional stock markets. These pools can therefore produce unreliable price signals, without any real transmission to the reference market.”

That explanation helps frame what happened in practice. When the liquidity pool becomes heavily imbalanced—such as holding a large share of the total tokenized float—onchain swap quotes can jump. If arbitrage cannot quickly re-align prices, the divergence can persist long enough to look dramatic.

Is this a new market—or just AMMs with stranger assets?

Under the hood, the system is built on familiar DEX plumbing: automated market makers that price assets based on liquidity pools and algorithmic formulas. The novelty, according to the reporting, is not the mechanism itself but the inventory it can contain. In traditional stock markets, equities trade against currencies and established financial instruments. Onchain, a tokenized stock can become one half of a liquidity pair with nearly any other token that is available in sufficient quantity.

Reid Noch of TD Securities, cited in the original article, described AMMs as still “very novel when compared to traditional markets.” He also suggested that if tokenized stocks are primarily used to provide liquidity for memecoin-style trading, it may be difficult to sell the concept to more conservative, institutional participants:

“As long as they are primarily used to drive liquidity in memecoins, it will be challenging for more traditional players to take them seriously.”

In the same vein, another skepticism raised in the source is whether these AMM venues will become the place where investors discover the “true” price of tokenized equities. The reporting included a view that price discovery may still happen more in traditional markets, with AMMs serving as rails that arbitrageurs use to keep quotes aligned—rather than becoming the dominant reference.

Still, the episode also highlighted something practical for market participants: even if price discovery remains imperfect, the onchain structure can generate real trading activity and liquidity demand for tokenized stocks—testing how they perform when exposed to DeFi incentives and round-the-clock trading.

What comes next: demand now, credibility later

One message that comes through clearly in the underlying commentary is that tokenized equities are already finding utility inside DeFi, even if their earliest use cases appear unconventional. Sergej Kunz, co-founder of 1inch, argued that the opportunity is broader than the assets currently appearing onchain and that tokenized equities matter because they can plug into an open financial system. Angelo Aspris similarly described how programmable equity exposure could eventually serve as collateral, loanable inventory, or margin inputs for derivatives.

The BONER/HIMS example also suggests that memecoin pairings may be less about “valuation” and more about experimenting with composability—using aggressive, liquid onchain tokens to stress-test whether stock tokens can function safely as DeFi building blocks. Kunz’s take in the source was that memecoin pairings may not be the primary use case for tokenized equities, but they still contribute to “demand, volume and liquidity” for these instruments.

At the same time, important questions remain open. The original reporting pointed to vulnerabilities created by thin reserves and issuance constraints, and to the possibility that AMM prices may not transmit reliably to the underlying reference market when trading conditions diverge. For readers, the key watch items are straightforward: whether onchain liquidity becomes deeper and more stable, whether arbitrage becomes more continuous rather than episodic, and whether trading activity grows beyond novelty pairs.

If tokenized equities can address those frictions, onchain markets may become more than a curiosity—shifting from isolated experiments toward robust infrastructure for programmable exposure to real-world assets. For now, BONER/HIMS stands as a vivid demonstration that when stocks are composable, the market outcomes can be just as unconventional as the pairings.