Zcash (ZEC) has dropped by 3% in the past 24 hours, as the token’s latest rally has taken a necessary breather after a strong push to $1,650.
Trading volumes have jumped by 90% during this period, exceeding $1 billion. This figure accounts for over 7% of the asset’s circulating market and indicates that the selling pressure is increasing.
Long liquidations rose beyond $300 million, as traders could be positioning for the continuation of the downtrend we saw on Thursday and Friday.
ZEC bounced strongly off our buy zone at around $1,150 but hit a sell wall at $1,300 shortly afterward.
The market will be digesting inflation data from the United States on Wednesday, and the volatility that comes along with this report could help tokens like ZEC bounce off key areas of support.
However, our most relevant driver for the time being is the ongoing implementation of the NU7 technical upgrade for the Zcash blockchain.
NU7 Will Make the Zcash Blockchain Three Times Faster
This technical overhaul should reduce transaction settlement times from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, further strengthening the project’s core use case, which is to keep transactions anonymous.
Usage of this feature has been increasing lately, as indicated by on-chain data from ZecHub. The percentage of shielded transactions recently rose to as much as 56% — a level not seen in years.
The NU7 upgrade was recently rolled out on the Zcash testnet — a controlled environment that allows developers to analyze the performance of the new version without risking the main blockchain.
Devs will decide if NU7 is ready to be implemented on October 20 and may roll out the new version of the blockchain on November 5 if the testnet launch confirmes the stability of the upgrade.
We believe that this can be a robust project-specific tailwind that could lift the price of Zcash over the next coming months, similar to what the Pectra upgrade did for Ethereum back in April – May 2025.
ZEC May Drop to $1,000, But Its Mid-Term Outlook Remains Bullish
Turning to the 4-hour chart, we can see that the price is on track to hit a key structural level at $1,250. If ZEC dips below $1,200, it will likely revisit its recent lows as buyers may have exhausted all of their ammo.
We see a slight chance that ZEC will revisit $1,000. If that’s the case, that could be a highly attractive opportunity for late buyers to enter this rally with the expectation that the token will retest the $1,650 level once the NU7 is successfully implemented.
However, if Zcash drops below that zone, we may witness a much deeper correction to the low $800 in the mid-term. The macroeconomic backdrop remains favorable in the near term as analysts pushed back the odds of an interest rate hike to December.
However, persistent tensions in the Middle East are keeping bullish sentiment in check and may weigh on the performance of cryptocurrencies in the near term.
