Cypherpunk Technologies has launched what it describes as the world’s largest Zcash mining operation following the acquisition of a mining fleet from Winklevoss Capital in an equity-based deal valued at $33.33 million.
The newly acquired fleet is already operational across U.S. facilities, contributing approximately 4.2 GSol/s to the Zcash network, which represents roughly 18% of the current hashrate. The transaction follows Cypherpunk’s existing holdings of 323,394 ZEC, equivalent to about 1.9% of the cryptocurrency’s circulating supply. The company has set a long-term target to hold 5% of the ZEC supply.
Cypherpunk has positioned Zcash mining as more economically attractive than Bitcoin mining or AI data center workloads under current market conditions. However, the profitability of the operation remains contingent on ZEC’s price, network hashrate, mining difficulty, and operational costs.
The expansion coincides with a surge in Zcash’s market performance. The cryptocurrency has rallied sharply in the second half of 2025, driven by renewed investor interest in privacy-focused digital assets. Despite a recent correction, ZEC remains up more than 1,300% over the past 12 months, according to CoinMarketCap data.
The Zcash network completed its Ironwood upgrade on July 28, introducing a new shielded transaction protocol to replace the Orchard pool and enhance security. The upgrade addressed a vulnerability in the Orchard pool that could have allowed counterfeit ZEC creation under specific conditions, though no exploitation was detected.
