Whale Flips Bullish On Zec After $11M Win

From Short to Long: A Rapid Change of Stance

Crypto trader Garrett Jin (@GarrettBullish) has made a sharp directional shift on Zcash ($ZEC), opening a 2x long position worth approximately $11.9 million, according to on-chain analytics platform Lookonchain. The move comes shortly after he closed a ZEC short trade for an $11.24 million realized profit, making the pivot one of the more closely watched whale trades in the privacy coin market this week.

His new long position is already showing an unrealized loss of roughly $800,000, suggesting the entry has not yet moved in his favor.

Jin is the founder of the now-defunct exchange BitForex. His earlier short was executed on the decentralized exchange Hyperliquid, with the trade timed around a steep price drop in ZEC following the discovery of a bug in the Orchard Pool privacy protocol.

The Zcash Backdrop: Orchard Bug and Recovery

Zcash encountered significant market turbulence in early June 2026 after the disclosure of a critical vulnerability in its Orchard shielded pool. The bug, present since the pool's activation in 2022, raised questions about the integrity of shielded transactions despite swift remediation efforts by developers.

ZEC fell roughly 40% after the network disclosed and patched the flaw, with no confirmed exploitation found. The crash erased more than $3 billion from ZEC's market capitalization and pushed the price below $350.

On June 3, Zcash developers executed an emergency network upgrade to patch the vulnerability. The patch process caused a three to four-hour network halt, and while no exploitation was found, the inherent privacy features made it impossible to prove no counterfeit coins were created.

ZEC clawed back a major part of its losses, adding roughly $1 billion in market value in less than 24 hours as traders returned to the asset. Jin closed his short during a partial ZEC recovery, not at the deepest panic low, locking in an eight-figure profit before flipping bullish.

Jin's decision to go long rather than simply take profits and step away suggests he sees further upside potential in ZEC from current levels, though the early unrealized loss underscores the risk involved in trading a volatile asset still digesting a major security event.

Sources:
Garrett Jin Closes ZEC Short With $11.24M Profit After Zcash Crash (Crypto Adventure)
Zcash Plummets 38% as Shielded Labs Reveals a Major Bug (CoinDesk)
Zcash ZEC Price: $3 Billion Wiped Out After Hidden Bug (CoinCentral)