ZCash Day Trading Tutorial, Brokers and Buying Guide

ZCash (ZEC) is a cryptocurrency based on a decentralised blockchain. Where it differs from the likes of Bitcoin (BTC) is its use of cryptography to provide enhanced anonymity. This page will break down everything you need to know about ZCash, including its history, wallets, mining and future price forecasts. Finally, this page will wrap up with guidance on how to go about day trading with ZCash gold coins.

ZCash Brokers & Exchanges

#1 - eToro USA

Why We Chose eToro USA

eToro US offers 24 tradeable cryptoassets, with just a 1% buying/selling fee added to the spread. Additionally, there are 80 different coins available through the broker’s proprietary wallet service. You can also practice your crypto strategies easily by switching between live and demo mode. Crypto asset investing is highly volatile and unregulated. No consumer protection. Tax on profits may apply.

"eToro remains a top pick for traders looking for leading social investing and copy trading services. With a low deposit, zero commissions and an intuitive platform, the broker will meet the needs of newer day traders."

- DayTrading Review Team
  • Coins: BTC, ETH, BCH, DASH, LTC, ETC, MIOTA, XLM, EOS, NEO, ZEC, XTZ, MKR, COMP, LINK, UNI, YFI, DOGE, AAVE, ALGO, MANA, ENJ, BAT, MATIC, FLR, SHIBxM
  • Crypto Mining: No
  • Auto Market Maker: No
  • Crypto Spread: BTC 0.75%
  • Crypto Lending: No
  • Crypto Staking: No
  • Platforms: eToro Trading Platform & CopyTrader
  • Minimum Deposit: $10
  • Regulator: SEC, FINRA

About eToro USA

eToro is a social investing platform that offers short-term and long-term trading on stocks, ETFs, options and crypto. The broker is well-known for its user-friendly community-centred platform and competitive fees. With FINRA and SIPC oversight and millions of users across the world, eToro is still one of the most respected brands in the industry. eToro securities trading is offered by eToro USA Securities, Inc.

Pros

  • The $10 minimum deposit and straightforward account opening process means beginners can get started quickly
  • A free demo account means new users and prospective day traders can try the broker risk-free
  • The online broker offers an intuitive social investment network with straightforward copy trading on cryptos

Cons

  • There's a narrower range of day trading instruments available compared to competitors, with only stocks, ETFs and cryptos
  • Average fees may cut into the profit margins of day traders
  • The proprietary terminal doesn't support trading bots and there are no additional stock market analysis tools

#2 - LQDFX

Why We Chose LQDFX

You can trade 16 well-known cryptos including Bitcoin, the majority paired with USD or EUR. Spreads are low, starting from 1.02 pips. You can also deposit instantly via crypto with minimum deposits from $20 and no fees.

"LQDFX is best for active day traders looking for ultra-tight spreads, low fees and high leverage up to 1:1000. Forex traders will particularly appreciate the strong range of 70+ currency pairs with minimum deposits starting from $20."

- DayTrading Review Team
  • Coins: BTC, LTC, ETH, DSH, XRP, BCH, NEO, ZEC, XMR, ADA, BNB, SOL, LUNA
  • Crypto Mining: No
  • Auto Market Maker: No
  • Crypto Spread: 1.02 - 28.0 pips
  • Crypto Lending: No
  • Crypto Staking: No
  • Platforms: MT4
  • Minimum Deposit: $20

About LQDFX

LQDFX is a straight-through processing (STP) broker based in the Marshall Islands. The offshore trading firm offers competitive spreads from 0.0 pips, free deposits, 24/5 support and access to the hugely popular MetaTrader 4 platform. LQDFX also runs a competitive bonus program for short-term traders.

Pros

  • Leverage is available up to 1:1000 for experienced day traders
  • The $20 minimum initial deposit is accessible for beginners, and the Micro account will serve those looking to trade in smaller volumes
  • There are multiple STP account types with fast execution speeds, plus an Islamic swap-free option and PAMM accounts

Cons

  • Market research tools and educational resources are very limited compared to top brands like IG
  • It's a shame that there's no copy trading platform for beginners or experienced strategy providers
  • There are no additional charting platforms available, such as MT5 or a proprietary solution

#3 - Pocket Option

Why We Chose Pocket Option

Pocket Option offers a modest crypto offering with 10+ digital currencies including Bitcoin and 65+ tokens if you deposit $1000. The integrated analytics feature in the platform is helpful for finding opportunities, while the daily signals service makes it straightforward to act on short-term crypto opportunities.

"Pocket Option excels for its easy-to-use web platform which provides a best-in-class user experience for short-term binary traders. The $50 minimum deposit is also accessible for beginners while opening an account is really easy. Looking at the negatives, Pocket Option still trails alternatives in its market offering and regulatory credentials."

