06 FLOWS — exchange inflows and the insider question - research date 2026-08-22 - chain state 3,456,227
What the chain shows vs. what is claimed
in one line — the finding
Custody is documented; addresses are not. The largest unshielding of the cycle mostly never reached an exchange. The dev fund is 99.28 per cent untouched and untraceable by design. Nobody has produced on-chain evidence of insider selling, and the allegations in circulation cite no addresses, no transactions and no supply audit.
how to read the marks — four kinds of number, and one chip
- exact transparent chain data, arithmetically exact and reproducible against a public API.
- bounded an inference across the shielded pool. Never a fact, and never provable by design.
- label somebody else's attribution, with the tier that applied it printed beside it.
- undefined not derivable from public data. The honest refusal, not a missing value.
- unbound sourced by the research pass but not yet a schema-validated record in the content package.
- verified pulled directly from the Blockchair Zcash API on 2026-08-22.
Executive summary
1.1 — a surveillance firm indexes the transparent side
Arkham Intelligence launched Zcash coverage on 8 December 2025, claiming 53 per cent of transactions labelled, $420B of volume attributed, 48 per cent of inputs and outputs attributed and 37 per cent of balances labelled. Its own research page concedes the boundary: shielded transfers are "fully private. The only piece of data visible on-chain is the transaction fee." Mert Mumtaz and Zooko Wilcox called the framing misleading, saying Arkham is just tracking wallets that opted into public transparency; Arkham then clarified that shielded transactions are not accounted for in the 50 per cent it labels. Both its own figures, 53 and 50, are printed here because the correction does not reconcile them.
R-arkham-coveragehighunboundR-arkham-coveragecite
- claim
- R-arkham-coverage
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- "Zcash Is Live On Arkham" (2025-12-08) Arkham · 2025-12-08 · accessed 2026-08-22
- "How To Track Zcash Transactions" Arkham · accessed 2026-08-22
- Criticism: "Arkham's 'Misleading' Zcash Tracking Claims Spark Outrage" The Defiant · accessed 2026-08-22
1.2 — the january 2026 story is real, and materially incomplete
276,077.74 ZEC was unshielded on one day, 2 January 2026, not across the first week as the press reported, and all of it inside three hours and forty-six minutes. Only 74,001.93 ZEC, 26.8 per cent, reached the high-throughput address Lookonchain labels Binance. The largest tranche, 202,076.207 ZEC, went to a single transparent address and has never moved. The exit framing is not supported by the destination of 73 per cent of the coins.
K-2026-01-02highK-2026-01-02cite
- claim
- K-2026-01-02
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- Blockchair Zcash API -- transaction dashboard (method; queried 2026-08-22) Blockchair API · accessed 2026-08-22
- BeInCrypto, "Over 1% ZEC Unshielded, Are Investors Exiting Privacy Coins?" BeInCrypto · accessed 2026-08-22
1.3 — two-thirds of the whale deposit appears to be a round trip
49,999.97 ZEC left the hot wallet on 24 and 25 December 2025 for a fresh address; that address shielded its whole balance on 2 January at 18:01:43; 50,000.5541 ZEC emerged fifty-two minutes later, 0.4059 ZEC smaller, and was returned to the same wallet. Net new inflow attributable to that flow is therefore at most about 24,001 ZEC, not 74,002. bounded Medium-high: the shielded pool deliberately breaks the link, and the inference rests on an amount delta and a fifty-two-minute gap.
K-2026-01-02medK-2026-01-02cite
- claim
- K-2026-01-02
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- med
- Blockchair Zcash API -- transaction dashboard (method; queried 2026-08-22) Blockchair API · accessed 2026-08-22
- blockchain.news, 74,002 ZEC to Binance (source of the t1Ym8XWv… address) Blockchain.News · accessed 2026-08-22
1.4 — the lockbox is 99.28 per cent untouched
78,750 ZEC was minted at the NU6.1 activation, block 3,146,400, as ten outputs of 7,875 to the ZIP 271 two-of-three multisig held by the Zcash Foundation, the Electric Coin Company and Shielded Labs. 566.5907 ZEC, 0.72 per cent, has net left it, into shielded outputs exactly as the ZIP mandates. Disbursement is therefore untraceable to any exchange after the first hop: a design property, not a cover-up, and it means the question of whether the dev fund sold is unanswerable from chain data.
K-zip271-lockboxL-t3ev37Q2uL1sfTsiJQJiWJoFzQpDhmnUwYohighK-zip271-lockboxcite
- claim
- K-zip271-lockbox
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- ZIP 271 (dev fund extension + 78,750 ZEC disbursement) Zcash Improvement Proposals · accessed 2026-08-22
- Blockchair Zcash API -- transaction dashboard (method; queried 2026-08-22) Blockchair API · accessed 2026-08-22
1.5 — custody is documented, addresses are not
Two custodial relationships are established from primary filings: the Grayscale Zcash Trust at Coinbase Custody Trust Company, and Cypherpunk Technologies at Gemini Space Station. Neither publishes on-chain addresses or a proof of reserves. No public rich list applies an exchange or custodian label to any Zcash address, and the largest transparent holders on the chain today are entirely unattributed in public data.
- Grayscale Zcash Trust
- 388,673.68359943 ZEC at 30 Jun 2026 (Q2 10-Q, fair value $155,252k, NAV per share $32.15); 391,103.89 ZEC at 31 Mar 2026; more than $260M in assets claimed 22 Aug 2026.
- Cypherpunk Technologies
- 323,394.38 ZEC, $110.5M total cost, $341.83 avg cost (30 Jun 2026 10-Q); ~1.92% of supply; stated target 5% of network
N-grayscale-zcash-trustcite
- claim
- N-grayscale-zcash-trust
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- med
- Grayscale Zcash Trust 10-Q, period ended 2026-06-30 SEC EDGAR · 2026-06-30 · accessed 2026-08-22
- Cypherpunk Technologies 10-Q (six months ended 2026-06-30) StockTitan · 2026-06-30 · accessed 2026-08-22
1.6 — the one hard recurring institutional outflow
Grayscale's Sponsor's Fee, paid in kind: 4,848.65 ZEC in the first half of 2026 and 4,883.12 ZEC in the first half of 2025, roughly 9,700 ZEC a year, withdrawn from the Trust and transferred to the Sponsor. The filings do not say whether the Sponsor then sells it. It is the only disclosed, recurring, documented institutional ZEC outflow anywhere in this research.
R-sponsor-feehighunboundR-sponsor-feecite
- claim
- R-sponsor-fee
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- Grayscale Zcash Trust 10-Q, period ended 2026-06-30 SEC EDGAR · 2026-06-30 · accessed 2026-08-22
1.7 — the insider-selling allegations are not evidenced
TechLeaks24, on 8 August 2026, argues that ZEC should be considered fraudulent until proven otherwise and cites no addresses, no transactions and no supply audit. ZachXBT's exit-liquidity critique of Arthur Hayes attaches no ZEC on-chain evidence. Barry Silbert's Form 144 filings are real, and they are ZCSH trust shares sold on OTCQX, which move no ZEC on-chain and create no exchange inflow.
U-techleaks24-exploiter-migration-theorylowU-techleaks24-exploiter-migration-theorycite
- claim
- U-techleaks24-exploiter-migration-theory
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- low
- TechLeaks24, "Why Zcash Should Be Considered Fraudulent…" (2026-08-08) techleaks24.substack.com · 2026-08-08 · accessed 2026-08-22
1.8 — whale alert does not appear to cover zcash
Its published supported-chain list does not include Zcash. Headlines reading "ZEC Whale Alert" on aggregator sites are editorial phrasing rather than that account's output. The reporting accounts that actually cover ZEC flows are Lookonchain and EmberCN, relayed through aggregators. The research puts this no more strongly than that Zcash is absent from the list, and neither does this page.
