ZEC Hits Six-Month High as SEC Ends Zcash Foundation Probe

Zcash jumped over 17% on Wednesday to reach a high of $690, a price level not seen since November last year. This rally took place on the back of the news that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had closed its investigation into the nonprofit without enforcement action. The news confirmed by the Zcash Foundation’s Q1 2026 report published on May 19 closes the book on a massive regulatory battle for Zcash. 

The SEC investigation into Zcash dates all the way back to August 2023 with a subpoena under the case “In the Matter of Certain Crypto Asset Offerings”. With the investigation coming to an end, Executive Director Alex Bornstein described the first quarter of 2026 as “one of the most consequential” periods in the Foundation’s history.

The timing for ZEC could hardly have been better. After a roughly 75% drawdown from its highs of $750 set in November to a low of $185 in February, Yesterday’s 17% move now puts Zcash within around 10% of breaking the highs put in last year. 

A Three-Year Overhang Finally Lifts 

The end of the SEC’s investigation into Zcash that spanned over the course of the past three years has effectively wiped out the biggest risk plaguing the entire project. For years, the potential of the project being labelled as an unregistered security was real, and for this reason, institutional money stayed away and many U.S. exchanges decided to delist the token years ago. With this decision coming in, a piece of that risk now disappears. 

The Foundation’s own balance sheet is also in solid shape. At the end of Q1, net liquid assets stood at $36.7 million, with 85,412 ZEC worth roughly $21.2 million making up the bulk of that. Total operating expenses for the quarter came to $817,618, an average of around $272,500 a month. At that burn rate, the nonprofit has years of runway in front of it. The cushion is useful timing too, considering what’s been going on at Electric Coin Company. ECC’s core development team walked out earlier this year over a governance fight with the Bootstrap board and have since announced plans for a new privacy wallet, cashZ.

The Rally Has More Going On Than Just the SEC

Yesterday’s move was certainly influenced by the SEC news. Having said that, ZEC was already seeing bullish momentum in the weeks leading up to this latest news. On April 23, Robinhood listed ZEC for nationwide U.S. trading, opening up the token to millions of retail investors for the first time. 

Less than two weeks later, on May 5, Multicoin Capital disclosed a “significant position” in the token, with co-founder Tushar Jain describing Zcash as “a return to the cypherpunk ideals crypto was founded on”. 

Grayscale’s outstanding Form S-3 to convert its Zcash Trust into a spot ETF also started drawing fresh attention through May. If approved, the product would list on NYSE Arca under the ticker ZCSH and become the first spot privacy coin ETF in the U.S. 

The SEC closure does not fix the ECC governance fallout, but it does at least let the project move forward without a federal probe hanging over it.