Zcash Co‑Founder Supports Shielded Bitcoin Proposal and Maintains $5,000 ZEC Target

Zcash co‑founder Eli Ben‑Sasson has publicly endorsed a new proposal called Shielded Bitcoin, which aims to bring zero‑knowledge privacy to Bitcoin’s layer‑1 without requiring a soft fork or consensus change.

Shielded Bitcoin proposal

The design, published by research firm Alloc Init on September 24, was authored by Misha Komarov, Aleksei Moskvin and Clara Shikhelma. It combines encrypted notes, public nullifiers and zero‑knowledge proofs. Nullifiers prevent double‑spending of hidden coins, while the protocol relies on Bitcoin PIPEs built on witness encryption, keeping all data on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Ben‑Sasson’s perspective

Ben‑Sasson, who also co‑founded StarkWare and co‑wrote the original Zerocash paper, said the proposal aligns with his original goal of bringing privacy to Bitcoin. Although he has not yet read the whitepaper, he expressed enthusiasm for seeing ZK‑based privacy and scalability realized on Bitcoin’s base layer.

ZEC price outlook

In a September 9 call, Ben‑Sasson predicted ZEC would trade above $1,200 by September 25, a level that was subsequently surpassed. At the time of reporting, ZEC was priced around $1,545, up 1.44% in the last 24 hours and up roughly 291% over the previous 90 days. Ben‑Sasson maintains a personal target of $5,000 for ZEC by year‑end, noting that achieving this would require an additional gain of about 223%.

Recent market activity

• ZEC spot funds attracted $98.2 million in inflows during the week ending September 18, the largest among 14 crypto products.
• Ledger added support for private ZEC balances in its desktop application.
• Short positions on ZEC have suffered losses, with one reported loss of $10.68 million.

Ben‑Sasson frames his price target as a personal bet rather than investment advice, and he suggests that continued ETF demand could influence ZEC’s trajectory toward his forecast.