R-whale-alerthighunboundR-whale-alertcite
- claim
- R-whale-alert
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- Whale Alert FAQ (supported chains — no Zcash) Whale Alert · accessed 2026-08-22
Dated table of large ZEC transfers
Every row marked verified was pulled directly from the Blockchair Zcash API on 22 August 2026 and is reproducible against a public endpoint; the transaction id is printed so a reader can check the row rather than trust it. Times are UTC. Three rows carry no transaction at all - they are claims, and they are here so the comparison is visible.
| Date and time, UTC | ZEC | From | To | Source | Proves, and does not prove |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-11-24 19:56:42block 3,146,400 | exact 78,750.00 | protocol lockbox value pool (NU6.1 activation coinbase)as the corpus states it | t3ev37Q2…label ZIP 271 lockbox disbursement multisigapplied by consensus, precedence 1 of 5 · this label's own confidence high · method printed in full at L-t3ev37Q2uL1sfTsiJQJiWJoFzQpDhmnUwYo | tx 525f4402…verifiedK-zip271-lockbox | Ten outputs of 7,875 ZEC to the 2-of-3 multisig named in the ZIP 271 consensus rules.K-zip271-lockboxhighK-zip271-lockboxcite
|
| 2025-12-20 (claimed)no block; not a chain event | undefined 202,077 ZECnot derivable from public chain data | "Binance", per the aggregator | unnamed address | claim only | Unverified, with a date conflict. No address was published. The only on-chain movement of about 202,07x ZEC that can be located is a shielded-pool exit on 2026-01-02 15:45:14, which is not a Binance withdrawal and is thirteen days later. Either the aggregator mis-dated or mis-described an event, or it refers to something that cannot be found. Do not cite.R-claim-embercn-202077lowunboundR-claim-embercn-202077cite
|
| 2025-12-24 | exact 1.0 | unknownas the corpus states it | t1gGCYpy…label Unattributed single-entity holding, destination of the 2 Jan 2026 unshieldingapplied by behaviour, precedence 5 of 5 · this label's own confidence high · method printed in full at L-t1gGCYpyURMo2FcYDSqeR8pgp2Kx9rnT72V | no transaction id in the corpus for this stepK-202076-unshield | A one ZEC test deposit, nine days before the address received two hundred thousand.K-202076-unshieldhighK-202076-unshieldcite
|
| 2025-12-24 19:32:46 | exact 29,999.99 | t1PKBiv7…label Exchange hot wallet, labelled "Binance" by Lookonchainapplied by analyst, precedence 4 of 5 · this label's own confidence med · method printed in full at L-t1PKBiv7mtzD9bNafYaqyxaENeiNDbpKxxQ | t1XKfbZY…label Newly created wallet behind the reported 30,000 ZEC exchange withdrawalapplied by analyst, precedence 4 of 5 · this label's own confidence med · method printed in full at L-t1XKfbZYsdxR5HSnP25ee5VaAxgCNUtFkFK | tx f45ded5d…verifiedK-2026-01-02 | Withdrawal from the hot wallet to a freshly created address. Input 120,552.69 ZEC in, 29,999.99 out, 90,552.70 change back to itself: textbook exchange-withdrawal mechanics.K-2026-01-02highK-2026-01-02cite
|
| 2025-12-25 06:20:32 | exact 1,999.99 | t1PKBiv7…label Exchange hot wallet, labelled "Binance" by Lookonchainapplied by analyst, precedence 4 of 5 · this label's own confidence med · method printed in full at L-t1PKBiv7mtzD9bNafYaqyxaENeiNDbpKxxQ | t1XKfbZY…label Newly created wallet behind the reported 30,000 ZEC exchange withdrawalapplied by analyst, precedence 4 of 5 · this label's own confidence med · method printed in full at L-t1XKfbZYsdxR5HSnP25ee5VaAxgCNUtFkFK | tx b39aa107…verifiedK-2026-01-02 | Second withdrawal to the same address. Not separately reported in the press.K-2026-01-02highK-2026-01-02cite
|
| 2025-12-25 06:22:23 | exact 17,999.99 | t1PKBiv7…label Exchange hot wallet, labelled "Binance" by Lookonchainapplied by analyst, precedence 4 of 5 · this label's own confidence med · method printed in full at L-t1PKBiv7mtzD9bNafYaqyxaENeiNDbpKxxQ | t1XKfbZY…label Newly created wallet behind the reported 30,000 ZEC exchange withdrawalapplied by analyst, precedence 4 of 5 · this label's own confidence med · method printed in full at L-t1XKfbZYsdxR5HSnP25ee5VaAxgCNUtFkFK | tx a05e75fe…verifiedK-2026-01-02 | Third withdrawal, bringing the total to 49,999.97 ZEC. The press reported only the first 30,000.K-2026-01-02highK-2026-01-02cite
|
| 2026-01-02 15:45:14block 3,190,907 | exact 202,076.207crosses the shielded-pool boundary: the amount is public, the party on the pool side is not | shielded poolno address exists on this side of the transaction; the pool is not an owner | t1gGCYpy…label Unattributed single-entity holding, destination of the 2 Jan 2026 unshieldingapplied by behaviour, precedence 5 of 5 · this label's own confidence high · method printed in full at L-t1gGCYpyURMo2FcYDSqeR8pgp2Kx9rnT72V | tx e179e5b0…verifiedK-2026-01-02 · K-202076-unshield | The single largest unshielding of the period, from a transaction with zero transparent inputs. It did not go to an exchange: the address has never spent and still holds exactly this balance.K-2026-01-02K-202076-unshieldhighK-2026-01-02cite
|
| 2026-01-02 18:01:43block 3,191,017 | exact 50,000.96crosses the shielded-pool boundary: the amount is public, the party on the pool side is not | t1XKfbZY…label Newly created wallet behind the reported 30,000 ZEC exchange withdrawalapplied by analyst, precedence 4 of 5 · this label's own confidence med · method printed in full at L-t1XKfbZYsdxR5HSnP25ee5VaAxgCNUtFkFK | shielded poolno address exists on this side of the transaction; the pool is not an owner | tx a7934713…verifiedK-2026-01-02 | The fresh address spends all four of its UTXOs into a transaction with zero transparent outputs, shielding its entire balance, and never appears again.K-2026-01-02highK-2026-01-02cite
|
| 2026-01-02 18:53:18block 3,191,051 | exact 50,000.5541crosses the shielded-pool boundary: the amount is public, the party on the pool side is not | shielded poolno address exists on this side of the transaction; the pool is not an owner | t1dP1MJw…label Single-use unshielding destination, 2 Jan 2026 18:53 UTCapplied by behaviour, precedence 5 of 5 · this label's own confidence med · method printed in full at L-t1dP1MJwfYr9z7EwWxSpefP6s2p7ewaKx9e | tx 7ae85864…verifiedK-2026-01-02 | Fifty-two minutes later, a transaction with zero transparent inputs creates a single output 0.4059 ZEC smaller. The alignment is four-fold and the link is unprovable by design.K-2026-01-02highK-2026-01-02cite
|
| 2026-01-02 19:31:34block 3,191,091 | exact 24,000.9781crosses the shielded-pool boundary: the amount is public, the party on the pool side is not | shielded poolno address exists on this side of the transaction; the pool is not an owner | t1U1NE8w…label Single-use unshielding destination, 2 Jan 2026 19:31 UTCapplied by behaviour, precedence 5 of 5 · this label's own confidence med · method printed in full at L-t1U1NE8w5KRwnxCZAaxVidW6MchFky97m4V | tx 6db13a92…verifiedK-2026-01-02 | Second unshielding tranche. Its origin inside the pool is unknown.K-2026-01-02highK-2026-01-02cite
|
| 2026-01-02 20:35:38block 3,191,134 | exact 74,001.9317 | t1Ym8XWv…label Consolidation address behind the reported 74,002 ZEC exchange depositapplied by analyst, precedence 4 of 5 · this label's own confidence med · method printed in full at L-t1Ym8XWvN2joxENB2Nc4TVg1M9PxKfWshc5 | t1PKBiv7…label Exchange hot wallet, labelled "Binance" by Lookonchainapplied by analyst, precedence 4 of 5 · this label's own confidence med · method printed in full at L-t1PKBiv7mtzD9bNafYaqyxaENeiNDbpKxxQ | tx ba078381…verifiedK-2026-01-02 | Both tranches consolidated and sent to the hot wallet. The press reported 74,002 ZEC and dated it 3 or 5 January; on-chain it is the 2nd.K-2026-01-02highK-2026-01-02cite
|
| 2026-01-02 22:36:40 | exact 1,293.9321 | roughly twenty small addressesas the corpus states it | t1PKBiv7…label Exchange hot wallet, labelled "Binance" by Lookonchainapplied by analyst, precedence 4 of 5 · this label's own confidence med · method printed in full at L-t1PKBiv7mtzD9bNafYaqyxaENeiNDbpKxxQ | tx ad6a3c3d…verifiedK-2026-01-02 | A classic many-to-one deposit sweep, which supports the hot-wallet reading independently of any third-party label.K-2026-01-02highK-2026-01-02cite
|
| 2026-02-03 23:09:40block 3,227,947 | exact 7,875.00crosses the shielded-pool boundary: the amount is public, the party on the pool side is not | t3ev37Q2…label ZIP 271 lockbox disbursement multisigapplied by consensus, precedence 1 of 5 · this label's own confidence high · method printed in full at L-t3ev37Q2uL1sfTsiJQJiWJoFzQpDhmnUwYo | shielded poolno address exists on this side of the transaction; the pool is not an owner | tx eaedfddd…verifiedK-zip271-lockbox | The first and only chunk ever spent, shielded as ZIP 271 mandates. Blockchair mislabels the whole amount as a fee; it is not a fee, it is shielded value.K-zip271-lockboxhighK-zip271-lockboxcite
|
| 2026-02-03 23:29:23block 3,227,959 | exact 7,438.2295crosses the shielded-pool boundary: the amount is public, the party on the pool side is not | shielded poolno address exists on this side of the transaction; the pool is not an owner | t3ev37Q2…label ZIP 271 lockbox disbursement multisigapplied by consensus, precedence 1 of 5 · this label's own confidence high · method printed in full at L-t3ev37Q2uL1sfTsiJQJiWJoFzQpDhmnUwYo | tx 1f6099a4…verifiedK-zip271-lockbox | 94.5 percent of the chunk returns to the multisig twenty minutes later. Net out of that operation: 436.7705 ZEC.K-zip271-lockboxhighK-zip271-lockboxcite
|
| 2026-04-14 21:24:25block 3,308,125 | exact 129.8202crosses the shielded-pool boundary: the amount is public, the party on the pool side is not | t3ev37Q2…label ZIP 271 lockbox disbursement multisigapplied by consensus, precedence 1 of 5 · this label's own confidence high · method printed in full at L-t3ev37Q2uL1sfTsiJQJiWJoFzQpDhmnUwYo | shielded poolno address exists on this side of the transaction; the pool is not an owner | tx 8a937240…verifiedK-zip271-lockbox | A second, much smaller shielded disbursement.K-zip271-lockboxhighK-zip271-lockboxcite
|
| 2026-06-05no block; not a chain event | undefined not on chainnot derivable from public chain data | Arthur Hayes / Maelstrom, self-disclosed | unspecified venue | claim only | Proves that Hayes said he liquidated his entire ZEC position after the Orchard vulnerability was disclosed. Does not prove venue, size, or any on-chain footprint: the report names no exchange, no address and no amount.N-edge-hayes-exits-positionhighN-edge-hayes-exits-positioncite
|
| 2026-06-05 (reported)no block; not a chain event | undefined $174M positionnot derivable from public chain data | unnamed holder, an Arkham label, entity never named publicly | unspecified | claim only | CoinDesk (5 June 2026) quotes Arkham describing an unnamed holder who lost over half the value of a $174M ZEC position, a party distinct from Arthur Hayes. The underlying Arkham post or X thread, the holder's identity, and any exchange or address were not locatable; Arkham's public pages render only via JavaScript and are not extractable without an account.U-arkham-174m-position-postlowU-arkham-174m-position-postcite
|
The full transaction ids are in the citation on every row, and each resolves at api.blockchair.com/zcash. Research 04 makes publishing them a condition of the page: every on-chain claim here is reproducible against a public API, and that reproducibility is the only credibility the page has.
