I would just like to hear peoples thoughts as to why the price is up so high today?
1 Like
The BTC price has dropped, suggesting that people are moving their BTC into other cryptocurrencies. This could be due to uncertainty around controversial “User Activated Soft Fork” proposals for Segwit.
Disclaimer and declaration of interest: I am a recipient of the Zcash Founders’ Reward. I do not currently hold any cryptocurrency. Nothing in this post should be interpreted as financial advice.
2 Likes
I’ve been wondering the same thing. The difficulty level is staying well under 1 million and network hash has dropped over the last few weeks. Bitcoin is dropping against the dollar - down to below $1000 at the time of writing this.
Perhaps the recent ZCash foundation announcement has some baring on the price rise - or even the SEC rejection of the Winklevoss’s EFT might now make people think to look at other coins that offer things that Bitcoin can’t currently offer.
I also noticed that Ethereum has hit highs this week too…
1 Like
It’s likely that the drop in Zcash hash rate is due to the increase in Ethereum price (which preceded the increase in Zcash price), since Ethereum is GPU-mined and so is Zcash for the most part. In the short term, hash rate tends to closely follow relative prices for coins between which mining power can be easily switched (and that have low-latency difficulty adjustment); see this illustrated for ETC/ETH at Hard Forks, Soft Forks, Defaults and Coercion .
2 Likes
mostly because ZEC’s grossly undervalued for what it offers! imo, this is smart money moving into the zcash markets… current exchange rate is nothing compared to what it’ll be at end of year! going to be fun!
5 Likes
I do not currently hold any cryptocurrency.
Isn’t the Zcash Founders reward in Zcash?
Zec price is a side effect. It’s no secret zec is bitcoin hodler’s favorite alt. ETH is a failed experiment on all levels. DeSantis’ tweet storm created big fear among btc hodlers today.
Good thing for those of us who trust zCash. I just wish I had the opportunity to invest more than I can now 
Not sure it was DeSantis (who I discovered reading this post ;-)) Anyway as a Bitcoin hodler I agree with you. The spike in ZEC in consequential with the bitcoin fork scare. Bitcoiners are really confused right now. The fast money who entered last in BTC is moving towards the better alts. And ZEC is definitely the best.
1 Like
Sure volume speaks out loud. The market is looking at Zcash with great interest. But there’s a lot of speculation going on now. This is always bad for organic growth since people tend do develop hatred toward a coin they got burned trading, non matter if it was their fault. Anyway, I’m doing a little trading myself, hoping to grow my Zcash holdings.
1 Like
speculation’s good! after a long period of price discovery; traders now feel more comfortable trading in zcash markets… this will create interest! as a little more time passes; merchants will start feeling more comfortable with zcash also! we’re really a young alt network!
2 Likes
ETH jumped in price about 3 days ago, apparently from demand. ZEC hashrate then dropped, apparently from miners switching to ETH. So the ZEC price rose from the decrease in fickle miners (serious ones staying behind are more likely to hold ZEC). As soon as ZEC rose, miners switched back and ETH hash rate decreased and ZEC hash rate recovered. But the ZEC price is not likely to decrease as people are probably viewing this as a firm end of ZEC’s downward spiral. (At $30 I felt it was oversold and had reached a bottom so I bought.) ETH has not come down in price either, and it’s jump in price is still much higher than ZEC’s. So miners should swing back to ETH mining, keeping ZEC high.
But the movement of miners has nothing to do with mid-to-long-term price. Supply is dictated exclusively on the coin-release schedule and has nothing to do with the number of miners or other coins. Demand is based entirely on people’s perception. Mining does not affect this either. A coin only needs to out-compete other coins to keep demand high or the general public interest in all coins needs to increase. Miner’s not selling is an intrinsic demand that should be considered as something distinct from their mining it. They could have just as easily been mining ETH and used the profits to buy ZEC. However, by not switching over, their profits may have been less, so they could not buy as much ZEC compared to if they were mining. So direct mining causes a slight increase in demand.
I think ZEC was just oversold. Trends in BTC and ETH are just affecting the timing. BTC’s rise delayed it, and now BTC down and ETH up is pushing it higher.
