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Will Zcash recap $300 as ZK-backed privacy narrative gains threshold?

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Zcash’s ZEC is consolidating near $235–$240 after a sharp February selloff, with a $25m ZODL raise, Foundry’s new mining pool and rising shielded use turning it into a 2026 privacy‑trade leader.

Summary

  • Zcash’s ZEC is trading near $235–$240 after a mid‑March surge of over 20% in a single day, extending a multi‑week recovery from February’s steep drawdown.
  • The privacy‑focused coin has seen daily volumes in the hundreds of millions of dollars during the latest upswing, as traders respond to fresh venture funding, new mining infrastructure and improving technical momentum.
  • Sector‑wide interest in privacy assets has picked up in 2026, with ZEC outpacing many peers as on‑chain shielded usage rises and developers accelerate work on new wallets and consensus upgrades.

Zcash’s (ZEC) native token ZEC, one of the longest‑running privacy coins in the market, is holding near the $235–$240 range this week after a volatile first quarter that saw it sell off sharply in February before rebounding on strong March news flow.

Will Zcash recap $300 as ZK-backed privacy narrative gains threshold? - 1

Data from BestCryptoChecker shows ZEC’s price dropped about 20.93% in February 2026, falling from $302.80 to close the month at $239.41, underscoring how aggressively the asset had been de‑risked before the latest move higher. The token, which uses zero‑knowledge proofs to enable shielded transactions and is categorized as a privacy and payments coin, has now re‑emerged as a focal point in the renewed 2026 privacy narrative.

ZEC extends rebound as $25m ZODL raise and Foundry mining pool revive Zcash story

Momentum turned decisively in March. On March 16, ZEC posted a 23.26% daily gain to trade around $285.35, with market capitalization at roughly $4.74 billion and 24‑hour trading volume reaching $583 million, according to MEXC’s tracking. CoinMarketCap’s Zcash dashboard later highlighted that ZEC broke above $235 on March 25 on “strong volumes” following a major ecosystem funding announcement, extending a weekly gain above 10% on elevated spot turnover. While some shorter‑term RSI screens still flag periods of selling pressure on lower timeframes, 14‑day readings near the low‑to‑mid‑50s indicate neither extreme euphoria nor deep exhaustion, leaving room for trend continuation if demand persists.

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Behind the tape, a series of structural developments has reframed the Zcash story for 2026. The Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL), a new core development entity formed after the breakup of the Electric Coin Company’s engineering team, closed a funding round of more than $25 million on March 25 from backers including Paradigm, a16z crypto and Coinbase Ventures, with capital earmarked for expanding the Zodl wallet and other privacy‑first tools. CoinMarketCap also reports that Foundry Digital, the largest Bitcoin mining pool, plans to launch an institutional‑grade ZEC mining pool in April 2026, marking its first move beyond Bitcoin and signaling growing confidence in Zcash’s long‑term viability. Additional roadmap items, including the CashZ wallet launch, consensus protocol upgrades and continued ZODL‑led ecosystem expansion, underline an effort to modernize infrastructure and make shielded transactions more accessible, potentially deepening ZEC’s role as a base layer for private finance.

Beyond Zcash itself, privacy coins as a group have begun to stage a comeback in 2026, with MEXC noting that ZEC and peers have delivered double‑digit daily moves as regulatory clarity around “digital commodities” and renewed interest in zero‑knowledge technology shift attention back to privacy‑preserving chains. That broader context matters: while some traders still see scope for a deeper correction toward the $100–$150 range based on ZEC’s longer‑term breakdown from much higher levels, recent funding, infrastructure and usage data have opened the door to a sustained repricing if the privacy trade continues to attract both retail and institutional capital.

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Bitcoin miners are becoming AI companies and selling their BTC to fund the transition

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(CoinShares/CoinDesk)

The bitcoin mining industry is undergoing the most fundamental transformation in its history, and the clearest sign isn’t the hashrate or the difficulty adjustments. It’s the balance sheets.

CoinShares’ Q1 2026 mining report, published this week, reveals that the weighted average cash cost to produce one bitcoin among publicly listed miners rose to approximately $79,995 in Q4 2025.

Bitcoin has traded in the $68,000 to $70,000 band, with a CoinDesk report last week estimating losses of $19,000 per BTC mined.

These numbers aren’t sustainable, and the industry knows it. The response has been a wholesale pivot toward artificial intelligence infrastructure that is reshaping what these companies actually are.