The 2 January 2026 event, reconstructed
2.1 the 2 january 2026 event, reconstructed — every line verified on chain
Fixed-width ledger. Each line is one transaction: time in UTC, the signed amount, and the two ends. The rule marks the December subtotal.
2025-12-24 19:32:46 −29,999.99 ZEC t1PKBiv7… → t1XKfbZY…
2025-12-25 06:20:32 −1,999.99 ZEC t1PKBiv7… → t1XKfbZY…
2025-12-25 06:22:23 −17,999.99 ZEC t1PKBiv7… → t1XKfbZY…
------------------------------------------------
49,999.97 ZEC total withdrawn to t1XKfbZY…
2026-01-02 15:45:14 +202,076.207 ZEC SHIELDED POOL → t1gGCYpy…
2026-01-02 18:01:43 −50,000.96 ZEC t1XKfbZY… → SHIELDED POOL
2026-01-02 18:53:18 +50,000.5541 ZEC SHIELDED POOL → t1dP1MJw…
2026-01-02 19:31:34 +24,000.9781 ZEC SHIELDED POOL → t1U1NE8w…
2026-01-02 20:35:38 74,001.9317 ZEC t1Ym8XWv… → t1PKBiv7…
2026-01-02 22:36:40 1,293.9321 ZEC roughly twenty small addresses → t1PKBiv7…- total unshielded on 2 January 2026
- exact 276,077.7392 ZEC
- reached the presumed exchange wallet
- 74,001.9317 ZEC · 26.8 per cent
- still parked, never spent
- 202,076.207 ZEC · 73.2 per cent
- shield-to-unshield difference
- 0.4059 ZEC across 52 minutes
The totals above are summed from the steps in zatoshi, so they are exact. The research prints the same total as 276,077.739 ZEC, about 1.63 per cent of the then-circulating supply, and notes that this is higher than the figure the press reported, which counted only the largest tranche.
what the steps establish — the case verdict, in full
276,077.739 ZEC left the shielded pool on 2 January 2026, about 1.63 percent of the then-circulating supply and higher than the figure the press reported, which counted only the largest tranche. 74,001.93 ZEC reached a major exchange hot wallet. Roughly 50,000 of that plausibly originated from the same wallet eight days earlier, which would make the widely-reported whale deposit at most about 24,000 ZEC of genuinely new inflow. Zcash's design means the shield and the unshield cannot be proven to be the same coins, and nothing here establishes who owns any address or that anything was sold.
K-2026-01-02highK-2026-01-02cite
- claim
- K-2026-01-02
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- blockchain.news, 30,000 ZEC withdrawal (source of the t1XKfb… address) Blockchain.News · accessed 2026-08-22
- blockchain.news, 74,002 ZEC to Binance (source of the t1Ym8XWv… address) Blockchain.News · accessed 2026-08-22
- blockchain.news, 202,077 ZEC claim (EmberCN, unverified) Blockchain.News · accessed 2026-08-22
- BeInCrypto, "Over 1% ZEC Unshielded, Are Investors Exiting Privacy Coins?" BeInCrypto · accessed 2026-08-22
- Blockchair Zcash API -- transaction dashboard (method; queried 2026-08-22) Blockchair API · accessed 2026-08-22
- Blockchair Zcash API -- address dashboard (method; queried 2026-08-22) Blockchair API · accessed 2026-08-22
the round trip, stated precisely — the most consequential inference on this page
- 01Fact. The fresh address received exactly 49,999.97 ZEC from the hot wallet on 24 and 25 December 2025, and its balance is 50,000.96 ZEC. The 0.99 ZEC difference is arithmetic; the corpus records no fourth withdrawal, so what it was is not established. Calling it a funding seed would be a behavioural read, and this step is labelled a fact.
- 02Fact. On 2 January 2026 at 18:01:43 it spent all four of its outputs into a transaction with zero transparent outputs, shielding the entire balance.
- 03Fact. 52 minutes later, a transaction with zero transparent inputs created a single output of 50,000.5541 ZEC.
- 04Fact. The difference is 0.4059 ZEC, 0.0008 per cent of the principal.
- 05Fact. That output was consolidated with a 24,000.9781 ZEC unshielding and sent to the hot wallet.
- 06Inference, medium-high. The same party shielded and immediately unshielded about 50,000 ZEC to break the transparent link before returning it. bounded Not a fact, and not provable.
- 07Why not higher. The shielded pool held roughly 4.9M ZEC at the time and is specifically engineered so that an output cannot be linked to an input. A coincidental near-match is not impossible.
- 08Why not lower. Four independent alignments: amount agreement to four decimal places, the fifty-two-minute proximity, the fresh address shielding its entire balance and never appearing again, and the emergent value being routed straight back to the wallet the coins came from.
On-chain records show about 50,000 ZEC leaving this exchange wallet in late December, being fully shielded on 2 January, and a near-identical amount emerging from shielding fifty-two minutes later and returning to the same wallet. Zcash's design means these cannot be proven to be the same coins. If they are, the widely-reported 74,002 ZEC whale deposit represents at most about 24,000 ZEC of new inflow.
2.2 the 202,076 zec unshielding that never moved — two steps, seven and a half months apart
- 2025-12-24 · no transaction id in the corpus
- 1.0 ZEC from unknown
- 2026-01-02 15:45:14 · e179e5b0…
- 202,076.207 ZEC from SHIELDED POOL
Proves that a single entity moved roughly 165 million dollars of ZEC out of shielding and has held it transparently ever since. Proves it did not go to an exchange. Does not prove who owns it, or why. An aggregator dated a 202,077 ZEC move to 2025-12-20 and called it a Binance withdrawal; no address was published, and the only on-chain event of that size is this one, thirteen days later in the wrong direction. Treat the aggregator's date and direction as unconfirmed.
K-202076-unshieldhighK-202076-unshieldcite
- claim
- K-202076-unshield
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- blockchain.news, 202,077 ZEC claim (EmberCN, unverified) Blockchain.News · accessed 2026-08-22
- BeInCrypto, "Over 1% ZEC Unshielded, Are Investors Exiting Privacy Coins?" BeInCrypto · accessed 2026-08-22
- Blockchair Zcash API -- transaction dashboard (method; queried 2026-08-22) Blockchair API · accessed 2026-08-22
- Blockchair Zcash API -- address dashboard (method; queried 2026-08-22) Blockchair API · accessed 2026-08-22
Labelled and candidate addresses
Eight addresses carry a label. One of them is labelled by the consensus rules themselves; the rest are labelled by an analyst or by their own behaviour, and every one of those is somebody else's attribution. The precedence order is consensus, owner filing, exchange confirmation, analyst, behaviour, and it is printed on every row with the method that produced the label. No row on this table asserts who owns an address.
