Garrett Jin has closed his ZEC short with an eight-figure profit after Zcash’s sharp selloff turned one of the market’s most controversial whale trades into a major win.
The Lookonchain-tracked Garrett Jin position closed with an $11.24 million profit, ending a ZEC short that had grown more important as the privacy coin moved from rally mode into one of the steepest large-cap drawdowns of the week.
The trade had been building before the crash. Jin, known on X as @GarrettBullish, had already placed a large bearish ZEC bet while also adding exposure to HYPE and Bitcoin. The earlier ZEC short setup showed how the position sat directly against one of crypto’s strongest privacy-coin narratives at the time.
That timing became decisive. ZEC later collapsed after Zcash disclosed and patched a critical Orchard shielded-pool flaw, turning Jin’s bearish trade into a clean profit event while many long-side traders were caught in the drawdown.
Zcash Crash Turned The Short Into A Winner
ZEC’s selloff began as a technical security story and quickly became a market-confidence crisis. The AI-assisted Orchard flaw hit the part of Zcash designed to support its newest shielded transactions, raising harder questions around supply assurance even after developers moved quickly to patch the issue.
The market reaction was brutal. ZEC dropped roughly 35% at first, then extended into a deeper collapse as confidence weakened and large holders reassessed the privacy-coin thesis. The move became even more dramatic when Barry Silbert defended Zcash as ZEC plunged 44%, while Arthur Hayes exited his position and argued that the “Holy Trinity” trade no longer worked for him.
That backdrop explains why Jin’s short mattered. It was not just a random leveraged bet on a falling altcoin. It became a direct trade against the idea that ZEC’s privacy narrative could absorb a supply-confidence shock without breaking market structure.
Profit Comes As ZEC Rebounds
The short was closed during a partial ZEC recovery, not at the deepest panic low. ZEC recently traded near $419, up about 18% over 24 hours, after moving through a 24-hour range between roughly $346 and $436.
That rebound makes the realized profit more important. Jin did not need the trade to catch the absolute bottom. The collapse from the pre-crash range had already created enough downside for the short to generate eight figures before ZEC bounced.
The recovery also shows that ZEC is no longer trading only on the Orchard flaw. Traders are now balancing three forces: the technical patch, the loss of confidence around shielded supply verification, and the possibility that panic selling overshot in the short term.
Whale Trade Adds To ZEC’s Volatility Story
The trade closes one chapter of Zcash’s violent week, but it does not remove the pressure around ZEC. The market still has to decide whether the Orchard patch is enough to restore long-term confidence, especially for a privacy asset where users care deeply about both secrecy and monetary integrity.
Large leveraged positions can also amplify the way a story trades. A profitable short creates a visible scoreboard for bearish traders, while a rebound after closure can feed speculation that some of the forced selling pressure has already passed. That makes ZEC a harder asset to read in the short term because technical recovery, narrative damage and whale positioning are moving together.
The clean version of the story is clear: Garrett Jin shorted ZEC before the privacy-coin shock turned into a full market selloff, then closed the trade with $11.24 million in realized profit. Zcash has patched the Orchard issue, but the market damage has already created one of the week’s most profitable whale trades.
