Winklevoss-Backed Cypherpunk Says Zcash Mining Yields 4x Bitcoin (BTC) Mining

McEvoy's $1,000 Per Megawatt-Hour Claim

Cypherpunk Technologies, the digital asset company backed by billionaire twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, says crypto mining of the privacy coin Zcash (ZEC) currently earns roughly four times more per unit of electricity than Bitcoin (BTC) mining, and beats AI data center infrastructure as well. The remarks position Zcash, long a niche privacy asset, as the highest-yielding use of miner electricity available today. Will McEvoy, the firm's chief investment officer, set out the arithmetic in podcast remarks published on Tuesday: one megawatt-hour of power directed at Zcash mining produces about $1,000 in revenue. Electricity is the dominant cost in both lines of work, which is why returns are measured per megawatt-hour rather than per machine. Bitcoin miners that converted capacity into AI hosting now earn about $240 per MWh on the same basis, an improvement from around $130 before those pivot deals, yet still roughly a quarter of the Zcash return. The framing is pointed: miners that spent two years rebranding around AI infrastructure now find themselves, on McEvoy's numbers, in the cheaper part of the stack. The comparison is unusually direct because both networks are secured through proof of work, so identical inputs can be measured against identical outputs. The claim lands while the Bitcoin (BTC) price narrative has shifted from coins to kilowatts, with mining, the industry that anchored Bitcoin's economics from its first block, chasing AI revenue after repeated halving events cut block rewards. McEvoy went further on valuation. A scenario in which Zcash grows to 10% of Bitcoin's market capitalization is reasonable enough, he argued, that ZEC could trade near $10,000 over the long term. He added that the company has set no official price target and that the figure reflects his assessment of Zcash's privacy technology rather than a formal forecast.

The Bitmain Bottleneck

Scarcity of hardware is what keeps the gap from closing on its own. Bitmain, the Chinese rig manufacturer, is effectively the only company producing dedicated Zcash mining machines, and its monthly output is estimated in the thousands of units. An operator ordering new machines today would wait roughly seven to eight months for delivery, and possibly longer. Bitmain has limited reason to expand the line: the Zcash equipment market is far smaller than the Bitcoin rig business that anchors its revenue, so higher ZEC mining margins do not translate into a proportionally larger market for machines. New entrants face the same wall from the other side. Building a Zcash-specific chip means custom semiconductor design, then securing foundry capacity at a major manufacturer such as Taiwan's TSMC, where AI chipmakers compete for the same wafer allocation. The result is a market in which elevated profitability can persist without attracting the capacity that would erode it. Cypherpunk sits near the front of that queue. The company controls about 18% of total Zcash network hashrate, the measure of computing power committed to the chain, describes its facilities as the world's largest dedicated Zcash operation, and says it intends to keep its share between 18% and 20%. Roughly one in five units of Zcash computing power now runs under one roof. The market has not matched the enthusiasm. ZEC changed hands near $1,183 on Tuesday, down 11.56% over the week, even though it gained 1.39% in the past 24 hours. The slide landed amid broad deleveraging that recently produced a $774 million liquidation wave across crypto derivatives, with longs taking most of the hit. The delivery lag functions as an entry fee for anyone considering expansion: by the time new machines arrive, the economics that justified the order may have moved.

Read with that self-interest in mind, the fourfold claim splits into two parts. The $1,000-per-MWh figure is Cypherpunk's own accounting, published by a firm that controls 18% of the network it is praising, so it should be treated as an operator's case until independent data confirms it. The structural argument is harder to dismiss: equipment scarcity is verifiable and it protects early movers whatever the exact revenue number. The $10,000 scenario is a different kind of wager, one against Bitcoin maximalism and for the idea that privacy demand can win ZEC a durable share of the altcoin market's value. Whether the fourfold gap holds will be decided by Bitmain's production choices and AI foundry demand, not by the argument itself.