| Address | Label | Labeller and method | On-chain profile and balance | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| t3ev37Q2uL1sfTsiJQJiWJoFzQpDhmnUwYomainnet · L-t3ev37Q2uL1sfTsiJQJiWJoFzQpDhmnUwYo | label ZIP 271 lockbox disbursement multisig | consensus · precedence 1 of 5ZIP 271 writes this address verbatim into the consensus rules and names the key-holders: a 2-of-3 P2SH multisig held by the Zcash Foundation, the Electric Coin Company and Shielded Labs. This is the only ZEC address whose owner is defined by consensus code rather than by a labelling vendor. | exact 78,183.4093 ZECReceived 93,496.64 ZEC lifetime, more than the 78,750 disbursement, because a 7,438.2295 return re-entered the same address. 99.28 percent is still unspent.balance as at 2026-08-22 | L-t3ev37Q2uL1sfTsiJQJiWJoFzQpDhmnUwYohighL-t3ev37Q2uL1sfTsiJQJiWJoFzQpDhmnUwYocite
|
| t2RnBRiqrN1nW4ecZs1Fj3WWjNdnSs4kiX8testnet · L-t2RnBRiqrN1nW4ecZs1Fj3WWjNdnSs4kiX8 | label ZIP 271 lockbox disbursement multisig (testnet) | consensus · precedence 1 of 5The testnet counterpart, named in the same ZIP 271 consensus rules. | undefined no balance statedbalance as at 2026-08-22 | L-t2RnBRiqrN1nW4ecZs1Fj3WWjNdnSs4kiX8highL-t2RnBRiqrN1nW4ecZs1Fj3WWjNdnSs4kiX8cite
|
| t1PKBiv7mtzD9bNafYaqyxaENeiNDbpKxxQmainnet · L-t1PKBiv7mtzD9bNafYaqyxaENeiNDbpKxxQ | label Exchange hot wallet, labelled "Binance" by Lookonchain | analyst · precedence 4 of 5Lookonchain, via X posts relayed by blockchain.news, BeInCrypto and Yahoo; methodology undisclosed. Corroborated by two independent Lookonchain reports, a 25 Dec 2025 withdrawal from it and a 2 Jan 2026 deposit to it. That it is an exchange hot wallet is established by behaviour alone: 554,064,601 ZEC lifetime received across 407,365 outputs, continuous activity since 2021-12-27, textbook change-back-to-self withdrawals and many-to-one deposit sweeps. That it is Binance specifically rests entirely on Lookonchain, with no exchange confirmation and no Arkham or Blockchair tag. | exact 74,881.26 ZECTwo claims of different strength share one address. Exchange hot wallet: high, from behaviour. Binance specifically: medium-high, from a single analyst. The site renders the weaker of the two.balance as at 2026-08-22 | L-t1PKBiv7mtzD9bNafYaqyxaENeiNDbpKxxQmedL-t1PKBiv7mtzD9bNafYaqyxaENeiNDbpKxxQcite
|
| t1Ym8XWvN2joxENB2Nc4TVg1M9PxKfWshc5mainnet · L-t1Ym8XWvN2joxENB2Nc4TVg1M9PxKfWshc5 | label Consolidation address behind the reported 74,002 ZEC exchange deposit | analyst · precedence 4 of 5Lookonchain named the deposit; blockchain.news printed the address; the research pass verified independently against Blockchair that it received 74,001.932 ZEC, matching the reported figure to 0.07 ZEC. Single-day life, 2026-01-02 18:25 to 22:36, zero balance since. Address correctness is high; the owner is unknown. | exact 0 ZECbalance as at 2026-08-22 | L-t1Ym8XWvN2joxENB2Nc4TVg1M9PxKfWshc5medL-t1Ym8XWvN2joxENB2Nc4TVg1M9PxKfWshc5cite
|
| t1XKfbZYsdxR5HSnP25ee5VaAxgCNUtFkFKmainnet · L-t1XKfbZYsdxR5HSnP25ee5VaAxgCNUtFkFK | label Newly created wallet behind the reported 30,000 ZEC exchange withdrawal | analyst · precedence 4 of 5Lookonchain named the withdrawal; blockchain.news printed the address; verified against Blockchair as real, receiving 50,000.96 ZEC in total rather than the 30,000 reported. Created 2025-12-24, shielded its entire balance on 2026-01-02, zero since. Address correctness is high; the owner is unknown. | exact 0 ZECbalance as at 2026-08-22 | L-t1XKfbZYsdxR5HSnP25ee5VaAxgCNUtFkFKmedL-t1XKfbZYsdxR5HSnP25ee5VaAxgCNUtFkFKcite
|
| t1gGCYpyURMo2FcYDSqeR8pgp2Kx9rnT72Vmainnet · L-t1gGCYpyURMo2FcYDSqeR8pgp2Kx9rnT72V | label Unattributed single-entity holding, destination of the 2 Jan 2026 unshielding | behaviour · precedence 5 of 5No public labeller attributes this address. What the chain shows: it received 202,076.207 ZEC directly from the shielded pool on 2026-01-02 15:45, preceded by a 1.0 ZEC test deposit on 2025-12-24, and has never spent. EmberCN reportedly published a destination address for a 202,077 ZEC move, but the aggregator relaying it did not print the address. | exact 202,076.207 ZECUnattributed. Do not name an owner. The only defensible statement is that a single entity moved this out of shielding and has held it transparently ever since.balance as at 2026-08-22 | L-t1gGCYpyURMo2FcYDSqeR8pgp2Kx9rnT72VhighL-t1gGCYpyURMo2FcYDSqeR8pgp2Kx9rnT72Vcite
|
| t1dP1MJwfYr9z7EwWxSpefP6s2p7ewaKx9emainnet · L-t1dP1MJwfYr9z7EwWxSpefP6s2p7ewaKx9e | label Single-use unshielding destination, 2 Jan 2026 18:53 UTC | behaviour · precedence 5 of 5Received 50,000.5541 ZEC from a transaction with zero transparent inputs at block 3,191,051, 52 minutes after 50,000.96 ZEC entered the pool from t1XKfb. No labeller attributes it. The 0.4059 ZEC difference is an alignment, not a link: the pool is designed so that an output cannot be tied to an input. | undefined no balance statedCited only as one leg of the round-trip inference in case K-2026-01-02. Never as an identity.balance as at 2026-08-22 | L-t1dP1MJwfYr9z7EwWxSpefP6s2p7ewaKx9emedL-t1dP1MJwfYr9z7EwWxSpefP6s2p7ewaKx9ecite
|
| t1U1NE8w5KRwnxCZAaxVidW6MchFky97m4Vmainnet · L-t1U1NE8w5KRwnxCZAaxVidW6MchFky97m4V | label Single-use unshielding destination, 2 Jan 2026 19:31 UTC | behaviour · precedence 5 of 5Received 24,000.9781 ZEC from a transaction with zero transparent inputs at block 3,191,091. The origin inside the pool is unknown and unknowable. No labeller attributes it. | undefined no balance statedbalance as at 2026-08-22 | L-t1U1NE8w5KRwnxCZAaxVidW6MchFky97m4VmedL-t1U1NE8w5KRwnxCZAaxVidW6MchFky97m4Vcite
|
Largest transparent holders, and who labels them
| # | Address | ZEC | Script | Behavioural read, inference only |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | t3aPMe94jMKyrgkbH5SSukimvdMFJ59EFhP | exact 438,920.90 | P2SH | Active 2023-04 to 2026-08; 100 outputs, 1,319,834 ZEC received. Large, long-lived, multisig-shaped. No public label. |
| 2 | t1gsBrGZGMyDGZw2icGnMpVBuEGVWip5kH8 | exact 400,001.01 | P2PKH | 4,650,001 ZEC lifetime across only 20 outputs - very large round-number movements. First seen 2025-11-13. No public label. |
| 3 | t1cpC3SS8okUsMQwTqWgzyA1k237B3WCeco | exact 386,846.32 | P2PKH | Steady accumulation since 2026-02-09; 107 outputs; still receiving, last 2026-08-13. No public label. |
| 4 | t3hdTwzcVVGEqDdNKJTBfWvWyaFYNJv7KkA | exact 341,937.19 | P2SH | First seen 2025-10-23; 18 outputs. No public label. |
| 5 | t1Lyq3AcqVcXkBTPHgNsDYoSyRDpugdSkE7 | exact 230,100.45 | P2PKH | One single receipt, 2025-11-20, never spent. Pure cold storage. No public label. |
| 6 | t1VxyLUKaK2tvj5iMRQagued6qpxPNvRkk7 | exact 220,000.00 | P2PKH | Round number. No public label. |
| 7 | t1gGCYpyURMo2FcYDSqeR8pgp2Kx9rnT72V | exact 202,076.21 | P2PKH | The 2 January 2026 unshielding destination. No public label. |
| 8 to 23 | not enumerated by the research pass | undefined | Sixteen addresses the research did not read individually. The gap is printed rather than closed. | |
| 24 | t3ev37Q2uL1sfTsiJQJiWJoFzQpDhmnUwYo | exact 78,183.41 | P2SH | The ZIP 271 lockbox - the only spec-identified address in the top 25. |
| 25 | t1PKBiv7mtzD9bNafYaqyxaENeiNDbpKxxQ | exact 74,881.26 | P2PKH | The hot wallet Lookonchain labels Binance. That label is an analyst's, and it is set out in the registry above. |
A large balance is not evidence of anything. It is not evidence of an exchange, a custodian, a fund, an insider or a seller. Nine-figure ZEC positions sit in addresses that no public labeller has attributed, and the research names that as the single largest attribution gap in Zcash. The column above is headed inference only because that is exactly what it is: script type, first-seen date and output count, from which no owner follows.