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(CoinShares/CoinDesk)

Over $70 billion in cumulative AI and high-performance computing contracts have now been announced across the public mining sector, according to the CoinShares report. CoreWeave’s expanded deal with Core Scientific alone is worth $10.2 billion over 12 years. TeraWulf has $12.8 billion in contracted HPC revenue. Hut 8 signed a $7 billion, 15-year lease for AI infrastructure at its River Bend campus. Cipher Digital has a multi-billion-dollar agreement with Google-backed Fluidstack.

Listed miners could derive as much as 70% of their revenue from AI by the end of 2026, up from roughly 30% today. Core Scientific’s AI colocation revenue already accounts for 39% of its total. TeraWulf is at 27%. IREN is at 9% and scaling rapidly with up to 200 megawatts of liquid-cooled GPU capacity under construction.

That means these mining companies are increasingly becoming data center operators that happen to still mine bitcoin on the side.

The economics explain why. According to CoinShares, the cost differential between bitcoin mining infrastructure at roughly $700,000 to $1 million per megawatt and AI infrastructure at $8 million to $15 million per megawatt is wide, but AI offers structurally higher and more stable returns.

Hash price, the metric that determines miner revenue per unit of computing power, hit an all-time post-halving low of roughly $28 to $30 per petahash per day in early March.

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At those levels, miners running mid-generation hardware need access to electricity below $0.05 per kilowatt-hour to remain cash-profitable. Meanwhile, AI infrastructure contracts promise margins above 85% with multi-year revenue visibility.

How the financials work

The transition is being financed in two ways, and both are visible in the data, the report explained.

First, debt. The sector’s aggregate leverage has fundamentally changed. IREN now carries $3.7 billion in convertible notes across five series. TeraWulf has $5.7 billion in total debt, split between convertible notes and senior secured notes at its compute subsidiary.

Cipher Digital issued $1.7 billion in senior secured notes in November, causing its quarterly interest expense to surge from $3.2 million for the first nine months to $33.4 million in Q4 alone. These are not mining-scale debt loads. These are infrastructure-scale bets that the AI revenue will materialize fast enough to service the obligations.

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Second, bitcoin sales. Publicly listed miners have collectively reduced their BTC treasuries by over 15,000 BTC from peak levels. Core Scientific sold roughly 1,900 BTC worth $175 million in January and is planning to liquidate substantially all remaining holdings in Q1 2026. Bitdeer reduced its treasury to zero in February. Riot Platforms sold 1,818 BTC worth $162 million in December.

Even Marathon, the largest public holder at 53,822 BTC, quietly expanded its policy in its March 10-K filing to authorize sales from its entire balance sheet reserve, partly driven by pressure on its $350 million bitcoin-backed credit facility where the loan-to-value ratio climbed to 87% as prices fell toward $68,000.

(CoinDesk)

The miners that are selling bitcoin to fund AI buildouts are the same companies whose mining operations secure the bitcoin network. That creates a tension at the heart of the transition. When mining is unprofitable and AI is lucrative, the rational economic decision is to reallocate capital away from mining. But if enough miners do that, the network’s security budget shrinks.

The hashrate data already reflects this. The network peaked at approximately 1,160 exahashes per second in early October 2025 and has since declined to roughly 920 EH/s, with three consecutive negative difficulty adjustments, the first such streak since July 2022.

The valuation market has already priced the bifurcation. Miners with secured HPC contracts now trade at 12.3 times next-twelve-month sales. Pure-play miners trade at 5.9 times. The market is paying more than double for the AI exposure, which reinforces the incentive to pivot further.

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The geographic picture is shifting alongside the economics, meanwhile. The United States, China, and Russia now control roughly 68% of global hashrate. The U.S. gained about 2 percentage points of market share in Q4 alone.

But emerging markets are entering the picture. Paraguay and Ethiopia have joined the global top 10 mining countries, driven by HIVE’s 300-megawatt operation in Paraguay and Bitdeer’s 40-megawatt facility in Ethiopia.

Hashrate forecasts and estimates

CoinShares forecasts the network hashrate will reach 1.8 zetahashes by the end of 2026 and 2 zetahashes by end of March 2027, one month later than previously predicted.

But that forecast depends on bitcoin recovering to $100,000 by year-end. If prices stay below $80,000, CoinShares expects hash price to continue falling and the hashrate to decline further as more miners exit.

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A sustained move below $70,000 could trigger larger capitulation that, paradoxically, benefits survivors through lower difficulty.