- DayTrading Review Team
  • Coins: BTC, ETH, BCH, LINK, AAVE, ALGO, TLM, ALPP, ANT, AVAX, AXS, BNB, ADA, CHZ, COMP, ATOM, DASH, MANA, DGB, DOGE, ENJ, EOS, FIL, GLMR, ILV, ICP, KAVA, LTC, MKR, MASK, MIOTA, XMR, ALICE, NEAR, NEO, NULS, OMG, DOT, MATIC, QTUM and many more
  • Crypto Mining: No
  • Auto Market Maker: No
  • Crypto Spread: N/A
  • Crypto Lending: No
  • Crypto Staking: No
  • Platforms: Web, MT4, MT5
  • Minimum Deposit: $50
  • Regulator: MISA

About Pocket Option

Established in 2017, Pocket Option is a binary options broker offering high/low contracts on forex, stocks, indices, commodities and cryptocurrencies. With over 100,000 active users and a global reach, the platform continues to prove popular with budding traders.

Pros

  • The range of payment methods beats the majority of rivals, providing fast, secure and convenient deposits for traders in most countries
  • Well-funded traders who deposit $1000+ can qualify for a 2%+ payout boost, more tradable assets and exclusive perks
  • The MetaTrader platforms offer integrated analysis with helpful technical summaries for short-term traders

Cons

  • You need to deposit $1000 to access the extended list of 250+ assets, otherwise just 130+ assets are available
  • The maximum binary contract length of 4 hours is restrictive for longer-term trading strategies. Alternatives like Videforex offer binaries up to 1 month
  • The MISA is a weak regulator with limited investor protection for retail traders

#4 - Pionex

Why We Chose Pionex

Make spot, future and leveraged trades on 120 cryptocurrencies via Pionex's proprietary platform with built-in trading bots and highly customizable automated trading options. On the negative side, the range of tokens is narrower than many alternatives.

"Pionex is an excellent option for crypto traders with an interest in cutting-edge AI like ChatGPT and automated trading."

- DayTrading Review Team
  • Coins: BTC, LTC, ETH, BUSD, EOS, BTT, TRX, NFT, DOGE, XRP, HT, ALICE, FIL, DOT, JST, AXS, UNI, AAVE, WIN, SUN, CAKE, LINK, BAKE, BCH, ETC, SNX, TFUEL, ADA, PUNDIX, ICP, MDX, FLOW, DODO, MFT, BSV, MATIC, CSPR, SHIB, ATOM, SUSHI and many more
  • Crypto Mining: No
  • Auto Market Maker: No
  • Crypto Spread: Market
  • Crypto Lending: No
  • Crypto Staking: No
  • Platforms: Own
  • Minimum Deposit: $0
  • Regulator: FinCEN

About Pionex

Pionex is a crypto trading platform that specializes in trading robots, offering a variety of ready made bots and strategies to traders as well as integrated AI to help customize a strategy or come up with your own. These can be used on spot crypto markets as well as crypto futures.

Pros

  • Excellent and innovative liquidity engines aggregated from Binance and Huobi
  • Low trading fees compared with other major exchanges at 0.05% maker and taker
  • 12 free integrated trading bots with no coding or programming requirements

Cons

  • No demo account
  • Withdrawal fees and limits may apply
  • Does not accept fiat deposits

#5 - Kraken

Why We Chose Kraken

Kraken is a specialized crypto exchange and supports more than 220 cryptocurrencies. These include all of the established tokens like Bitcoin as well as some altcoins. Traders can make trades on spot crypto markets with up to 1:5 leverage or on futures with up to 1:50. Fees are low and the platform is super easy to pick up.

"Kraken will suit traders looking for a diverse list of cryptos including Bitcoin and a good security track record."

- DayTrading Review Team
  • Coins: AAVE, ALGO, ANT, REP, REPV2, BAT, BAL, XBT, BCH, ADA, LINK, COMP, ATOM, CRV, DAI, DASH, MANA, XDG, EWT, EOS, ETH, ETC, FIL, FLOW, GNO, ICX, KAVA, KEEP, KSM, KNC, LSK, LTC, MLN, XMR, NANO, OCEAN, OMG, OXT, PAXG, DOT and many more
  • Crypto Mining: No
  • Auto Market Maker: No
  • Crypto Spread: 0-0.26% average
  • Crypto Lending: No
  • Crypto Staking: Yes
  • Platforms: AlgoTrader
  • Minimum Deposit: $10
  • Regulator: FCA, FinCEN, FINTRAC, AUSTRAC, FSA

About Kraken

Kraken is a leading cryptocurrency exchange with a proprietary trading terminal and a list of 220+ tradeable crypto tokens. Up to 1:5 leverage is available with stable rollover fees on spot crypto trading and up to 1:50 on futures. The exchange also supports crypto staking and has an interactive NFT marketplace.

Pros

  • Mobile investing
  • NFT marketplace and crypto staking available
  • 50x leverage on futures trading

Cons

  • Low leverage on spot trading
  • Does not accept fiat deposits
  • Does not support many newer altcoins

What is ZCash?

ZCash is the first open-source, permissionless cryptocurrency. Essentially, ZCash is Bitcoin but with some important improvements. Instead of your entire payment history being public if someone has your address, ZCash encrypts all information using zero-knowledge cryptography. As a result, users can’t see the:

Much of the cryptocurrency’s value and potential profitability centres around this promise of enhanced privacy.