R-richlisthighunboundR-richlistcite
- claim
- R-richlist
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- Blockchair API: Zcash Addresses Blockchair API · accessed 2026-08-22
- Blockchair Zcash API -- address dashboard (method; queried 2026-08-22) Blockchair API · accessed 2026-08-22
a tempting false inference, pre-empted — rank 3 and rank 4 above
Entry #3 (386,846.32 ZEC) sits close to Grayscale Zcash Trust's disclosed 388,673.68 ZEC, and entry #4 (341,937.19) is in the neighbourhood of Cypherpunk's 323,394.38. These proximities are not evidence. Neither figure matches. More importantly, both Coinbase Custody and Gemini run omnibus wallets that commingle client assets, so there is no reason to expect any single address to equal any single client's balance, and every reason to expect it not to. Do not publish these as identifications. They appear here only so the page can pre-empt the inference when a reader raises it.
R-false-inferencehighunboundR-false-inferencecite
- claim
- R-false-inference
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- Blockchair API: Zcash Addresses Blockchair API · accessed 2026-08-22
- Grayscale Zcash Trust 10-Q, period ended 2026-06-30 SEC EDGAR · 2026-06-30 · accessed 2026-08-22
- Cypherpunk Technologies 10-Q (six months ended 2026-06-30) StockTitan · 2026-06-30 · accessed 2026-08-22
what labelling infrastructure exists for zcash — surveyed 22 August 2026
- Blockchair
- Rich list live and accurate. No entity labels: ZEC address objects carry no tag field.
- CoinCarp
- Rich list present, every row "None listed". Badly stale: it lists one address at 1,414,573 ZEC against a live balance of 160,205.10, and its rows 2 and 3 are zero on-chain.
- CoinCarp exchange wallets
- Purports to label exchanges. The table is empty and the asset is BEP20-wrapped ZEC on BNB Chain, not native Zcash. Not usable.
- BitInfoCharts
- Rich list present, no labels surfaced. The table did not render for extraction.
- CipherScan
- Privacy score, risk scanner, blend check and shielded-pool analytics. A rich-list feature exists but the route returns 404. Entity labels not evidenced.
- ZEC Stats
- Strong network and pool data. Explicitly no exchange reserves and no entity labels.
- Arkham
- The only meaningful ZEC labeller. Public pages render through JavaScript only and the entity list is not extractable without an account.
- Whale Alert
- Zcash is not in the published supported-chain list.
One vendor labels Zcash entities at all, and its pages are gated. That is the whole of the public labelling infrastructure for this chain, and it is why every attribution on this page names the party who made it.
R-labellinghighunboundR-labellingcite
- claim
- R-labelling
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- Blockchair Zcash API -- address dashboard (method; queried 2026-08-22) Blockchair API · accessed 2026-08-22
- CoinCarp Zcash rich list (stale) CoinCarp · accessed 2026-08-22
- CoinCarp Zcash "exchange wallets" (empty; BEP20) CoinCarp · accessed 2026-08-22
- BitInfoCharts top-100 BitInfoCharts · accessed 2026-08-22
- CipherScan (cipherscan.app) CipherScan · accessed 2026-08-22
- ZEC Stats (zecstats.com) ZEC Stats · accessed 2026-08-22
- Arkham Zcash explorer intel.arkm.com · accessed 2026-08-22
- Whale Alert FAQ (supported chains — no Zcash) Whale Alert · accessed 2026-08-22
Exchange-reserve trends
| Provider | ZEC exchange-reserve series? | What could be verified |
|---|---|---|
| CryptoQuant | An endpoint exists and its page metadata describes an exchange-reserve chart. | Values unreadable: a Cloudflare interstitial, and the API needs a key. The endpoint existing is suggestive; the series may be empty. |
| Glassnode | The balance-on-exchanges metric exists. | ZEC coverage unconfirmed; the endpoint list requires authentication and returned 401. |
| CoinGlass | An exchange-balance tracker exists. | ZEC is not present on it. CoinGlass ZEC coverage is derivatives, liquidations and funding only. |
| Nansen | Cited as the chart source in a January 2026 article. | Not independently verifiable; Nansen ZEC coverage is not documented publicly. |
| ZEC Stats | No. | Confirmed: it publishes pool, supply and derivatives data and explicitly no exchange reserves. |
| IntoTheBlock | Not found. | No ZEC exchange-flow product located. |
This is a genuine data gap, and the page says so plainly rather than reprinting a percentage from an aggregator.
R-reserve-providershighunboundR-reserve-providerscite
- claim
- R-reserve-providers
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- CryptoQuant ZEC exchange reserve (Cloudflare-blocked) cryptoquant.com · accessed 2026-08-22
- CoinGlass exchange balances (no ZEC) coinglass.com · accessed 2026-08-22
- ZEC Stats (zecstats.com) ZEC Stats · accessed 2026-08-22
the circulating number, and why it is unusable — a headline that cannot be true
A syndicated article of 27 January 2026 was headlined "Exchanges' ZEC Balance Falls 44%", while its body text cited Nansen for a 48 per cent drop "during this period" - the past twenty-four hours - and gave no absolute figures at all. A collapse of roughly 46 per cent in aggregate exchange balances in one day is not a plausible physical event. Flagged unreliable; the percentage is not cited here.
R-reserves-44pctlowunboundR-reserves-44pctcite
- claim
- R-reserves-44pct
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- low
- Yahoo/AMBCrypto "Exchanges' ZEC Balance Falls 44%" (unreliable) Yahoo Finance · accessed 2026-08-22
what can be said, verified 2026-08-22 — from the loaders, not from an aggregator
- shielded, summed from the four pool buckets
- exact 4,389,764.00 ZEC
- shielded share of supply
- 26 to 26.8 per cent
- value of the shielded pools
- $3.44B to $3.60B
- issued, summed from all five buckets
- 16,889,987.00 of 21,000,000 ZEC
- largest identified transparent institutional position
- Grayscale Zcash Trust, 388,673.68 ZEC, about 2.3 per cent of supply
The share is a range and not a point: CipherScan reads 26.0 per cent at block 3,456,227 and ZEC Stats reads 26.8 per cent, so the site cites the range. The research's own supply bullet quotes ZEC Stats at 4,530,445 ZEC shielded and 16,890,961 ZEC issued; neither reconciles with the buckets the package ships, which is why both are printed and neither is presented as the other.
Because both Gemini and Binance issue transparent deposit addresses, exchange balances are in principle observable. Nobody publishes the address sets needed to compute them.
R-supply-distributionmedR-supply-distributioncite
- claim
- R-supply-distribution
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- med
- CipherScan — Ironwood migration tracker CipherScan · 2026-08-22 · accessed 2026-08-22
- ZEC Stats (zecstats.com) ZEC Stats · accessed 2026-08-22
- CoinGecko — Zcash CoinGecko · accessed 2026-08-22
- Coinglass ZEC derivatives coinglass.com · accessed 2026-08-22
- Coin Metrics, State of the Network #338 Coin Metrics · 2025-11-08 · accessed 2026-08-22
- Gemini support, ZEC deposit address type support.gemini.com · accessed 2026-08-22
caveat on explorer arithmetic — not a rounding error
Blockchair's Zcash stats endpoint currently returns a negative circulation of −4,638,503.75 ZEC. Naive UTXO accounting cannot handle shielded value pools. Treat any ZEC supply or flow figure taken from a generic multi-chain explorer with suspicion unless it is address-level transparent data.
R-explorer-arithmetichighunboundR-explorer-arithmeticcite
- claim
- R-explorer-arithmetic
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- Blockchair Zcash stats API Blockchair API · 2026-08-22 · accessed 2026-08-22
Dev fund and insider disclosed sales
The numbering below follows the research: 5.1, 5.2, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6. The gap at 5.3 is kept rather than closed - 5.3 is the round-trip inference, and it is rendered in block 03 beside the ledger it argues about.
5.1 the zip 271 lockbox — facts high - downstream destination zero, by design
- 2025-11-24 · 525f4402…
- +78,750.00 ZEC to the multisig
- 2026-02-03 · eaedfddd…
- −7,875.00 ZEC into shielded outputs
- 2026-02-03 · 1f6099a4…
- +7,438.2295 ZEC to the multisig
- 2026-04-14 · 8a937240…
- −129.8202 ZEC into shielded outputs
- net removed
- 566.5907 ZEC · 0.72 per cent
- remaining unspent
- 78,183.4093 ZEC · 99.28 per cent
Fact: 78,183.4093 ZEC, 99.28 percent of the lockbox, is still sitting in the multisig, with nine of ten chunks completely untouched. Fact: the 566.5907 ZEC that has moved went into shielded outputs. Inference, medium: the amounts retained are consistent with grant disbursements under ZIP 1016. Not knowable: whether any recipient sold. ZIP 271 requires each chunk to be spent completely into a shielded output, so the trail terminates at the first hop by design, not by any failure of research.
