Zcash (ZEC) led Thursday’s cryptocurrency rebound after US policymakers delivered their first rate increase since 2023, a move that markets largely treated as already expected rather than a shock. The privacy token advanced roughly 23 percent over 24 hours and traded near $1,369. Bitcoin rose less than 1 percent to about $76,258. Solana gained nearly 3 percent and sat just under $100.
Binance Coin and Hyperliquid’s HYPE each added more than 2 percent, while ether, XRP and dogecoin climbed between 1 percent and 2 percent.
A few thoughts on ZCash (disclosure: Paradigm is an investor in ZEC and ZODL):
– All blockchain ecosystems struggle with long-term funding, especially of public goods, and an inflation-funded developer fund is an elegant mechanism to do so. How this fund is allocated is a fair…
— Matt Huang (@matthuang) September 16, 2026
Stock-index futures also recovered as Asian trading got under way.On September 16 the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) voted 12–0 to lift the federal funds target by a quarter point, to a range of 3.75 percent to 4 percent.
The official statement said inflation remains elevated and that the action would support a more timely return to the 2 percent goal.
Accompanying projections pointed to a median policy rate of about 4.1 percent at the end of both 2026 and 2027, consistent with limited additional tightening this year.
Because the hike had been widely discounted, borrowing-cost fears did not dominate risk assets overnight.
Zcash’s larger move also tracked a public comment from Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang.
In a post on X, he disclosed that Paradigm is an investor in ZEC and ZODL, described Zcash as a private complement to Bitcoin, and argued that an inflation-funded developer fund remains important given advancing cyber and quantum risks.
He added that governance based only on coin voting could introduce unpredictability as the asset is used more like money.
Zcash is built so senders, recipients and amounts can stay hidden from the public ledger.
That design, together with recent holder support for Network Upgrade 7—shorter 25-second blocks and an unchanged Bitcoin-style halving schedule—gave traders a project-specific reason to bid the token even while the policy backdrop tightened slightly.
Higher official rates normally make speculative capital more expensive.
In this case, the combination of a priced-in decision, a restrained forecast path, and a visible institutional endorsement of Zcash’s privacy role helped both Bitcoin and smaller tokens recover rather than sell off.
The outperformance now lasting longer will most likely depend on follow-through in inflation data, further Fed guidance, and whether shielded usage and network upgrades keep attracting capital. The recent episode shows that token-specific news can still outweigh a modest shift in US rates.
Notably, Ethereum (ETH) price recovered more modestly than the privacy-coin leaders, holding above $2,400 and trading near $2,430–$2,440 with gains of roughly 1–2 percent after an earlier dip around the policy announcement.
Spot ether funds recorded one of September’s larger daily withdrawals, yet on-chain flows showed large holders buying and staking into the weakness, a split that helped ETH reclaim short-term support after Tuesday’s selloff tied to the Senate’s failure to advance the CLARITY Act.
The token remained inside its late-August range rather than breaking out, suggesting traders treated the Fed move as confirmation of a known path instead of a reason to abandon the second-largest network.
Among other large-cap names, XRP stabilized near $1.30 after a sharper drop earlier in the week, posting only a fractional rebound as payment-token demand stayed secondary to Bitcoin and Zcash.
Tron hovered around $0.335 with a similarly contained advance, compressed between nearby moving averages rather than showing a decisive trend.
Cardano participated in the same cautious bid that lifted most layer-1 tokens, without matching Solana’s approach toward $100 or Zcash’s double-digit spike. Together the tape pointed to a market that had already discounted the first rate increase since 2023 and was rotating toward idiosyncratic stories rather than selling the entire complex.