Next-generation hardware offers a potential lifeline. Bitmain’s S23 series and Bitdeer’s proprietary SEALMINER A3, both operating below 10 joules per terahash, are expected at scale through the first half of 2026. These machines would roughly halve the energy cost per bitcoin compared to current mid-generation fleets. But deploying them requires capital that many miners are directing toward AI instead.

The bitcoin mining industry entered this cycle as a group of companies that secured the network and accumulated bitcoin. It is exiting as a group of companies that build AI data centers and sell bitcoin to fund them.

Whether that’s a temporary response to unfavorable economics or a permanent structural shift depends on one variable: the price of bitcoin. If it returns to $100,000, mining margins recover and the AI pivot slows. If it stays at $70,000 or below, the transition accelerates and the mining sector as it existed for the past decade continues to disappear into something else entirely.

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Morgan Stanley sets 0.14% Bitcoin ETF fee, could be market’s lowest

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Crypto Breaking News

Morgan Stanley is accelerating its crypto ambitions with a plan to launch a spot Bitcoin ETF priced at 0.14% in annual fees. If approved, the vehicle would be the cheapest spot BTC offering in the U.S. market and could push rival fund sponsors to trim fees to stay competitive. The filing appears in the bank’s latest S-1 registration materials and signals a serious intent to broaden access to Bitcoin exposure for Morgan Stanley’s client base.

Industry observers say the move, paired with the bank’s broader crypto strategy, could reshape the U.S. ETF landscape. Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart flagged the filing as a “big move” and forecast an early-April launch for the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust (MSBT). Fellow Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas noted the ultra-low fee would be attractive to Morgan Stanley’s advisory network, which manages trillions of dollars in client assets, potentially easing internal conflicts over recommendations. The price tag—0.14%—would sit just a hair below the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF and meaningfully under BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, underscoring the fee-pressure dynamic across the space.

Beyond the fee structure, the development underscores Morgan Stanley’s evolving stance on crypto as part of a broader suite of products and services. The bank’s early 2020s shift toward crypto included appointing Amy Oldenburg to lead its digital asset team and pursuing a national banking charter to custody digital assets and execute purchases, sales, and swaps for clients, including staking services. Morgan Stanley previously identified Coinbase and Bank of New York Mellon as the prospective custodians for its Bitcoin ETF, a detail that helps frame how the bank intends to operationalize a spot-BTC product for a traditionally risk-averse client base.

Key takeaways

  • The proposed 0.14% fee for Morgan Stanley’s spot Bitcoin ETF would be the lowest in the U.S. market at launch, positioning the bank as a potential price leader and prompting peers to consider fee reductions to retain assets.
  • If the SEC approves MSBT, Morgan Stanley would become the first traditional bank to issue a U.S. spot BTC ETF, expanding access to crypto exposure for high-net-worth clients and broader Morgan Stanley advisory channels.
  • The move sits within a broader crypto push: Morgan Stanley has filed for a staking Ether ETF and has sought a national trust charter to custody digital assets and trade crypto for clients, signaling a multi-pronged strategy beyond a single ETF product.
  • Analysts foresee an early-April launch window for the MSBT, suggesting the bank is moving with pace to bring a regulated, traditional-finance gateway to Bitcoin into its product lineup.

Strategic significance for Morgan Stanley and the market

The 0.14% fee is not just a stat; it signals a strategic pivot with potential ripple effects. For Morgan Stanley, a successful, low-cost spot BTC ETF would enable seamless integration into its existing advisory framework. As Balchunas noted, the soft price point reduces potential conflicts for roughly 16,000 financial advisors who oversee about $6.2 trillion in client assets, potentially making it easier to recommend cryptocurrency exposure within conventional portfolios. For the broader market, the introduction of a bank-backed spot BTC ETF could heighten competition among ETF providers to offer low-cost, accessible crypto exposure, potentially accelerating adoption among institutions and high-net-worth individuals.

The path remains contingent on regulatory approval. A green light from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission would mark a milestone not just for Morgan Stanley but for the broader integration of traditional finance with regulated crypto products. The bank’s broader crypto orchestration—ranging from a Solana ETF filed in January to staking-related offerings and a declared charter to custody and trade digital assets—paints a picture of a lane-change moment for Wall Street institutions that have historically approached crypto with caution.

