The story behind ZEC's big pump of 1460%: A perfect marketing of Mining Rig sales?

The starting point of mythology, the foreshadowing of collapse

In just the past two months, Zcash ($ZEC) has become the most dazzling focus of the entire cryptocurrency market. From the end of September at $50 to a recent high of $730, it surged by as much as 1460%, with its FDV skyrocketing to a historical peak of $13B in 8 years.

https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/zcash

What pushed the emotions to a climax was the appearance of a group of top figures: the calls from heavyweight personalities like @naval, @0xMert_, and @CryptoHayes became catalysts, igniting market FOMO and attracting a large number of KOLs, retail investors, and even some funds to re-evaluate this old chain. It's rare to see both Chinese and English CT enthusiastically discussing ZEC, privacy narratives, and the resurgence of ZK technology; Privacy seems to once again be regarded as the protagonist of the “next big trend” in the crypto market.

However, beneath this seemingly hot and perfect narrative backdrop, some key fundamental issues have been consistently overlooked: Is the miner economic model of ZEC, network security, and on-chain interaction activity really enough to support a FDV of over 10 billion USD?

ZEC is on the eve of a typical Hardware–Price Scissors in PoW history.

Before discussing the sustainability of any PoW project, the economic incentives at the mining end often reflect the chain's value capture ability most intuitively.

Let's first calculate the current break-even cycle for ZEC:

1) Z15 Pro: The most mainstream mining machine currently

The latest flagship ZEC mining machine that is currently the most discussed in the market and is eagerly sought after by miners is the Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro, with the following hardware specifications:

• Hashrate: 840 KH/s
• Power: 2780 W, actual operation around 2560 W
• Energy Efficiency Ratio: 0.302 KH/W

Currently, the official website only has the Z15 Pro futures available, with delivery in April 2026, priced at $4,999. For those who can't wait, you can also grab second-hand spot purchases on the black market, with the actual price being around 50,000 RMB.

https://m.bitmain.com/zh/product/detail?pid=00020251112140439260bFAoSY2F0667

2) ZEC's Hash Rate and Mining Revenue Structure: Amazing Daily Returns

In the past two months, ZEC's high yields have rapidly attracted hash power into the market, resulting in a significant increase in the overall network hashrate, and the difficulty has also entered an upward cycle. From the chart, it is clear that ZEC's price (yellow line) began to break away from its sideways trend at the end of September, while the hashrate (light purple) and difficulty (dark blue) subsequently showed a synchronized rise. This trend indicates that the mining side has started to respond to the price increase.

https://minerstat.com/coin/ZEC

As of the time of writing, the key parameters of the Zcash network are:

• Total Network Hashrate: 13.31 GH/s
• Network Difficulty: 118.68M
• Block Reward: 2.5 ZEC / block

To calculate the daily earnings, we input the parameters of the Z15 Pro into the mining profit calculator and set it according to the standard miner configuration:

• Pool fee: 2%
• Electricity price: $0.08 / kWh
• Daily power consumption: 5.34 USD (2.78 kW × 24 hours × 0.08 USD/kWh)

Then we can come to an astonishing figure: a single Z15 Pro generates a net profit of over $50 per day! Moreover, historical data shows that such high returns have been sustained for at least over a week.

https://whattomine.com/coins/166-zec-equihash

3) Payback Period: Extremely Rare High ROI

Assuming that the network difficulty remains unchanged in the short term and electricity costs are stable, we calculate the payback period using the futures price of the Z15 Pro miner at $4,999.

To reflect the true cost, here it is amortized linearly over 5 years (1826 days):

• Daily machine cost amortization: $2.74
• Consider the daily net income after amortization: approximately $47.63

Therefore, the static payback period of a Z15 Pro is approximately 105 days, which translates to an annualized return rate of nearly 350%.

This number is extremely rare throughout the entire history of PoW - it could even be described as abnormal:

• The payback period for BTC mining equipment typically takes 12–24 months during the price upcycle.
• The ROI of mining machines in the ETH PoW era is between 300–600 days.
• Historically, PoW projects with a payback period of less than 120 days (such as FIL, XCH, RVN, etc.) have almost all collapsed months later.
• The latest BTC miner generates a daily revenue of ~$23, with a static payback period of about 3.4 years.

4) Case Review: The Repeated Hardware–Price Scissors

Hardware-Price Scissors is a “harvesting” script that has repeatedly played out in the history of PoW mining, where miners order mining machines at prices several times higher at the peak of coin prices and during periods of intense FOMO (at this point, the ROI appears very low, requiring only 4 months to break even). However, when the mining machines are actually delivered and the hash power surges (usually delayed by more than 3 months), the speculators often sell off at high prices, leading miners to face a “double whammy” of “coin price halving + production halving”, while the mining machines in their hands instantly turn into overpriced scrap metal.

