Arkham exposes Zcash’s “privacy nakedness”—why did Wall Street funds breathe a sigh of relief?

Arkham overturns the Zcash (ZEC) privacy myth: 53% of transactions labeled, no crash triggered, market reevaluates the compliance value of “partial transparency.”

(Previous context: Arkham calls out Michael Saylor: has found 87% of Strategy’s Bitcoin addresses) (Background: Arkham launches derivatives exchange! Early points may be airdropped as $ARK, price surges 17% intraday)

The US federal government is cracking down on gray assets using on-chain data. Prince Group’s Chen Zhi’s 127,000 BTC were confiscated, and Qian Zhimin was caught laundering 60,000 BTC, prompting funds to seek refuge in Zcash (ZEC). The price surged to $750 in early December, with shielded transaction volume soaring 6x in 24 hours. However, today (December 9), Arkham Intelligence launched the “Ultra” algorithm, directly challenging Zcash’s defenses and sending the market into high alert.

Arkham’s bold move exposes privacy coins

According to the latest data, Ultra has labeled 53% of Zcash transactions, covering $420 billion in historical flows, and mapped 48% of sending and receiving addresses to real-world entities, with about $2.5 billion in balances (37% of supply) “identified by name.” Ultra uses a multimodal graph neural network to compare timestamps, amount distributions, and exchange paths, exposing shielded outputs on a visual dashboard. Arkham emphasized in its statement:

Ultra has pushed Zcash’s transparency to 53%; zero-knowledge no longer means zero footprint.

The once-black-box shielded pool is now as auditable as Bitcoin, and the absolute anonymity myth is instantly shattered.

Why hasn’t the capital fled?

In theory, a total privacy breach is a nuclear-level negative event, and prices should plummet. But ZEC did not crash, dropping only to $400 support intraday and still up 237% year-to-date. Internal market data shows that over the past week, 62% of large on-chain transfers (>100,000 ZEC) still flowed to regulated exchanges, not back into the shielded pool. Cypherpunk Holdings even took the opportunity to increase its holdings, with its stock price doubling. Panic premium and compliance expectations are offsetting each other, creating resilience that defies intuition.

While the privacy black box can “hide money,” it keeps large custodians at bay; Monero’s delisting was a previous warning. Arkham’s deanonymization unlocks partial auditability for Zcash, reducing the ultimate risk of total delisting.

There are even rumors online that some fund managers claim, “Only a semi-transparent ZEC stands a chance of receiving regulatory favor when applying for an ETF.”

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10 ways to protect your privacy footprint—stop going naked on-chain Copy smart money and earn while lying down: Full tutorial on Arkham tracking on-chain data, whale movements, and cash flow visualization “Arkham exposes Zcash’s ‘naked privacy’: why is Wall Street breathing a sigh of relief?” — this article was first published by BlockTempo, the most influential blockchain media outlet.