Winklevoss Files for Spot Zcash (ZEC) ETF WINK With $100 Million Backing Pledge

S-1 Filed for Winklevoss Zcash ETF

Winklevoss Asset Services, the fund sponsor run by chief executive Cameron Winklevoss, filed a Form S-1 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday for an exchange-traded fund offering spot trading exposure to Zcash (ZEC), the veteran privacy coin. The Zcash price sits near $1,359 as of this writing, up roughly 2.4% over the past 24 hours, so the filing lands while the asset holds within reach of its heaviest overhead shelf. The proposed Winklevoss Zcash ETF would hold ZEC directly rather than through futures or other derivatives and plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker WINK. Per the S-1 registration statement, the trust would pay its sponsor an annual fee of 0.25%, accrued daily in ZEC, a sharp undercut of legacy crypto fund pricing. The fund would run a cash creations and redemptions model: authorized participants deliver dollars, the fund buys ZEC on the open market, and no physical tokens change hands. Winklevoss Capital Fund has signaled interest, through affiliates, in buying as much as $100 million of WINK shares, though the filing cautions that such indications are not binding purchase commitments. Integration across the Zcash ecosystem runs deep: Gemini Trust Company, described in the filing as an affiliate of the sponsor, would keep the fund's coins in segregated cold storage addresses, and the exchange has provided ZEC custody and trading since 2018. The SEC closed its review of Zcash-related matters in January 2026 without enforcement action, a decision that cleared a path for privacy-coin funds to register. The filing also lands weeks after Zcash's NU7 upgrade cut testnet block times from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, with a mainnet activation slated for Nov. 5.

A Race With Grayscale's ZCSH

WINK would become the second U.S. fund delivering direct ZEC exposure. Grayscale's Zcash ETF (ZCSH) began trading on NYSE Arca on Aug. 25 as the country's first spot ZEC fund, and its 2.5% management fee runs ten times the Winklevoss rate. Grayscale said the fund held more than $500 million by Sept. 8, about $100 million of which came from a subsidiary of its parent, Digital Currency Group. Flows have not been one-way since: the fund shed $93.6 million in its first weekly outflow after listing, a redemption stretch our desk tracked as it unfolded. The Winklevoss filing also names Cypherpunk Technologies, a Nasdaq-listed company that holds ZEC in its treasury, as the trust's Zcash Ecosystem Partner, a role covering coinholder polling and voting and advice on technical changes to the network. Winklevoss Capital, the investment firm Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss founded in 2012, led a $58.88 million private placement in Leap Therapeutics last October, and the biotech later renamed itself Cypherpunk. The path to approval is not assured. Among its risk factors, the S-1 details the Orchard bug a Shielded Labs researcher identified in late May, a flaw that could have allowed counterfeit ZEC to be minted inside the shielded pool. An emergency upgrade patched it in early June, and developers report no evidence of exploitation, yet the filing warns there is no cryptographic way to prove the pool stayed clean before the fix. The SEC disapproved the Bats BZX proposal to list the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust in March 2017, a precedent the sponsors know well. Several details remain blank in the preliminary prospectus, including the pricing benchmark, the administrator and the seed investor. Advocates have pressed the case in parallel: the ecosystem's lobby group registered under the federal Lobbying Disclosure Act, backed by a $750,000 grant.

$1,387 Resistance Rated 83/100

The competitive backdrop sharpened as Grayscale's ZCSH bled assets into the new filing's path: the fund held $1 billion on Sept. 24 and stood at roughly $781.96 million by Oct. 5, a drop of about $218 million of which only $97 million came from withdrawals, with the rest a price effect. Investors pulled money in four of the fund's last five sessions, including $30.25 million on Sept. 30 and $26.93 million on Oct. 2, and Grayscale executed a three-for-one share split on Sept. 30 that lifted outstanding shares to 23,967,900 without changing holders' value. ZEC itself traded above $1,376, up more than 5% in 24 hours as a newer reading than the figure at this piece's open. The filing also notes the sponsor itself was formed Oct. 1 and has no prior experience running a pooled investment fund, while developers have set an Oct. 20 decision on NU7's proposed Nov. 5 mainnet activation.

The filing also widens a competitive field the article's earlier framing undercounted: WINK would make Winklevoss Asset Services the third issuer chasing a U.S. spot Zcash ETF, behind Grayscale and Bitwise, which late last year filed with the SEC for 11 "strategy" ETFs including ZEC alongside AAVE and Bittensor's TAO. Outside the United States, 21Shares listed Europe's first Zcash ETP on Euronext Paris and Amsterdam in September, also at a 2.5% fee. The filing's contact is Cameron Winklevoss at the sponsor's Wilmington, Delaware offices, and it lands days after Tyler Winklevoss said the excitement around Zcash reminded him of 2019. The twins also donated $1.2 million worth of ZEC to developer Shielded Labs in January. ZEC traded near $1,354 on Tuesday, a newer reading than earlier figures in this piece, up more than 735% over the past year to a market cap around $23 billion, ranking it tenth among crypto assets.

The filing also sketches the fund's fee mechanics in fuller detail: the 0.25% sponsor fee applies to assets held, while the sponsor itself absorbs ordinary operating expenses, with only extraordinary costs carved out, and the trust's net asset value would be calculated against a daily pricing reference. The ecosystem Partner role attached to the new vehicle comes with a deep treasury connection: Cypherpunk Technologies, which took $58.9 million from Winklevoss Capital in November 2025 to pivot to a ZEC strategy, bought a further $29 million of ZEC that December, and its holdings reached roughly 1.8% of circulating supply. The competitive pitch also has a macro reading behind it: 21Shares reported that the combined market cap of privacy coins had climbed to about $30 billion, roughly a fivefold rise over a year, citing institutional demand for confidential settlement as a driver of further expansion.

The filing's mechanics also spell out why the trust will stay silent on network governance: taking part in Zcash coinholder votes requires holding privacy-shielded ZEC in a self-custody wallet, so the fund does not expect to vote at all. Votes are advisory and non-binding, the filing notes, with about 2.4 million ZEC taking part in the NU7-related polling in 2026. The document further confirms the net asset value is struck daily at a 4 p.m. New York pricing reference, with the fund barred from leverage or derivatives, and names the sponsor as a Delaware limited liability company set up Oct. 1, a point the filing itself concedes means it has no prior fund-management track record. Fields still blank include the pricing benchmark and the transfer agent.

(as of 05:42 UTC) COINOTAG's proprietary 42-indicator composite S/R scoring engine rates the $1,391.56 resistance at 84/100, with EMA 20, the R1 pivot, the 0.236 Fibonacci and the Ichimoku Kijun carrying most of the weight; a daily close above it opens the $1,514.66 shelf, scored 71/100 from the 0.114 Fibonacci, a high-volume node, the bearish FVG and the ATR upper band. Support sits at $1,188.05 (79/100 on the Bollinger lower 3SD band, the Gann level, EMA 50 and the 0.382 Fibonacci), and a break below it would drag price toward liquidation zones. Momentum is mixed: our RSI reads 49.28 while the MACD stays bearish inside a broader uptrend. Positioning is calm: the funding rate runs at 0.0037% on perpetuals, open interest sits at $919.63 million, and the Fear & Greed Index prints 71 (Greed). For a fuller read, see our Zcash technical analysis. Within the 24-hour window this piece covers, ZEC holds near $1,319.70, down 1.55%.