K-zip271-lockboxL-t3ev37Q2uL1sfTsiJQJiWJoFzQpDhmnUwYohighK-zip271-lockboxcite
- claim
- K-zip271-lockbox
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- ZIP 271 (dev fund extension + 78,750 ZEC disbursement) Zcash Improvement Proposals · accessed 2026-08-22
- ZIP 255, Deployment of the NU6.1 Network Upgrade (Mainnet activation height 3,146,400) Zcash Improvement Proposals · 2024-11-23 · accessed 2026-08-22
- ZIP 1016, Community and Coinholder Funding Model Zcash Improvement Proposals · accessed 2026-08-22
- Alternate explorer cross-check mainnet.zcashexplorer.app · accessed 2026-08-22
- Blockchair Zcash API -- transaction dashboard (method; queried 2026-08-22) Blockchair API · accessed 2026-08-22
- Blockchair Zcash API -- address dashboard (method; queried 2026-08-22) Blockchair API · accessed 2026-08-22
5.2 the foundation, ecc and bootstrap, and community grants — positions disclosed, sales not
- Zcash Foundation
- 85,412 ZEC ($21.2M of $36.69M liquid assets), Q1 2026. No transaction-level sale disclosure. The Q1 2026 report gives $36.69M of liquid assets against a ZEC-denominated income stream, which necessarily implies historical conversion, but no amounts, dates, venues or counterparties are published. The report's own PDF was blocked to the research pass, so the breakdown reaches this page through secondary reporting.
- ECC and Bootstrap
- ~112,000 ZEC + ~$806K (Q3 2024) declining to ~83,000 ZEC + ~$1.0M (12 Mar 2025); carries a $3.4M liability to Electric Notes, LLC. The transparency report records gains and losses at the point of a subsequent sale and discloses no quantities, venues or methods. The public series appears to stop at the fourth quarter of 2023, which is the research's own hedge and is left as it stands.
- Zcash Community Grants
- $20.5M committed (excl. cancelled), $18.7M paid, $1.9M open, 183 approved grants; roughly $3.5-3.8M explicitly promotional. The accounting is USD-denominated with no transaction ids, no addresses and no timestamps, so grant flows cannot be tied to chain activity at all.
R-zf-ecc-zcgcite
- claim
- R-zf-ecc-zcg
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- med
- ZF Q1 2026 PDF Zcash Foundation · accessed 2026-08-22
- ECC — Transparency Report Q3 2024 (PDF) Electric Coin Company · 2025-03-12 · accessed 2026-08-22
- OpenZcash ZCG disbursements OpenZcash · accessed 2026-08-22
5.4 grayscale zcash trust — SEC EDGAR - the only fully documented recurring institutional outflow
| Date | ZEC held | Fair value | Event |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-12-31 | 392,723.58934327 | $22,040k | |
| H1 2025 | 4,888.23272520 ZEC contributed; 4,883.12100169 distributed for the Sponsor's Fee. | ||
| 2025-06-30 | 392,728.70106678 | $15,324k | |
| 2025-12-31 | 393,522.33134026 | $200,441k | Cost basis $47,911k. |
| H1 2026 | ZEC contributed: nil. 4,848.64774083 distributed for the Sponsor's Fee. | ||
| 2026-06-30 | 388,673.68359943 | $155,252k | Cost basis $47,320k. NAV per share $32.15, against $41.51 at 31 December 2025. 4,829,300 shares outstanding. |
The 393,522.33 figure is the 31 December 2025 line, not the Q2 position: the two are routinely mis-paired. Custodian: Coinbase Custody Trust Company, LLC, with Coinbase, Inc. as prime broker and the keys held offline in the Vault Balance. Roughly 9,700 ZEC a year leaves in kind and the resale is undisclosed. No addresses and no proof of reserves appear in the S-3, the S-3/A or the 10-Q.
R-grayscale-ledgerN-grayscale-zcash-trusthighunboundR-grayscale-ledgercite
- claim
- R-grayscale-ledger
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- Grayscale Zcash Trust 10-Q, period ended 2026-06-30 SEC EDGAR · 2026-06-30 · accessed 2026-08-22
- Grayscale Zcash Trust S-3 (2025-11-26) SEC EDGAR · 2025-11-26 · accessed 2026-08-22
- Grayscale Zcash Trust S-3/A summary (2026-08-18) StockTitan · 2026-08-18 · accessed 2026-08-22
5.5 dcg and silbert — real, documented - and share sales, not ZEC
148 Form 144 filings on the Trust, 84 in 2024 and 64 in 2025, spanning 24 January 2024 to 6 November 2025. The filers, by CIK: Digital Currency Group, Inc.; DCG International Investments Ltd.; Silbert Family Investments LLC; Silbert Barry E.; and Lenihan Lawrence D Jr. The DCG entities filed in clustered consecutive-day runs, which is the signature of a programmatic Rule 144 disposal schedule rather than a proven one.
- filed 2025-11-05 · Silbert Family Investments LLC
- 9,753 shares, $407,312.59 aggregate market value, sold 5 November 2025 on OTCQX through Canaccord Genuity Inc.; originally acquired 24 October 2017 from the issuer for cash.
- filed 2025-11-06 · Silbert Barry E.
- 1,000 shares, $47,250.00 aggregate market value, sold 6 November 2025 on OTCQX through Capital Institutional Services, Inc.; originally acquired 11 July 2018 in a privately negotiated purchase from the issuer.
These are ZCSH trust shares traded on OTCQX between investors. They move no ZEC on-chain, create no exchange inflow and add no ZEC sell pressure. Reporting them as insider ZEC selling would be wrong. The juxtaposition worth stating as fact, and not as an accusation: the same corporate family that filed dozens of Rule 144 notices through 2024 and 2025 is now, per the S-3/A of 18 and 19 August 2026, in discussions for ~200,000 ZEC (~$110M) to be contributed to that Trust ahead of the proposed NYSE Arca listing - discussions the filing is explicit are not binding agreements or commitments to purchase.
R-form144N-barry-silbertN-edge-dcg-contributes-etfhighunboundR-form144cite
- claim
- R-form144
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- Form 144, Barry E. Silbert (2025-11-06) SEC EDGAR · 2025-11-06 · accessed 2026-08-22
- Form 144, Silbert Family Investments LLC (2025-11-05) SEC EDGAR · 2025-11-05 · accessed 2026-08-22
- Filer identity lookups SEC EDGAR · accessed 2026-08-22
- Grayscale Zcash Trust S-3/A summary (2026-08-18) StockTitan · 2026-08-18 · accessed 2026-08-22
5.6 cypherpunk technologies — accumulation stated, nothing preventing the opposite
323,394.38 ZEC, $110.5M total cost, $341.83 avg cost (30 Jun 2026 10-Q); ~1.92% of supply; stated target 5% of network. Custodian: Gemini Space Station, from the 10-Q's own risk-factor language - not Coinbase Prime and not Anchorage. Gemini issues transparent addresses, so the holding is in principle on transparent addresses, but no address has been published by anyone. Since 18 Aug 2026 the company has run a 4.2 GSol/s Equihash fleet, about 18 per cent of network hashrate, acquired from Winklevoss Capital for $33.33M in equity; at a network-wide reward of roughly 43,800 ZEC a month an 18 per cent share implies about 7,880 ZEC a month, which is arithmetic on a hashrate share and not a disclosed production figure. There is no statement of intent to sell, and the stated target is 5 per cent of supply; there is also no lock-up and no covenant preventing sales. Zooko Wilcox joined as a paid strategic advisor, which is relevant to any insider framing, though the filings reviewed disclose no ZEC compensation for the role.
R-cypherpunkN-cypherpunk-technologiesN-edge-winklevoss-capital-sells-mining-fleetmedunboundR-cypherpunkcite
- claim
- R-cypherpunk
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- med
- Cypherpunk Technologies 10-Q (six months ended 2026-06-30) StockTitan · 2026-06-30 · accessed 2026-08-22
- crypto.news, "Cypherpunk becomes largest Zcash miner in $33M deal" crypto.news · 2026-06-05 · accessed 2026-08-22
- Gemini support, ZEC deposit address type support.gemini.com · accessed 2026-08-22
Allegations against the evidence
Each row states the allegation, who made it and when, the evidence that was actually offered for it, and what that evidence supports. Five of the nine offer no chain data of any kind; one offers nothing at all. Reporting the allegation without the fourth column is how these travel.
