I’ve been reading a lot of other forums, cryptocurrency speculation, etc, and Zcash is literally invisible.
It’s all about Bitcoin, ETH, ETC, LTC, even some new altcoins (Waves, OBIQ, Sia, Decred, etc)
Out of curiosity… Why does no one give a s**t about Zcash?
Because we have no PR team like other coins
Seriously, I could choose to mine many other coins - I choose ZCash. The reason I choose ZCash is because of the encryption privacy features it implements. It is fundamentally different from all other coins in that regard.
In the long run this coin won’t need a PR team once the general public understands that this coin can be used in a virtually untraceable way on demand - that single feature alone will become indispensable and highly sought after. Cash transactions can’t easily be tracked, traced and tabulated - neither can Z transactions. ZCash is as close to digital cash as one can get.
Pivx seem set on introducing the Zerocoin protocol to provide better privacy than their current built-in method of obfuscation via mixing (just like Dash, which they are forked from). That network has a number of other things going for it - including a reasonable PR effort. I suspect that the initial reaction to enhanced privacy will be a boost for Pivx but also that the huge Zerocoin proof size (25.6kb) will be an on-going issue for them. At that point, people might start to value the choices made by the Zcash team.
I agree with your thoughts. I genuinely think ZCash is a long term contender. I do wish that all of us who hold ZCash would hold it in private ZCash node wallets. Holding ZCash in Internet and web based wallets allows the wallet providers to loan out the ZCash for “short sale”. This allows pricing manipulation and currency instability. Hoping more people choose to run a full ZCash node wallet since this will minimize the likelihood of pricing manipulation and improve pricing stability long term.
Holding your own private keys is the only way to prevent manipulation and increase privacy.
Do you have any evidence to back up this claim? Several exchanges allow you to lend your coins, but you have to sign up for this and are paid interest for your effort. I haven’t heard of wallet vendors doing so, particularly doing so without permission.
There is no claim being made here. It’s common sense. If you don’t have control of the private keys, you don’t have control at all. Digital currency is unregulated. There is NOTHING to stop a wallet provider from doing this except by not giving them the CHANCE to do it to begin with - Zcash owners can control that. Also there is nothing to stop a wallet vendor from disappearing with all the customers private keys. Who needs to risk that?
Just look at stocks and Forex - what I described IS being done everyday in those markets (margin accounts). My point is that if ZCash holders hold their own private keys, it makes it very difficult for anyone to “sell short” and manipulate the market. How can you sell what you don’t have or don’t have access to(can’t borrow to sell)? I am sure there are those firms which allow people to “sell short” a digital currency on paper ledgers. That’s all fine and good by me, but if they don’t have access to the underlying currency - to actually sell or trade, it will not affect the value of my assets. At that point it is more like a firm offering an internal ledger sheet bet. The firm taking all the risk and the transaction having zero influence on the value of the ZCash asset.
The premise in what your saying is viable, however if a wallet provider started playing with people’s money and couldn’t cover a withdrawl it would be dead in minutes. The risk of doing a bit of manipulation vs losing everyone’s money is probably not worth it. In the end keeping your own keys is smarter and history has shown storing your coins in an exchange is dangerous. However I don’t believe a wallet provider would be spending your money. More likely a catastrophic hardware failure or ditch and run will cause it to be lost.
Either way storing your own keys is smarter, however i don’t believe online wallets are being used to manipulate the currency. I believe the people doing that have enough money to not need anyone elses.
I dont think Zcash is all that unpopular, it just young. It was just released in October last year. i think the gains it has made is great. It has a market problem as far as spending it, but all coins are behind in this regard compared to bitcoin. An interesting dynamic in all of this is that bitcoin took off with the misconception of it being good at anonymity (partly due to the “success” of Silk Road). Then the harder realization of it is that its actually just security though obscurity (as seen also in the fall of silk road). this left more to be desired from a Crypto currency. By this point bitcoin matured and more vendors started to on board the currency as a payment option. Zcash strikes a very awesome balance. You can have very private transactions if you want. or public transactions if you want. a fully private currency is not good. You want public transactions for things like payments to companies so you can have a sort of receipt. some things you just WANT a paper trail on as proof of payment. The problem is that most companies have no reason for the privacy features of Zcash… until some companies realize the “tax advantages” of it. I could say so much on this whole topic, but i would like people to read my posts and not skip them as a wall of text 
There is a huge difference between an entity legitimately buying and selling using their own money and one buying and selling using “borrowed” assets. Assets can generally be borrowed at a fraction of the cost of assets purchased at the full market price. This is the basic premise of leverage. The people who have enough money to pull this off are also smart enough to attempt to maximize the leverage. Yes, it is a huge risk for the wallet provider or broker - but that doesn’t mean the risk won’t be taken - there is potentially a lot of profit involved. There have been wallet providers who have disappeared. Who is to stay that these disappearances have not been because of such schemes? The point is no one really knows for sure what happens/happended except those directly involved.
