Bitcoin Early Billionaires Clash Again: Winklevoss Twins and DCG Vie for Zcash Ecosystem Dominance

PANews, October 23 - According to Bloomberg, privacy cryptocurrency Zcash (ZEC) has surged approximately 3,000% year-to-date, attracting increased positioning from early Bitcoin investor and Gemini co-founder Winklevoss Twins and Digital Currency Group (DCG) founder Barry Silbert, as both sides compete over Zcash mining infrastructure and investment products.

On the investment product front, DCG's Grayscale launched the first U.S. Zcash ETF in August, providing institutional capital with access to the asset. The Winklevoss Twins filed for their own Zcash ETF this month, further intensifying competition. Cypherpunk Technologies, backed by the Winklevoss Twins, and Fortitude Mining, backed by Silbert, have become major mining firms on the Zcash network, planning to invest tens of millions of dollars to expand hashrate and compete for more mining rewards. Currently, Cypherpunk holds approximately 20% of the network's total hashrate; Fortitude stated that its hashrate share will reach 20% once new capacity is deployed. However, Zcash mining is essentially a hashrate competition around a fixed issuance supply; increasing a miner's hashrate mainly affects its probability of earning mining rewards and does not necessarily imply an inevitable rise in token price.