Winklevoss twins and Barry Silbert expand Zcash rivalry
The Winklevoss twins and Barry Silbert are competing through Zcash investment products and mining businesses, with expansion plans that could deepen their presence on the network.
jienweng
A report dated 2026-10-23 described growing competition between Gemini co-founders the Winklevoss twins and Digital Currency Group founder Barry Silbert over Zcash investment products and mining infrastructure. It put the privacy-focused cryptocurrency’s year-to-date gain at roughly 3,000%.
According to the report, DCG’s Grayscale launched the first U.S. Zcash ETF in August, while the twins filed for their own Zcash ETF in October.
Winklevoss-backed Cypherpunk Technologies and Silbert-backed Fortitude Mining plan to invest tens of millions of dollars to expand their mining capacity, the report said. It put Cypherpunk’s share of network hashrate at about 20%; Fortitude said its share would reach 20% once its additional capacity is deployed.
Those expansion plans concern competition for mining rewards from a fixed issuance. More hashrate increases a miner’s probability of earning rewards; it does not establish that Zcash’s price will rise.
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