But it’s very interesting that movement in ETH this past week and for the coming week will be followed by ZEC in the same direction and that this short-term marriage is a short-term supply change being dictated by fickle miners.
ZEC’s 18-hour cycle in hash rate concerns me. I don’t know how or why it’s there. it’s not present in ZCL. Either ZEC’s being manipulated, or ZCL has an improved version of the code.
1 Like
On this regard I think the move on Zcash came on the track of the Dash move. Which I couldn’t wrap my head around by the way. People are jumping in for the high rise, but they’re as fast to exit as well. Not so sure the current price level will last. It is highly correlated with the bitcoin fork scare imho.
2 Likes
No, I mean it. It’s got a definite ~18 hour cycle to it. A 30% change that is not related to a daily cycle indicates (to me at least) something is rotten in Denmark. You can do a fourier transform on to confirm it. The concerning part is that I can’t imagine a cause of it. Bitcoin is the only other coin I could find that’s got such a large and definite pattern. It’s cycle is 2 days. A cycle that is a multiple of a day or half day is not as concerning but it’s a little surprising to see BTC doing this.
@zadow Yes, hidden in my words is my belief that the rise in BTC caused ZEC to be oversold and the pullback in BTC is bringing ZEC back in-line to where it should be.
The hashrate is peaking an hour or two AFTER the difficulty peaks, which tells me the hashrate is not being reported correctly, or the difficulty is “looking ahead” intentionally or accidentally (via the method of using the median past timestamp due to not having a universal clock). In other words, if there is an increase/decrease in the hashrate, the difficulty will overshoot/undershoot which will cause people who can switch coins or turn off easily to jump out/into, which then exacerbates the oscialltion. This causes the some miners to gain at the expense of other miners and by manipulating their timestamps, they can increase the oscillations even more. Hence a 30% change possible. For whatever reason, 18 hours seems to be their sweet spot if I am correct. I argued until I was blue in the face that there should not be any “looking ahead” in setting the difficulty. I can’t see if there is a problem in determining the median because I could never see the simple math through the bird’s nest of variables and declarations.
Every error I followed in development was ultimately due to simple but hard-to-find errors due to the bird’s nest of variables and declarations. I don’t program any in C and C++ and haven’t done much in Javascript so it was a surprise to see this is the state of programming. The variables and declarations are the biggest security risk to the project.
ETH and ZEC hash rate and price have stabilized in the last 12+ hours and the 10 day trend is ETH is up 2.8x and ZEC is up 2.2x times. So either ZEC could rise in the next 12 hours, or it could still be on a downward trend relative to ETH.
I, like others, originally thought a standard “PID” controller was the obvious way to set difficulty as is being done in other coins. This looks at past, present and future of the variable being controlled (targeted). The “D” part (derivative) is what is looking towards the future. Apparently this should be avoided (and apparently it’s accidentally included in Zcash for possibly an unavoidable reason). It should be avoided because the algorithm for predicting the future can be seen by people seeking profit so they can gain at the expense of those unable to take equal advantage of it. Even worse, by being able to set the timestamp, they can manipulate it.
On the other hand, if something in the difficulty is causing the 30% variation, and if it is set without looking ahead (as I think it is) as a result of my arguments, then it could be my fault. Digicash, the difficulty originally chosen by str4d et al, is not varying that much. I assume Zcash is mining is large enough that its “small size” is not the cause. My understanding is that the difficulty is based on the average of the difficulty of the past 17 or 18 blocks, multiplied by a ratio the desired solution time and the recent solution time. That is, Current difficulty = AVG (past 18 Difficulties) x 2.5 / MEDIAN (past 18 solution times). So if it was recently being solved too quickly, the difficulty will be set higher. But I believe my demands were not fully met. If I’m not mistaken, they did not correct the allowable timestamps to be like bitcoin’s. Bitcoin, I believe, has an allowable timestamp of 3600 seconds ahead or behind. Zcash, I believe, kept this number which means it is NOT like bitcoin. The allowed timestamp must be based on the time between blocks in order to prevent a timewarp attack. If not from a timewarp attack exactly then there might be other milder problems from less-substantial miners, such as a 30% variation every 18 hours to profit from. To be like bitcoin, they should have kept the same 60 minute/10 minute ratio. i.e., zcash should allow a maximum of 2.5 x 6 = 15 minute timestamp variation. There might be other reasons that bitcoin’s allowable timestamp variation was reduced to 6x the time between blocks. Not having a real-world objective timestamp is a big problem that ETH only “solves” with what looks to me too much like a 3rd-party oracle, which is what cryptocurrencies are trying to avoid. It seems like nodes could be made to reach a consensus on the correct time in some way similar to how they agree on who solved a block first, within the time-delay of network propagation.