| # | Allegation | Who and when | Evidence actually offered | Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Zcash should be considered fraudulent and a sophisticated inflation scam until proven otherwise: a venture investor with early access to a frontier model could have found and exploited the Orchard inflation bug before Taylor Hornby disclosed it on 29 May 2026. | TechLeaks24, on Substack2026-08-08 | No blockchain data. No addresses. No transactions. No supply audit. It rests on circumstantial venture connections, timing correlations, a disclosure that one fund accumulated ZEC in February 2026, the Orchard balance falling from about 5.2M to 4.4M by mid-July, and about 1.9M ZEC migrating to Ironwood in two weeks. | This is TechLeaks24's inference (8 Aug 2026), arguing that roughly 1.9M ZEC migrating within two weeks is suspiciously fast, and separately alleging early Claude Opus access by VCs before Hornby. No evidence is offered for either claim, and the migration pace is equally explained by Orchard's exit-only design forcing every legitimate holder to move. Cite only with an explicit speculation label, never as fact.U-techleaks24-exploiter-migration-theorylowU-techleaks24-exploiter-migration-theorycite
|
| 2 | The Zcash supply is manipulated or inflated. | various, after the Orchard disclosure2026 | None offered. The column is empty, and that is the finding. | Rejected by Zooko Wilcox, in a joint statement with Shielded Labs' Jason McGee on 15 June 2026: "we believe prior exploitation is unlikely and therefore that legitimate Orchard funds are recoverable and the current supply of Zcash is sound. However, users cannot currently verify that the Zcash supply is sound, and they should not have to rely on our assessment, or anyone else's." That is the fairest available summary and it is notable for conceding the verification gap. Neither side has produced an audit.C2C9medC2cite
|
| 3 | Arthur Hayes used his followers as exit liquidity on ZEC. | ZachXBTJune 2026 | For ZEC: none. No wallet, no exchange, no amount, no transaction. The only address-level data produced in that episode concerned a different asset entirely. | A conduct critique, not on-chain evidence. Hayes's ZEC exit rests only on his own statement; his response was that he sold to a willing buyer at a market price. Confidence that he sold: high, by self-disclosure. Confidence in venue, size or route: zero.N-arthur-hayeshighN-arthur-hayescite
|
| 4 | Arkham can surveil Zcash: 53 per cent of Zcash is tracked. | Arkham Intelligence marketing2025-12-08 | Transparent-side coverage statistics: 53 per cent of transactions labelled, $420B of volume attributed, 48 per cent of inputs and outputs attributed, 37 per cent of balances labelled. | Materially misleading as originally framed, and publicly corrected. Mert Mumtaz of Helius said Arkham had not been able to do anything with shielded transactions while counting them in the figure; Zooko Wilcox agreed the language was misleading. Arkham later clarified that shielded transactions are not accounted for in the labelled percentage. The underlying transparent-side coverage is real; the privacy-defeat implication is not.R-arkham-framinghighunboundR-arkham-framingcite
|
| 5 | 202,077 ZEC was withdrawn from Binance on 20 December 2025. | blockchain.news, attributing @EmberCN2025-12-20 | No address printed by the aggregator. | Unverified, with a date conflict. The only movement of about 202,07x ZEC locatable on-chain is a shielded-pool exit on 2026-01-02 15:45:14, which is not a Binance withdrawal and is thirteen days later. Either the aggregator mis-dated or mis-described an event, or it refers to something that cannot be found. Do not cite.R-claim-embercn-202077lowunboundR-claim-embercn-202077cite
|
| 6 | Balances of ZEC held on exchanges fell 44 per cent. | Yahoo and AMBCrypto syndication, sourcing Nansen2026-01-27 | The headline says 44 per cent; the body says 48 per cent during "this period", which is the past 24 hours; no absolute figures are given at all. | Internally inconsistent and physically implausible: a collapse of roughly 46 per cent in aggregate exchange balances in a single day is not a plausible physical event. Do not cite the percentage.R-reserves-44pctlowunboundR-reserves-44pctcite
|
| 7 | More than 200,000 ZEC, about 1.2 per cent of supply, was unshielded in the first week of January 2026, sparking sell-off concerns. | BeInCrypto, syndicated to YahooJanuary 2026 | Directionally correct. | Substantially understated and mis-framed. The verified figure is 276,077.74 ZEC in a single day, 2 January 2026, about 1.63 per cent of supply. But 73.2 per cent of it never went to an exchange and has not moved since. The sell-off framing is the part that fails.K-2026-01-02highK-2026-01-02cite
|
| 8 | Barry Silbert sold Zcash. | multiple outletsNovember 2025 | Form 144 filings, which are real. | Half-true and routinely misreported. What was sold was ZCSH trust shares on OTCQX: 1,000 shares for $47,250 by Barry E. Silbert personally on 6 November 2025, and 9,753 shares for $407,312.59 by Silbert Family Investments LLC on 5 November 2025. No ZEC moved on-chain.N-barry-silbertT2025-11-06highN-barry-silbertcite
|
| 9 | A holder lost half the value of a $174M ZEC position. | Arkham, via CoinDesk2026-06-05 | One quotation: "He hasn't sold ZEC for 6 months. Ouch." | CoinDesk (5 June 2026) quotes Arkham describing an unnamed holder who lost over half the value of a $174M ZEC position, a party distinct from Arthur Hayes. The underlying Arkham post or X thread, the holder's identity, and any exchange or address were not locatable; Arkham's public pages render only via JavaScript and are not extractable without an account.U-arkham-174m-position-postlowU-arkham-174m-position-postcite
|
What this page does not support
9.1 refusals attached to findings — ten claims the research would not make
Each item below is something the research examined and would not assert. Seven further refusals - the TechLeaks24 theory, the exit-liquidity allegation, the Silbert share sales, the aggregator's 202,077 ZEC withdrawal, the 44 per cent exchange-balance headline, the first-week-of-January framing and Arkham's coverage claim - are the assessment column of the allegations table above, and are not repeated here.
- unattributed
That anybody in particular owns t1gGCYpyURMo2FcYDSqeR8pgp2Kx9rnT72V, the address the largest unshielding of the cycle went to.
No public labeller attributes it. An aggregator reportedly published a destination address for a 202,077 ZEC move and the relay did not print it. Do not name an owner. The only defensible statement is that a single entity moved this out of shielding on 2 January 2026 and has held it transparently ever since.
L-t1gGCYpyURMo2FcYDSqeR8pgp2Kx9rnT72VhighL-t1gGCYpyURMo2FcYDSqeR8pgp2Kx9rnT72Vcite
- claim
- L-t1gGCYpyURMo2FcYDSqeR8pgp2Kx9rnT72V
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- blockchain.news, 202,077 ZEC claim (EmberCN, unverified) Blockchain.News · accessed 2026-08-22
- Blockchair Zcash API -- address dashboard (method; queried 2026-08-22) Blockchair API · accessed 2026-08-22
- contradicted
That rich-list entries 3 and 4 are Grayscale and Cypherpunk, because their balances are close to the disclosed figures.
Neither figure matches, and both Coinbase Custody and Gemini run omnibus wallets that commingle client assets. There is no reason to expect any single address to equal any single client's balance. Do not publish these as identifications.
R-false-inferencehighunboundR-false-inferencecite
- claim
- R-false-inference
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- Blockchair API: Zcash Addresses Blockchair API · accessed 2026-08-22
- Grayscale Zcash Trust 10-Q, period ended 2026-06-30 SEC EDGAR · 2026-06-30 · accessed 2026-08-22
- not-verified
That the January 2026 unshielder and the December 2025 withdrawer are the same party.
A medium-high inference and not provable. The shielded pool is engineered so that an output cannot be linked to an input, and a coincidental near-match is not impossible. The site publishes the alignment and refuses the identification.
K-2026-01-02highK-2026-01-02cite
- claim
- K-2026-01-02
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- Blockchair Zcash API -- transaction dashboard (method; queried 2026-08-22) Blockchair API · accessed 2026-08-22
- not-verified
That the 74,001.93 ZEC which reached the exchange hot wallet was sold.
The chain shows arrival at a hot wallet and nothing further. A deposit is not a sale, and no venue, order or counterparty is observable from public data.
K-2026-01-02highK-2026-01-02cite
- claim
- K-2026-01-02
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- Blockchair Zcash API -- transaction dashboard (method; queried 2026-08-22) Blockchair API · accessed 2026-08-22
- blockchain.news, 74,002 ZEC to Binance (source of the t1Ym8XWv… address) Blockchain.News · accessed 2026-08-22
- not-verified
That any dev-fund coin reached any exchange.
No dev-fund coins were traced to any exchange and, because ZIP 271 requires each chunk to be spent completely into a shielded output, they structurally cannot be. Any claim to have traced the dev fund to an exchange is false by construction. This is a design property, not a research failure.
K-zip271-lockboxhighK-zip271-lockboxcite
- claim
- K-zip271-lockbox
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- ZIP 271 (dev fund extension + 78,750 ZEC disbursement) Zcash Improvement Proposals · accessed 2026-08-22
- Blockchair Zcash API -- transaction dashboard (method; queried 2026-08-22) Blockchair API · accessed 2026-08-22
- not-verified
That the ZEC withdrawn from the Grayscale Trust as the Sponsor's Fee was sold.
Roughly 9,700 ZEC a year leaves the Trust in kind. The filings do not say whether the Sponsor then sells it, and no address is published that would let anyone check.
R-sponsor-feehighunboundR-sponsor-feecite
- claim
- R-sponsor-fee
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- Grayscale Zcash Trust 10-Q, period ended 2026-06-30 SEC EDGAR · 2026-06-30 · accessed 2026-08-22
- not-verified
That Cypherpunk Technologies intends to sell its ZEC.
There is no statement of intent to sell, and the stated strategy is accumulation towards a target of 5 per cent of supply. That reading is an inference at medium confidence: no lock-up, covenant or public commitment prevents sales, and no ZEC-denominated production disclosure exists yet.
