Zcash has fallen toward the $500 psychological support level after losing $520 and triggering more than $2 million in long liquidations over 24 hours. According to crypto.news, sellers took control after the token broke below intermediate support at $510, with automated stop orders adding pressure as price slipped through this key level. The ₹50,000 ($500) region has emerged as the first meaningful support level, with traders expecting a brief move below this threshold before any sustained recovery. Trader Ardi from CoinGlass identifies $530 as the level that would return the chart to neutral and likely begin a sideways consolidation phase, while $550 represents the level that would fully break the current bearish structure.
Zcash has rallied nearly 37% since developers deployed the Ironwood [NU6.3] upgrade to testnet on July 2, with activation following on July 4. According to reports from AMBCrypto, this milestone serves as the final testing phase before the planned mainnet rollout around July 28. The upgrade will activate at block 3,428,143 and will retire the vulnerable Orchard shielded pool while introducing a corrected pool. Funds leaving Orchard must pass through an accounting turnstile designed to prevent more ZEC from exiting than originally entered. However, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox has explained that the process cannot identify individual counterfeit coins or prove that the flaw was never exploited, with temporary wallet and exchange interruptions possible during system updates.
On the daily chart, ZEC has fallen below its 20-day simple moving average at $514.77 but remains above the 50-day SMA at $477.05 and the 100-day SMA at $466.50. The bear-bull power has dropped to minus 25.48, showing sellers have gained control after ZEC's rejection near $570. The 4-hour Relative Strength Index stands at 35.11, close to oversold territory but still above 30, while the Moving Average Convergence Divergence line remains below its signal line at minus 9.15. A daily close below the 50-day SMA at $477.05 would weaken the primary recovery thesis and expose $466.50, followed by the June support region near $370. The ₹42,000 ($500) region has emerged as the first meaningful support level, with a decisive breakout potentially targeting ₹50,000 ($600).
Outside crypto, Thursday's technology rout reduced demand for risk assets, with the Magnificent Seven erasing about $797 billion in market value after Alphabet and Tesla's earnings raised concerns over heavy artificial intelligence spending. The Nasdaq Composite fell more than 2%, while Tesla dropped 14% and Alphabet lost almost 7%. Oil and bond markets added pressure, with Brent crude briefly moving above $100 after Houthi attacks on two Saudi tankers raised fears of Red Sea disruption. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield reached an 18-month high near 4.70%, making speculative assets less attractive as traders reconsidered expectations for lower interest rates. Crypto funds also lost institutional capital, with U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recording $225 million in net outflows on July 23, including $202 million from BlackRock's IBIT account.
Zakura, a new full-node client for Zcash developed jointly by Project Tachyon and Valar Group, has been officially released as a free and open-source client built on Zebra, developed by the Zcash Foundation. According to Odaily Planet Daily, Zakura already supports the Ironwood (NU6.3) network upgrade and is designed to gradually integrate future Zcash protocol upgrades—including quantum recoverability, recursive proofs, and private information retrieval—into the live network. Benchmark tests show Zakura completes synchronization with the Zcash mainnet in approximately 4 hours and 20 minutes, representing a nearly fivefold improvement over Zebra's 20 hours and 46 minutes. The new Rust-based client targets 50,000 private transactions per second and can reportedly start from a pruned snapshot in under two minutes, though the development has not stopped the current price correction.
