Grayscale's Zcash ETF Sets a 3-for-1 Split for 30 September

The Zcash ETF will split its shares three for one at the end of the month, less than four weeks after it started trading. Holders of record at the close on 28 September receive three post-split shares for every one they hold, paid after the close on 29 September, with split-adjusted trading beginning on 30 September. The ticker ZCSH and the CUSIP do not change. Grayscale, which built the fund, put the announcement out at 08:00 New York time on Friday. Assets read about $890 million on 17 September, having passed $500 million ten days earlier.

Arithmetic, not value

A forward split cuts the quoted price and multiplies the share count by the same factor. Nothing else moves. The fund's own release says so plainly.

"The Forward Split will not change the total value of a shareholder's investment," the release said.

The practical argument for doing it is access: a lower nominal price lets small accounts and brokerages that do not deal in fractional shares buy in round lots. Six accounts carry the three dates identically, which is unusual for this fund. Its asset figure has been the contested number since launch, and the split schedule is the first part of the story that nobody prints two ways.

Two prints of one inflow total

Cumulative inflows since 25 August are given as more than $233 million by The Block, financefeeds and The Crypto Times. news.bitcoin.com puts net inflows at $232.3 million as of 17 September. The gap is small and neither figure corrects the other. Underneath it sits a larger question about what the total counts. Grayscale's own accounting, reported here when the fund crossed $500 million on 8 September, separated more than $70 million of cumulative inflows from a $100 million contribution by DCG International Investments, an affiliate of the sponsor's parent, paid in 85,705.32563297 ZEC. The same 8 September date carries a single-day inflow of more than $112 million in this week's coverage. Whether the affiliate's money sits inside the $233 million is not addressed in any account read for this piece, and we could not establish it. Cumulative trading volume has passed $11 billion. The largest single day of inflows, $46.6 million, falls on Wednesday in two accounts; financefeeds dates the same sum to 19 September, a day after its own publication, so that reading is set aside.

Friday's high has two numbers

The token underneath the fund ran hard into the announcement. The Block puts ZEC's Friday high at $1,521 and calls it a new effective all-time high; The Crypto Times gives $1,531 for the same session with the same description. They do not reconcile, and neither cites the venue it read. By later on Friday CoinEdition had ZEC at $1,478.30, down a fraction on the day and up 24.8% over seven days, worth about $25.05 billion across roughly 17 million coins. Mining has followed the price. The solrate, the measure of Equihash solutions Zcash miners produce each second, rose from about 25 GSol/s in late August to just under 32, and difficulty sits near a record 291 million.

After the 30th

What the split does not touch is the fee. ZCSH charges 2.5% a year, payable in the token, and Grayscale directs all of it to Zcash ecosystem development and marketing. That was the number the fund was argued about on its first day on NYSE Arca, and a third as many dollars per share does not make it smaller. The network's own calendar is the next thing to land. The Crypto Times is alone this week in dating NU7 to a 6 October testnet activation and a 5 November mainnet activation, cutting block times to 25 seconds from 75; coinholders backed that change in a vote this site covered on 16 September, and no other outlet republished the dates. No account read this week carries a word from Grayscale on what kind of buyer the lower price is meant to reach. The first flow numbers that could answer it arrive after 30 September.