March 18, 2026
Bitcoin was the first decentralized digital currency and is still by far the largest as measured by market capitalization. But there are other blockchains with a “digital currency” use case. We categorize all of them in Grayscale’s proprietary Currencies Crypto Sector. Today, this crypto market segment includes fifteen assets with a combined market capitalization of $1.6 trillion. Bitcoin is king of the category, with a market share of about 90%.¹
Among the assets that compete directly with Bitcoin, we believe Zcash (ZEC) has the best shot of capturing a higher market share over time. Two main reasons why:
Zcash’s ZEC token is valued at just $4 billion today, or 0.3% of the Currencies Crypto Sector.³ If it were to capture just 5% of this market segment, its value would be 18x greater.⁴ Zcash is smaller and more volatile than Bitcoin and therefore has a higher risk profile.
Key takeaway: Zcash, a privacy-focused digital currency, is the Bitcoin competitor with the best shot at capturing market share over time, in our view.
