Alliance DAO co-founder Qiao Wang claims Zcash may be “the last possible 1000x in crypto.” His argument is not framed around a near-term catalyst, but around a long-duration macro and technology thesis in which privacy becomes the final major unresolved market gap in digital assets.
Why Zcash Could Be The Last 1000x
Posting on X on March 15, Wang wrote, “continue to believe that Zcash is the last possible 1000x in crypto. Gov overreach, money printing, rise in socialism, quantum. All massive multi-decade tailwinds.” He paired that with an investment posture that sounded more like a Bitcoin-style conviction trade than a tactical altcoin call: “as with btc, don’t trade it. Accumulate during periods of apathy and hold it for 10-20yrs.”
continue to believe that zcash is the last possible 1000x in crypto.
gov overreach, money printing, rise in socialism, quantum. all massive multi-decade tailwinds.
as with btc, don’t trade it. accumulate during periods of apathy and hold it for 10-20yrs.
— qw (@QwQiao) March 15, 2026
The core of Wang’s reasoning is scale. In a follow-up post, he argued that “there’s still lots of possible 10x’s and maybe 100x’s, but a 1000x requires an extraordinarily large tam.” In other words, the bar for that kind of return is not just technical novelty or strong narrative. It requires a market large enough to absorb a multi-decade re-rating.
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That idea was quickly reinforced by others in the thread, most notably Helius Labs CEO Mert Mumtaz, who pointed back to a privacy thesis he published in November under the title, “The Last 1000x in Crypto: A Privacy Thesis.” His summary was blunt: “Bitcoin started with three problems: i) legitimacy, ii) programmability and scale, iii) privacy. Bitcoin solved i) by becoming a trillion dollar asset, Solana/Ethereum solved ii), and iii) is the last remaining piece.”
Mumtaz’s broader argument is that crypto’s biggest order-of-magnitude gains historically came from solving foundational deficits in the original Bitcoin design. First came legitimacy, then programmability and scale. Privacy, in his view, is the remaining open branch.
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He wrote that “improvements will continue to happen on this programmability/scale branch and the Bitcoin branch, but I’m not sure we’ll see another 1,000x improvement. That is to say, I think future improvements are marginal, not order of magnitude in scale.” By contrast, he argued, “the privacy branch is the last thing remaining for asymmetric upside.”
Why Zcash rather than privacy tech in the abstract? That part of the conversation turned less on code and more on credibility.
Awa Sun Yin, co-founder of Anoma and a board member at Shielded Labs, recounted a rumor that circulated “in the trenches” late last year: that someone influential enough to get a meeting with the US president had been moving through political circles arguing that Bitcoin and crypto lacked privacy because “holdings and balances were visible to everyone – and seizable,” and recommending Zcash instead.
Awa said the key point was not whether the story was true. “What’s relevant is that when you read or hear this story, you have an easy time believing it,” Awa wrote. “Whereas the story wouldn’t be believable if the person were recommending Monero or any other privacy coin instead of Zcash.”
At press time, Zcash traded at $231.59.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com