Historical replay · ZEC/USD
Zcash Peaks at $1,698, Then Slides 23% in Five Days (Sept-Oct 2026)
On the evening of September 26, 2026, Zcash hit $1,698 — the top of a rally that had doubled its price in a month. Five days later it was 23% lower. Relive the peak and the staircase down, hour by hour.
Zcash, the best-known privacy coin, was one of the standout trades of September 2026. ZEC started the month near $830, broke above $1,000 in the first week, and accelerated again in mid-month: on September 16 it rose 20% on about $559 million of Binance spot volume, and on September 17 another $682 million changed hands as it pushed toward $1,500.
The top came on a Saturday night. In the 21:00 UTC hour of September 26, ZEC jumped from about $1,582 to $1,698 on roughly $74 million of volume and closed the hour near $1,684 — within touching distance of the high. The next hour it was already slipping, and that was as far as the rally would go.
What followed was not a single crash candle but a staircase. Each day's high was lower than the one before: $1,680 on September 27, $1,600 on the 28th, $1,489 on the 29th, $1,494.52 on the 30th and $1,449.75 on October 1. The steepest steps came in concentrated hours — on September 28, the 14:00 and 19:00 UTC hours traded $35 million and $40 million as price broke below $1,500. On October 1, ZEC reached a low of $1,305.01, 23.1% below the peak, and closed at $1,335.56.
Watch how the volume behaves. The days of the slide traded roughly $240-320 million each, well below the $560-680 million of the strongest rally days. A decline on lighter volume than the advance often reads as profit-taking rather than panic — which doesn't make it shallow, as the chart shows, but does make it look different from a capitulation.