The wallet provider generally does not show the private key to the wallet holder. The wallet holder only knows his/her balance. The private keys could theoretically be loaned out and actual market transactions could be executed using them - all without the owners knowledge. Sure there could be a run on the wallet provider and who is to say that a 400% increase in pricing in a short time isn’t an example of it. Those who have money know how to use leverage - that is probably how they obtained their money. The principles being described above are those used in conventional investment banking daily. One of the primary reasons people are getting involved in digital currency systems is to remove the influence of conventional investment banking principles, methods and manipulations. People are tired of having their assets manipulated. Who can blame them for that?
Yes, you are right - it is safer to hold the private keys yourself for MANY reasons. Would you let a stranger keeps the keys to your house for you? I seriously doubt any of us would and if you did who could blame the stranger for renting out your house when you were away and weren’t looking! 
All I am saying is this - all digital currencies and pricing would be more stable over the long haul if those who own the private keys - hold the private keys privately in node or hardware based wallets.
I disagree with the last statement. I don’t believe values will be more stable. This market is so volatile and has so many people in it who don’t know investing (like myself honestly) that it is unlikely to be stable anytime in the foreseeable future.
I don’t believe the base economics of how it works and integrates into our world is really understood yet. In the end its going to be a roller coaster no matter where people store their cash. I think way too many people are already manipulating the markets and working to take money from each other (like pump groups). The technology and markets are just too new to be stable.
However as i stated previously. The ONLY safe place for your cash is in a local wallet. Or better yet a cold wallet.
SOME pr is good for a coin, but when over half pivx team is made of marketers only, with their team members mostly being responsible for pumping the coin on social networks and some of their members changing every few weeks - see pivx team page on archive.is for more proof on the matter - IMO, you’d have to be bat shit insane to think this has any chance in hell of coming out on top.
Promoting Pivx wasn’t my purpose in mentioning it here. My point was more to pointing out that they’re taking a big chance on a wasteful zk-proof protocol.
At least we agree on where to store digital currencies - even if we come to that conclusion for different reasons. 
Wasn’t referring to yourself, it was the team themselves as a whole.
Their competency has been questionable from the start so I’d imagine this hasn’t even been considered.
no one? I kinda do.
I’m not sure how long you’ve been involved in this class of investment but I have to assume you’re rather new. If you want to gamble perhaps Vegas would suit you better. I did months of evaluation on over a dozen coins. many of the coins are designed to generate quick profits for the developers and promoters that bring the coin to market. how many of today’s skyrockets will be around in 5 or more years?Most will not survive after all the speculators have moved on to the “next hot thing”.
I made a large investment here strongly based on the team behind the coin(something like betting on football team based on their coaching staff). If you’ve done your homework you’d know the goal here isn’t a short term one. Z coin is an investment rather than a bet. cheers
I have to say, there is a lot of negativity towards Zcash from other anon-crypto communities. You can put it down to jealousy if you want… but it basically goes like this when summarising different coins:
Dash: Pre-mined scam. Bad tech. All based on marketing.
PIVX: Just like Dash. All marketing.
Monero: Good tech. Not ideal for “normal” vendor adoption due to invisible transactions.
Zcash: Zooko tweets are constantly used to create FUD. ie His constantly reshared “too traceable for criminals” post.
Zcoin: Transactions too large.
Verge: Is just Bitcoin with TOR.
I feel like Zcash is the obvious leader in tech. But people are extremely wary of it due to Zooko’s posts.
It’s as if, other anon coins are aiming at total and complete anonymity. Whereas Zcash, with its superior tech, is just for hiding money from your significant other. It’s an odd approach… but I guess it makes sense as Zcash is a company. Other anon coins are decentralised.
I hear you about the superior tech in terms of privacy. And the idea that it’s too traceable for criminals causing the hate from these other communities. Have no answer on how to change their minds.
But if it’s true that Zcash is too traceable for criminals my take is this - for widespread adoption of ANY cryptocurrency in mainstream markets and everyday consumer use, there has to be support from governments/regulators - who would never be ok with a completely untraceable and totally private form of currency.(outside of CASH, but as the result of centuries of evolving monetary/fiscal policies, cash is a necessary medium of exchange - zcash (or any crypto) is not).
Maybe the Zcash team is hoping this becomes a mainstream currency (on the level of BTC) with superior privacy capabilities for all but criminal uses. Kinda like how you can sort of be anonymous/private on the internet for most intents/purposes (how the mainstream use it - hiding dick pics, not cyber-espionage) vs the much more private/anonymous dark web (how the fringe/cutting-edge use it - crime/activism/etc).
Maybe I’m totally off? I am kinda high rn…
Honestly, I think it’s because coinmarketcap.com and coincap.io have it as lower down. This is because of the limited supply. It’s less than a year old and already worth more than $150. That’s pretty impressive.
Actually, thats exactly what I think they must be chasing. It just plays a bit poorly among early crypto adopters.
I mean, as a US company, the Government could subpoena Zcash for user IPs at any time. So, my understanding is that they nothing will ever be 100% anonymous with Zcash if you’re doing anything illegal. But it will be impossible to trace otherwise.
So it’s a bit of a chicken and the egg scenario. Early crypto users looking for an anonymous coin might reject Zcash because of this, preventing it from gaining traction (like I imagine Monero will start to enjoy now after the recent Dark market takedowns).
However, Monero can never really truly take off, because it’s TOO invisible for legal vendors.
It seems that Zcash is going after Bitcoin, not Monero.