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From 2021 to 2026: A Full Review of Barry Silbert's "Privacy Asset Conspiracy" While everyone else was FOMOing AI and memes, one person quietly spent five years stacking an asset abandoned by the market. Today, this asset surged 70% in one week, hitting an eight-year high. This is not luck. This is a carefully orchestrated "privacy conspiracy." 🧵 Thread Start 1/ First, let's see what happened today. On August 26, Grayscale founder Barry Silbert publicly declared in Bhutan: ZEC's long-term market cap could reach one-tenth of BTC — $8,000. At the same time, he predicted: the US stock market will achieve 7×24-hour trading within five years, and competition from crypto platforms like Hyperliquid will accelerate this process. This is not an isolated event. It's a hidden thread buried for five years that has finally surfaced. 2/ Let's rewind to 2021. What was the market doing that year? The afterglow of DeFi summer, the NFT jpeg craze, and various public chains' "Ethereum killer" stories played out one after another. No one cared about privacy. But on January 10, 2021, Barry Silbert tweeted: "Looks like 2021 will be a year for privacy protection, decentralization, and resistance to censorship." Then he listed two coins — ZEC and ZEN. At that time, Grayscale had just resumed trust subscriptions for ZEC and ZEN. Silbert even publicly said, "We like both, and we hold a significant amount of ZEC." How much was ZEC then? At most around $300. No one took it seriously. 3/ Then what? Then came a long "death cycle." In 2022, 2023, and 2024, the privacy sector was heavily suppressed by regulators. ZEC fell from its peak to $16 in 2024. Binance even listed it as a candidate for delisting. Everyone in the market mocked: "Privacy coins are dead," "Compliance is the future," "ZEC will eventually go to zero." Silbert? He said nothing and kept holding. 4/ The turning point came in the second half of 2025. In Q3 2025, Arthur Hayes' Maelstrom fund began accumulating large positions in ZEC. In an interview, he said: "I realized the privacy narrative is reviving. Now, underlying crypto players are all complaining that Bitcoin has been hijacked by institutions; we need to truly solve privacy issues, something that belongs to ordinary people." By the end of 2025, ZEC started soaring from about $50, breaking through $700 in just two months — a more than 12x increase. The privacy narrative officially returned. Those who mocked at first began to panic. 5/ In 2026, this narrative exploded completely. In January, Hayes publicly announced his 2026 strategy: "Privacy will become the dominant narrative." In May, Grayscale officially submitted the Zcash spot ETF application — the first privacy coin ETF in the US. In June, ZEC flash crashed due to an Orchard vulnerability, and Hayes liquidated his position. The market panicked, thinking "It's over, the narrative is broken." But Silbert didn't leave. Grayscale not only stayed but submitted the fifth revision of the ETF application on August 21. On August 25, Grayscale's Zcash ETF (ZCSH) officially listed on NYSE Arca — the world's first Zcash spot ETP. On the same day, ZEC hit $888, a new high since 2018, with a weekly increase of over 70%. On August 26, Silbert shouted $8,000. 6/ Connecting this timeline, what do you find? 2021: Silbert publicly supports ZEC — no one believes. 2025: Hayes pushes ZEC into an independent rally — people start paying attention. August 2026: ZEC ETF launches, price hits an eight-year high, Silbert sets an $8,000 target — everyone is asking "Is it still possible to get in?" This is not a pump call. This is a five-year-long battle for "privacy asset pricing power." 7/ More intriguingly, Silbert's attitude toward tokenized stocks has shifted. He admits: once US stocks achieve 7×24-hour trading, the appeal of tokenized stocks in the US market will decline. What does this mean? He repositions the value of tokenized stocks from "trading time arbitrage" to "geographical arbitrage" — liquidity havens outside the US will be the real battleground. And the judgment that "Hyperliquid competition accelerates 24/7 US stock trading" is even more severe — crypto trading platforms are evolving from fringe challengers to drivers of traditional market infrastructure. Traditional finance is not being "disrupted" but being "forced to transform." 8/ Back to ZEC itself. Silbert's logic is actually simple: First, ZEC is based on the BTC codebase, with a 21 million supply cap and PoW consensus — technically capable of handling BTC-level capital. Second, ZEC adds a layer of privacy beyond BTC — shielded transactions can hide sender, receiver, and amount. In an era where AI-driven financial surveillance is constantly upgrading, privacy is not an "option" but a "must-have." Third, Grayscale's report points out: the market's current valuation of ZEC reflects the assumption that "privacy will remain marginalized." If investors ultimately believe privacy deserves a moderate premium, the current valuation may be seriously undervalued. In short: the market has not yet priced in the "privacy" attribute. 9/ Here's the hard truth. While everyone chases the hundredfold riches of memecoins and the grand imagination of AI narratives, what are the true "old OGs" positioning? Silbert puts it bluntly: Memecoin is essentially gambling. Then he added — "If you must engage in such risky trades, the best choice is to buy ZEC." What does this mean? It's not telling you to gamble. It's telling you: even gambling has better targets than memes. $ZEC $ZEN $BTC #ZEC现货ETF首日成交额1480万美元