Is Zcash Really Next Bitcoin? Crypto King Barry Silbert Revives Viral '1%' Prediction

Digital Currency Group (DCG) founder Barry Silbert has once again reminded the market of his long-standing, but somewhat forgotten, forecast that Zcash ($ZEC) should be worth at least 1% of Bitcoin's market capitalization.

The public trigger for the renewed discussion was Silbert's statement on X. Assessing the coin's current market position, the DCG chief jokingly clarified, "wait, did we say 1% or 10%?!?" but then added, without joking, that he still sees 1% as the base target, with long-term upside potential toward 10%.

SEC clears the runway for 'next Bitcoin'

Fresh CoinMarketCap data turns this discussion into hard mathematical calculations. While market leaders are going through a local pullback, with Bitcoin correcting to $67,006.34 and a market capitalization of $1.34 trillion, Zcash is showing strong countertrend performance.

Against the decline of most altcoins, $ZEC rose 4.20% over the past 24 hours, reaching $592.91, while its market valuation came close to a psychological threshold at $9.91 billion. Right now, the pure math shows that Zcash's capitalization equals exactly 0.74% of the first cryptocurrency's market capitalization.

For Silbert's historic "prophecy" to fully play out and for $ZEC's share to reach the 1% target, equivalent to $13.43 billion, the privacy coin needs to add another $3.52 billion in market value. In other words, the coin needs to grow only 35.55% from current levels to complete the final trigger.

This push is being fueled not by speculation, but by changes in infrastructure as U.S. regulators have fully closed their two-year investigation into the Zcash Foundation without making any claims, finally removing the "high-risk" label from the privacy coin.

The main catalyst, however, is Grayscale Investments, the asset manager controlled by Silbert and a subsidiary of his holding company DCG. Amid preparations to convert the fund into a spot ETF, institutional inflows into the Grayscale Zcash Trust have accelerated significantly.

The fund already holds about 389,420 $ZEC, valued at $232.80 million, while daily demand for the fund's shares rose by 15.09%. For institutions that agree with Silbert's thesis that Zcash is now repeating Bitcoin's 2013 path, this activity inside the trust looks like an obvious signal to act.