The company has already purchased 203,775 Zcash at an average price of roughly $245 per coin, totaling about $50M.
Zcash Token News
Gemini co-founder Tyler Winklevoss unveiled Cypherpunk Technologies on Wednesday, a rebrand of Leap Therapeutics backed by a $58.9M Winklevoss Capital investment, aimed at acquiring and holding privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash. The company has already purchased 203,775 Zcash at an average price of roughly $245 per coin, totaling about $50M.
Cypherpunk plans to lift its holdings to at least 5% of Zcash's total supply. Like Bitcoin, Zcash has a fixed maximum supply of 21 million coins, and with roughly 16.3 million ZEC currently in circulation, Cypherpunk's initial purchase already accounts for about one-fifth of its 5% accumulation goal.
Winklevoss wrote on X that “Privacy is the precondition for many of our freedoms” and represents “the point at which government and corporate reach end and our individual freedoms and self-sovereignty begin.” The company begins trading on the Nasdaq under the new ticker CYPH on Thursday.
The rebrand marks a pivot for the former biotech firm, which will continue its cancer-drug research through a wholly owned subsidiary that retains the Leap Therapeutics name. Alongside the funding and name change, the company appointed Khing Oei as board chair and Will McEvoy as chief investment officer.
Douglas Onsi, CEO of Cypherpunk Technologies, said the company's digital asset holdings will complement its biotech business while creating long-term shareholder value through active participation in Zcash. The leadership shake-up sees Oei, founder and CEO of Treasury, a Netherlands-based Bitcoin treasury company that raised $147M in September, taking the chairman role.
Winklevoss compared Zcash's role to Bitcoin's, calling it “encrypted Bitcoin” and suggesting the privacy coin could eventually represent a meaningful share of Bitcoin's market value. “If Bitcoin is digital gold, Zcash is digital cash,” he wrote, arguing that the two assets go hand in hand.
Zcash has rallied sharply in recent weeks, reaching a more than seven-year high above $720 last week before pulling back to about $460 as of Wednesday. The token surged nearly tenfold in two months, triggering $51M in short liquidations before easing, still 85% below its 2016 high of $3,191.
Zcash co-founder and StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson described Zcash as a solution to two problems on public blockchains, privacy and scalability, contrasting it with mix-based approaches. Galaxy Digital research analyst Will Owens noted that Zcash is gaining traction as an alternative to Bitcoin amid growing concerns about on-chain surveillance. Zcash's advocates frame it as encrypted Bitcoin, a return to cypherpunk principles that resonate amid widespread on-chain surveillance, Owens wrote, contrasting it with Bitcoin's fully transparent transaction history.
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