If there is a problem from not adhering to Bitcoin’s timestamp-to-blocktime ratio limitation, then it’s propagating to other coins like UBIQ and Zclassic. They’re erroneously calling it a version of Digisheild v3 when it’s really just attempting to be an average of the past 18 blocks.
imo, you’re making this much too complicated - exchange rate’s up because a large market maker moved into our markets. there’s no easy way to do this (why it happened on a weekend). should expect wild upswings as more makers move into the market.
2 Likes
What market maker is that?
never met a market maker in our industry that uses their real name in public. interesting analysis, tho! will be looking into your posts a little further.
I always have to look up “market maker” every time someone says it. I just looked it up again and realized it’s because they rarely give an example of what one is which means the definition might be subjective. The underlying definition seems to be “buys and then sells large blocks for a small profit in order to improve liquidity in th emarket”. Fundamentally everyone who buys and sells for a profit is a market maker. They should have the property of making the market more efficient without price-gouging. They should make mark-to-market more determinable. Exchanges apparently do not qualify since they do not hold the asset, but they do take a percentage profit and they increase liquidity so they should. But the definition says they give market makers a place to do business. The only example I see is “online brokerage firm like Charles Schwab”. The Winklevoss brothers are not that, but ETF’s like theirs should qualify. Only a few ETF’s like theirs and GLD qualify as a market maker that holds an asset because most ETFs only hold contracts for acquiring next-month’s asset which they roll-over each month, selling the contract they have in order to buy the next one. This causes DBO, USO, OIL, etc to lose 9% per year relative to spot prices which has nothing to do with contango or backwardation, which is everyone’s erroneous excuse for bad results when the lose on an ETF. So it’s an awful decision to deny Winlevoss an ETF based on “small-guy consumer protection” because they are one of the very few types of ETFs that would not secretly cause the small-guy to lose 9% per year as a result of the small guy not knowing the effect of a monthly roll-over. It’s a sure bet people holding monthly contracts are giving kick-backs to the ETFs in the same way 401k’s are getting kickbacks for selecting more expensive (annual fee) mutual fund options instead of having no-load options.
Anyway I agree. The winklevoss ETF may have been the cause of less interest in ZEC, and their failure renewed interest in ZEC ETH Dash and ZCL. But the point of my long explanation was to claim that ZEC is not going up from from some self-generated interest that should result from things like a Zcash official windows wallet or removing the option to have non-anonymous or non z-transactions. I am arguing it is where it should be instead of being about to jump from here.
Once openbazaar gets working and makes ZEC easy, it could take off. BTW [start rant] OpenBazaar exceeding Amazon should be world-chaging. But OpenBazaar currently does not work. I can’t even sell computers there at a 20% discount to ebay. So it is not yet functional because people do not see my ads. It’s not my fault or responsibility that people do not know about my ads and trust me as a seller. Peer-to-peer and cryptography should eventually eliminate the large organizations like ebay, amazon, and government all of whom’s primary purpose in life is to facilitate honest transactions between producer and buyer. One example goal is to eliminate marketing via product reviews so that producer can concentrate on production instead of manipulation. They have a long way to go because even bitcoin (a fantastic asset) is a horrible currency due to not even theoretically achieving stable value that would make contracts in terms of it possible. We can’t negotiate a salary or plan production costs or predict future revenue or profits in terms of BTC. Hence Bill Gates and Warren Buffett say it’s as pointless as gold. Only when there are no contracts (i.e. anarchy such as in Zimbabwe and Venezuela) do bitcoin and gold shine as currencies. [end rant]