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What comes next and what to watch

Investors and crypto observers should monitor several moving parts. First, the SEC’s decision on MSBT will determine whether a bank-backed spot BTC ETF can enter the market with a capital-light, cross-sell approach through Morgan Stanley’s vast advisory network. The timing remains uncertain beyond signals from analysts about an early-April launch, but any formal approval would intensify a fee-competition dynamic already visible across existing U.S. spot BTC ETFs.

Second, Morgan Stanley’s broader crypto agenda—its staking ETH ETF, custody capabilities, and the possibility of additional crypto products—will shape how the bank positions itself as a regulated gateway to digital assets. The custodial framework with potential partners like Coinbase and BNY Mellon will influence both product design and client trust as the firm seeks to democratize access without compromising risk controls.

Third, the market will closely watch how competitors respond. If Morgan Stanley’s 0.14% fee sets a new baseline, rival asset managers may need to recalibrate fee structures, custody arrangements, and distribution strategies to maintain market share among sophisticated investors seeking regulated exposure to Bitcoin.

Lastly, the regulatory trajectory for spot crypto ETFs remains a central theme. While a bank-run product could gain traction, final approvals will hinge on how regulators assess custody standards, liquidity, and investor protection in a landscape evolving toward deeper institutional participation in digital assets.

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In sum, Morgan Stanley’s proposed MSBT at a sub-0.15% fee underscores a broader move by legacy financial institutions to normalize and scale regulated crypto exposure. If approved, the impact would extend beyond a single ETF—potentially reshaping fee benchmarks, distribution dynamics, and the pace at which traditional finance fully embraces digital assets in its core client offerings.

Readers should keep an eye on regulatory updates, Morgan Stanley’s official disclosures regarding the MSBT timeline, and any shifts in the competitive landscape as major banks and fund sponsors recalibrate their crypto product menus in response to this development.

Risk & affiliate notice: Crypto assets are volatile and capital is at risk. This article may contain affiliate links. Read full disclosure

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Morgan Stanley Sets Bitcoin ETF Fee at Ultra-Low 0.14%

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Morgan Stanley Sets Bitcoin ETF Fee at Ultra-Low 0.14%

Investment bank Morgan Stanley is seeking to launch its spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund at a 0.14% fee, which would make it the cheapest in the US market and potentially force rivals to cut fees to stay competitive.

The 0.14% fee, proposed in Morgan Stanley’s latest S-1 registration statement on Friday, would be one basis point below the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF (BTC), currently the cheapest in the US market, and 11 basis points below the BlackRock-issued iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT).

“Big move here. They are not messing around,” Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart said, predicting that the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust (MSBT) is “likely to launch in early April.”

Source: James Seyffart

Fellow Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said the low fee means that none of Morgan Stanley’s roughly 16,000 financial advisors — which manage $6.2 trillion in client assets — would feel conflicted in recommending the product to its clients.

Given that spot Bitcoin ETFs track the price movements of Bitcoin (BTC), Morgan Stanley’s ultra-low fee could spark a fresh fee war in the $83 billion market, putting immediate pressure on rivals to cut costs or risk losing assets.

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Regulatory approval would make Morgan Stanley the first bank to issue a spot Bitcoin ETF, expanding access to Bitcoin exposure for millions of its high-net-worth clients.

“They are the ultimate gatekeepers of rich boomer money,” Balchunas added.

Morgan Stanley previously selected Coinbase and Bank of New York Mellon as the proposed custodians for its Bitcoin ETF.

Morgan Stanley seeking suite of crypto ETFs, banking charter

Morgan Stanley, previously one of the more crypto-hesitant Wall Street firms, filed for the spot Bitcoin ETF in the first week of January, along with a Solana (SOL) ETF.

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Related: Bitcoin traders see 53% odds of sub-$66K BTC by April 24 

It then filed papers for a staked Ether (ETH) ETF later that week, and by the end of the month, the bank appointed one of Morgan Stanley’s longest-standing executives, Amy Oldenburg, to lead its digital asset team.

Source: James Seyffart

Morgan Stanley also applied for a national trust banking charter on Feb. 18, seeking to custody certain digital assets and execute purchases, sales and swaps for clients in addition to staking services.

In October, before the investment bank adopted its institutional crypto strategy, it recommended a 2% to 4% allocation to crypto portfolios for investors. It also allowed its financial advisors to recommend crypto funds to clients with individual retirement accounts (IRAs) and 401(k)s.

Magazine: Bitcoin may face hard fork over any attempt to freeze Satoshi’s coins

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