Now things are getting interesting.

Arkham (the platform specializing in on-chain data tracking) suddenly announced that they can now track ZEC transfers. With this news out, a lot of people are probably panicking.

Why did ZEC shoot up to $750 back in the day? The core reason boils down to two words—privacy. When Chen Zhi's 120,000 BTC stash was cracked and traced, everyone started worrying about Bitcoin's transaction privacy. ZEC took advantage of this hype and skyrocketed. Although the market later corrected it back to the $300-400 range, the privacy narrative was firmly established.

But now? Arkham just came in and tore apart ZEC’s privacy.

Some old players in the space have questioned before: when certain people were hyping up ZEC, were they really buying in, or just taking incentives from the project team? After all, ZEC claimed not to record counterparties, didn’t show addresses, and didn’t reveal amounts—no one could verify anything. Now that the privacy veil has been lifted, ZEC’s core selling point has taken a huge hit.

The privacy sector has actually been in an awkward spot these past few years. XMR, due to its "absolute privacy," has been targeted by Western regulators and delisted from major exchanges; now ZEC has been proven traceable. On the other hand, DASH—which was previously lukewarm—suddenly looks appealing.

DASH has privacy features, but they’re not as extreme as XMR, so there’s less regulatory pressure. More importantly, it has built a payment ecosystem. At the summit in Dubai not long ago, CZ clearly stated that the future value of cryptocurrencies lies in payment scenarios. Looking at it this way, DASH has both privacy and is betting on payments, so it has both advantages.

People used to think DASH was a fence-sitter, but now it seems they’re actually the true pragmatists. With the market direction shifting, who would’ve thought DASH would be the one laughing in the end?