In less than ten months, a regulated stock exchange in the EU will not be able to operate an account with a coin that hides transactions. Monero has already been removed from these exchanges. And Zcash, listed in the same regulations, just broke through $800 and grew bigger in a week than the entire crypto market combined. This is not a market failure, just a definition gap.
Key takeaways:
- Article 79 of the EU AMLR regulation will prohibit regulated platforms from operating anonymity-enhancing coin accounts from July 2027. It explicitly mentions Monero, Zcash and Dash.
- However, Zcash has two layers: public and protected. Thanks to the preview keys, the exchange can leave it in the offer, allowing payments only to public addresses. Monero does not have this option and that is why it disappeared from regulated platforms faster.
- The course was driven by institutions, not ideology. Grayscale has filed an application to U.S. regulators to convert its Zcash fund into an exchange-traded ETF.
On Friday and Saturday, Zcash grew by more than 40 percent overnight and touched $805.52. On Sunday, it traded even higher, around $850. Readings between platforms differ by several dollars, so it is better to treat them as a range rather than a point. The pace is certain: during the week, ZEC gained about 65 percent while the entire cryptocurrency market increased by less than 21 percent.
What does Article 79 actually prohibit?
The practical effect for the holder is simple and inconvenient. It’s not that you can’t have such a coin in your private wallet. The point is that there will be no place to legally sell it in the EU, because it will disappear from all licensed platforms.
Monero has been through this scenario before. Kraken, Binance and OKX removed XMR from the European market well ahead of schedule because there is no compliance path with this structure. There is no mechanism that would allow the auditor to reconstruct the transaction history.
Why Zcash Might Survive a Privacy Ban
This is where the difference begins, which the market is probably pricing in. Zcash has had two types of addresses from the beginning. Public ones work like in Bitcoin, i.e. everyone can see the sender, recipient and amount. Protected hides all three things.
In addition, there is a preview key, i.e. a separate key that gives the right to read the history of the address, but not to spend funds from it. The owner can give it to an auditor, bank or office and show his transactions without giving up control over them.
This is a real gateway for the stock exchange. It can leave ZEC in the offer, accept deposits and withdrawals only to public addresses, and leave the protected layer to the user outside the platform. In May 2026, ZEC was still listed on Coinbase, Robinhood, and Phemex, among others, while XMR disappeared from most regulated venues.
I think this is the most interesting element of this story and also its greatest unknown. The provision talks about coins that enhance anonymity, not whether anonymity can be turned off. The market today assumes that Zcash will fall on the right side of this definition. There is no decision by the supervisor yet and this is a mere assumption, not a determination.
Which really set the course in motion
Not just a dispute over definitions, but a request to American supervision. Grayscale filed a form around August 21 signaling its intention to convert the Zcash Trust into an ETF listed on NYSE Arca. The ticker will be ZCSH and the annual fee will be 2.5 percent. This is the same scheme that the company previously carried out with Bitcoin and Ether.
The second leg is institutional demand. A subsidiary of Digital Currency Group is in talks to purchase 200,000 ZEC for approximately USD 110 million. The Multicoin Capital fund revealed a large position in this asset back in May and caused an increase of over 30 percent in one day.
The scale of the movement is only visible when compared to the previous weeks. For most of August, Zcash traded between $500 and $700. Its previous peak in November 2025 was around $750.
What does this mean for you
An application for supervision is not a consent of the supervision and the date of the decision is not known. The history of quotations of this asset shows a repeatable pattern: jumps of over 30 percent a day were canceled out by a correction of a similar size within a few days. Buying on the third day of such a move is different than buying before it.
Today, the market is pricing in the thesis that a privacy cryptocurrency will survive the privacy ban because it can turn it off on request. The overseer hasn’t said a word yet.