• In May 2021, Chia caused a global shortage of hard drives. At that time, the price of XCH soared to $1,600, and the static payback period shown by early hard drive investments was compressed to less than 130 days. This extreme profit triggered a tsunami of global storage computing power. However, what followed was a brutal “scissors difference”: despite the decline in coin prices, hard drives ordered in advance continued to come online, and the overall computing power continued to surge after the coin price peaked, with the payback period quickly extending from 30 days to over 3,000 days.

• Observing the data of the IceRiver KS1 miner, its payback period once dropped to as low as 150 days in mid-2023. Unlike Chia, the price of KAS even maintained an upward trend. However, miners are still losing money because the rate of hash power growth far exceeds the rate of price increase. The rapid iteration and large-scale deployment of industrial-grade ASICs have caused the overall network difficulty to rise exponentially. Despite the strong coin price, due to the surge in difficulty, the payback period for the KS1 machine has irreversibly skyrocketed to 3,500 days.

The hash power level of ZEC is currently in a danger zone that has historically been subjected to multiple 51% attacks.

Apart from the mining economic model, another decisive risk factor is the security of the network and the scale of computing power. For PoW chains, the “total network computing power scale + 51% attack cost” directly determines whether it can remain self-consistent under a high valuation.

1) Total network hash rate scale: only equivalent to a small to medium-sized Bitcoin mining farm

According to the latest data from the network, the total network hash rate of ZEC is approximately 12.48 GSol/s. Based on a Z15 Pro with a hash rate of 0.00084 GSol/s, about 14,857 Z15 Pro mining machines are needed, corresponding to an energy consumption of approximately 40 MW, which is equivalent to the scale of a small to medium-sized Bitcoin mining farm.

From the perspective of the overall network's computing power scale, Zcash's security foundation appears extremely weak and has entered the risk zone of many small PoW chains that have previously been successfully attacked by 51%.

https://miningpoolstats.stream/zcash

2) Attack Cost: Theoretical level of only a few million dollars

In general, launching a 51% attack requires controlling more than 50% of the total network hash rate at the same time. If nearly 16,000 Z15 Pro devices across the ZEC network can form the main force, then an attacker only needs to rent or purchase thousands of devices to potentially control over 50% of the hash rate.

Rough estimate:

• The cost of each Z15 Pro futures is ~$5,000, and generally, orders of over 300 units constitute major customer purchases, which can enjoy at least a 10% discount.
• Control computing power ~8,000 units → Cost up to ~$40M, energy consumption required for the attack is around 20 MW
• If the leasing or second-hand price is lower, the actual startup cost could be several million dollars.

On a public chain with an FDV of nearly 10 billion dollars, a computational power investment at the level of millions is sufficient to initiate potential chain reorganizations or double spending, which in itself is a structural risk that cannot be ignored.

3) Comparison with mainstream chains: Huge security gap

To give everyone a more intuitive and clear perception, let's make a simple comparison with other large PoW chains in operation:

More importantly, ZEC's current hash rate is not only far lower than mainstream PoW chains such as BTC/LTC/KAS, but even lower than the hash rates of chains like ETC, BTG, VTC, and BSV, which have previously been successfully 51% attacked. This means that ZEC's network security has actually fallen into a dangerous range that can be attacked.

On-chain data reveals that the actual usage of ZCash remains very limited.

Despite the recent surge in the ZEC narrative, on-chain data provides a more rational perspective - there is a significant divergence between the actual usage and the current multi-billion FDV.

From trading volume, active addresses to ecological scale, the actual network activity of Zcash is far less prosperous than what the price trend suggests.

• The average daily transactions in the past month were only 15,000 – 18,000 transactions/day, which is only 1% – 2% of large public chains.
• As a privacy chain, the majority of transactions are still transparent transactions, with shielded transactions accounting for less than 10%.

https://zechub.wiki/dashboard

The repricing when the market returns from frenzy to calm.

Narrative, emotions, celebrity effects, and mining machine economic traps have jointly pushed an eight-year-old dormant project to the peak of public opinion. However, beneath the lively surface, when we truly return to the three core issues of blockchain: economic sustainability, network security, and on-chain adoption, ZEC presents a completely opposite picture.

This is:

• Return of capital in just 105 days, with an annualized rate of 350% for the crackdown on miners scheme
• The computing power scale is only equivalent to that of a medium-sized Bitcoin mining farm, the cost of a 51% attack is as low as the million-dollar level, the trading volume is only 1%-2% of mainstream public chains, and the actual usage of privacy features accounts for less than 10% of PoW chains.

History has proven countless times: an extremely short payback period (super high ROI) is often a precursor to mining disasters and price crashes.

I cannot assert whether ZEC will be an exception.

But the rules of the crypto world have never changed: narratives and emotions can create myths, while fundamentals determine how far those myths can go.

End.

*The author would like to specially thank @0x010crypto and @0xTZ_DeFi for their contributions.