R-cypherpunkmedunboundR-cypherpunkcite
- claim
- R-cypherpunk
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- med
- Cypherpunk Technologies 10-Q (six months ended 2026-06-30) StockTitan · 2026-06-30 · accessed 2026-08-22
- crypto.news, "Cypherpunk becomes largest Zcash miner in $33M deal" crypto.news · 2026-06-05 · accessed 2026-08-22
- contradicted
That headlines reading "ZEC Whale Alert" are Whale Alert output.
Zcash does not appear in Whale Alert's published supported-chain list. The phrasing is editorial. The reporting accounts that actually cover ZEC flows are Lookonchain and EmberCN, relayed through aggregators.
R-whale-alerthighunboundR-whale-alertcite
- claim
- R-whale-alert
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- Whale Alert FAQ (supported chains — no Zcash) Whale Alert · accessed 2026-08-22
- contradicted
CoinCarp's Zcash rich list.
Materially wrong. Its first entry overstates a live balance by about 8.8 times, and its second and third rows are zero on-chain. It appears on this page only as evidence that the source is broken, and its figures are not repeated anywhere else on this site.
R-labellinghighunboundR-labellingcite
- claim
- R-labelling
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- CoinCarp Zcash rich list (stale) CoinCarp · accessed 2026-08-22
- Blockchair Zcash API -- address dashboard (method; queried 2026-08-22) Blockchair API · accessed 2026-08-22
- contradicted
Any ZEC supply or flow figure taken from a generic multi-chain explorer.
Blockchair's Zcash stats endpoint currently returns a negative circulation of −4,638,503.75 ZEC. Naive UTXO accounting cannot handle shielded value pools. Treat any such figure with suspicion unless it is address-level transparent data.
R-explorer-arithmetichighunboundR-explorer-arithmeticcite
- claim
- R-explorer-arithmetic
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- Blockchair Zcash stats API Blockchair API · 2026-08-22 · accessed 2026-08-22
9.2 from the quarantine — records that cannot be published as fact
The quarantine is where a claim goes when it cannot be published as fact. These four bear on this page. Two more, the unlocated Arkham post and the TechLeaks24 theory, are in the allegations table above.
- not-verified
Ninety-nine percent of Zcash Founders Reward withdrawals are linkable on-chain without qualification.
The sourceable figure from Kappos et al. (USENIX Security 2018) is narrower: 1,943 of 1,953 (99.5%) of the 250.0001-ZEC-denominated withdrawals already flagged by the founder heuristic also matched a separate 6-to-10-block timing pattern. The unqualified 99.x-percent shorthand overstates the finding; publish it only with the withdrawal-subset qualifier attached.
U-fr-withdrawals-linkable-headlinelowU-fr-withdrawals-linkable-headlinecite
- claim
- U-fr-withdrawals-linkable-headline
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- low
- Kappos, Yousaf, Maller, Meiklejohn — An Empirical Analysis of Anonymity in Zcash, USENIX Security 2018 USENIX · accessed 2026-08-22
- PDFsam Kappos Sec18 Full Proceedings discovery.ucl.ac.uk · accessed 2026-08-22
- unlocatable
Grayscale has publicly disclosed the on-chain ZEC address holding the Trust's assets.
Checked Grayscale's S-3 (26 Nov 2025), S-3/A (18 Aug 2026) and 10-Q (period ended 30 Jun 2026) directly: all three name Coinbase Custody Trust Company, LLC as custodian but none discloses a wallet address or publishes proof-of-reserves. No Grayscale-published ZEC address exists in any filing checked. (Custodian corrected by the HANDOFF-03 session: this field said Gemini, which is Cypherpunk Technologies' custodian, not the Trust's. Research 04 quotes the filing directly - "Coinbase Custody Trust Company, LLC (the 'Custodian') ... responsible for safeguarding the ZEC" - and network.json's N-grayscale-zcash-trust already said Coinbase Custody. The substantive finding, that no filing discloses an address or proof of reserves, is unchanged.)
U-grayscale-published-zec-addresslowU-grayscale-published-zec-addresscite
- claim
- U-grayscale-published-zec-address
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- low
- Grayscale Zcash Trust 10-Q, period ended 2026-06-30 SEC EDGAR · 2026-06-30 · accessed 2026-08-22
- Grayscale Zcash Trust S-3 (2025-11-26) SEC EDGAR · 2025-11-26 · accessed 2026-08-22
- Grayscale Zcash Trust S-3/A summary (2026-08-18) StockTitan · 2026-08-18 · accessed 2026-08-22
- not-verified
The current balance of the NU6 development-fund lockbox is publicly known.
No current lockbox balance is published anywhere on electriccoin.co, zfnd.org or z.cash. The only figures available are the one-time 78,750 ZEC NU6.1 disbursement under ZIP 271 and a separate approximately 20,000 ZEC Q2 2026 accrual figure; neither is a running current total.
U-nu6-lockbox-current-balancelowno source: nothing could be located to cite, which is why the record is quarantined - unlocatable
Zooko Wilcox sold ZEC in order to pay a tax bill.
Research 04 section 7 item 10 searched for this specifically and found no source at all. The only Zooko-and-tax item it surfaced is a 2017-era Cointelegraph piece about Snowden and tax evasion as a general property of privacy coins, which is a different subject entirely. Treat the claim as unsourced until a primary quote is produced. HANDOFF-02 section 3 names it as one of the five corrected premises that may appear only in this file, so it is recorded here even though nothing in the package asserts it.
U-zooko-sold-for-taxeslowno source: nothing could be located to cite, which is why the record is quarantined
9.3 what could not be verified — thirteen open questions
Thirteen questions the research pass asked and could not answer. They are printed because a page that reports only what it found, and not what it looked for and missed, is telling the reader how much it knows without telling them how much there is to know.
- 01The original Arkham post behind the $174M figure. The entity, the custodian and the address are all unlocated; Arkham's public pages render only through JavaScript.
- 02Any Arkham ZEC entity label for Coinbase Prime, Coinbase Custody, Grayscale, Cypherpunk or DCG. None found. Arkham's own Zcash page names only the United States government, from the AlphaBay seizure, and anonymous traders.
- 03Any Grayscale-published ZEC address or proof of reserves. The S-3, the S-3/A and the 10-Q were checked; the custodian is named and the addresses are not.
- 04Any Cypherpunk-published ZEC address. The 10-Q names the custodian; no addresses.
- 05Any report of ZEC moving to Coinbase Prime. Zero results across Whale Alert, Lookonchain, Arkham, Spot On Chain, EmberCN and PeckShield. Every identifiable large flow in 2025 and 2026 concerns Binance.
- 06Anchorage, BitGo or Copper holding ZEC. No primary evidence for any of the three.
- 07Transaction-level sale disclosures from the Zcash Foundation, the Electric Coin Company or Zcash Community Grants. No dev-fund coins were traced to any exchange and, because ZIP 271 mandates shielding, structurally cannot be.
- 08Founders' Reward address tracing to exchanges in 2025 and 2026. Kappos and colleagues at USENIX Security 2018 remain the canonical clustering work; the Electric Coin Company's own transfers post is blocked to robots, and no address list was extracted in this pass.
- 09Any public ZEC exchange-reserve series with readable values.
- 10That Zooko Wilcox sold ZEC to pay a tax bill. Searched specifically; no source found. Treat as unsourced.
- 11Owner identity for every nine-figure address in the rich list. This is the single largest attribution gap in Zcash.
- 12Whether the January 2026 unshielder and the December 2025 withdrawer are the same party.
- 13Mining-pool payout routing, for ViaBTC, F2Pool and Foundry, to exchanges. No published analysis was found.
R-gapscite
- claim
- R-gaps
- last verified
- 2026-08-22
- confidence
- high
- Arkham Zcash explorer intel.arkm.com · accessed 2026-08-22
- Grayscale Zcash Trust 10-Q, period ended 2026-06-30 SEC EDGAR · 2026-06-30 · accessed 2026-08-22
- Cypherpunk Technologies 10-Q (six months ended 2026-06-30) StockTitan · 2026-06-30 · accessed 2026-08-22
- Whale Alert FAQ (supported chains — no Zcash) Whale Alert · accessed 2026-08-22
- Kappos, Yousaf, Maller, Meiklejohn — An Empirical Analysis of Anonymity in Zcash, USENIX Security 2018 USENIX · accessed 2026-08-22
- CryptoQuant ZEC exchange reserve (Cloudflare-blocked) cryptoquant.com · accessed 2026-08-22
Every line above is a search that returned nothing, so the citation lists the places that were searched rather than a source for the finding. A negative result has no source; it has a date and a method.
Sources for this surface: the Zcash Improvement Proposals (ZIP 271, ZIP 255, ZIP 1015, ZIP 1016); SEC EDGAR, for the Grayscale Zcash Trust 10-Q, S-3, S-3/A and the November 2025 Forms 144, and for the Cypherpunk Technologies 10-Q; the Blockchair Zcash API, for the address dashboards and the thirteen transactions listed above, queried 2026-08-22; mainnet.zcashexplorer.app; Arkham announcements and research pages; The Defiant; crypto.news; BeInCrypto; Yahoo Finance; blockchain.news, relaying Lookonchain and EmberCN; CoinDesk; ZEC Stats; CipherScan; CoinCarp; and the Whale Alert FAQ. Every URL, publisher and access date is on the sources page, which is where URLs live on this site.