Day trading with ZCash

Supply

According to the website, there is to be a limited total supply of 21 million units. However, in the first four year period, 20% of the coins generated were to be allocated to a ‘founders reward’, which would be shared with investors, developers and a non-profit.

ZCash also uses the same insurance rate as Bitcoin with 21 million ZEC to be brought out over 131 years. Although, instead of 10-minute block transaction times, ZCash will use a 2.5-minute block average with four times greater block rewards that halve every four years.

Privacy

Understandably, a difficulty this cryptocurrency is facing comes from law enforcement, who distrust the uses brought about by the privacy features. In fact, the founder has held numerous virtual meetings to emphasise “they did not develop the currency to facilitate illegal activity“.

However, ZCash does facilitate a ‘selective disclosure’ process. This enables private transactors to prove payments for auditing purposes. This gives clients the option to comply with anti-money laundering and tax regulations. As the developers explained, “Transactions are auditable but disclosure is under the participant’s control“.

So while the network’s usage may be questionable, long-term scalability looks promising and is set to attract considerable investment.

History

ZCash came to life in October 2016 when founder Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn wanted to tackle privacy issues online using an open financial system. As laid out in the white paper, instead of offering the open ledger system of Bitcoin, ZCash wants to provide an encrypted open ledger.

The founder appears to be the right man for the job. He has over 20 years of experience in decentralised systems and cryptography. In fact, his highly regarded works include:

Also among the founding team is cryptographer Mathew D. Green and initial investor Roger Ver. Of course, a huge number of other people helped build the system too. In fact, it began with the Zercoin protocol bring improved and turned into the Zerocash system. This was then enhanced and turned into the ZCash cryptocurrency in 2016. Protocol evolution is implemented by the Zerocoin Electric Coin Company, also known as the ZCash company.

The year after its launch there was a clear upward trend in favour of ZCash, as the currency was trading at $68.7 by April 2017. Price analysis shows it also boasted a market capitalisation of $80.2 million, ensuring it ranked on the list of top ten cryptocurrencies. This rise continued into the start of next year, as 2018 price predictions were met and often exceeded. In fact, the cryptocurrency regularly reached new all-time highest prices.

Overall, news of ZCash’s worth and reviews of the coin have helped shaped its history so far and continue to drive future forecasts.

ZCash Live Chart

How it Works

Head over to cryptocurrency forums and anonymity will often feature in discussions. Fortunately, ZCash uses sophisticated software and code to ensure privacy.

A special proof, zk-snark secures the network. The zero-knowledge proof basically allows two users to transfer capital without either party having to reveal their addresses. Obfuscation also ensures the value of the transaction is kept a secret. The addresses that are stored on the blockchain are shields, making it virtually impossible to trace the path between sender and receiver.

Whereas with Bitcoin, each full masternode stores details of what is held by each address in the UXTO or unspent transactions output database. Each transaction is then verified in order to unlock the output.

The approach taken by ZCash essentially implements an additional layer of privacy into transactions. Having said that, by the end of 2017, only about 4% of coins were in the shielded pool. At this point, most wallets did not actually support Z-addr and there were no online web-based wallets that did either.

Uses

Aside from cybercriminals on the darknet, there are a number of reasons users may want to use ZCash, including:

On balance, the long-term outlook and uses for ZCash look both positive and legitimate.

Benefits

For those deciding whether to buy and sell ZCash, there are several serious advantages to consider, including:

So for many reasons it has become accepted ZCash has a lot to offer potential investors and cryptocurrency explorers. In addition, the advantages are only likely to increase as the roadmap is followed and updates are made.

Drawbacks

Despite the benefits outlined above, there are also risks to consider, some of which may lead to a drop and even crash in ZCash prices, including:

So despite promising stats so far, there are a number of factors that could cause ZCash rates to start falling.

How to Buy ZCash

There are a number of exchanges where you can buy ZCash online either directly with a debit card or by purchasing BTC and transferring it to ZEC. Popular options include:

Regardless of whether you’re from the UK, the US or Europe, look for the lowest quotes, rates and transaction fees. For example, USD exchanges may offer accounts with better prices to USD than GBP and Euro. Remember also that many brokers offer single click access to cryptocurrencies (IQ Option offer over 20) – allowing trader to speculate and day trade on price movements, with needing to own the asset itself.

Alternatively, you can try ZCash on the test network for free by heading to a faucet.

Wallets

Once you have your gold coins, you will also need a secure wallet to store them in. Fortunately, you can download a number of wallets. The official wallet is built for Linux. However there are also iOS app wallets, Mac wallets, other desktop and hardware wallets, plus you can get offline paper wallet generators. But perhaps the most popular option is the Ledger Nano S.

Although you now know where to buy ZCash, effective intraday trading with these coins will require careful price analysis of graphs and the following of the latest news.

ZCash Mining

Cryptocurrency mining is becoming increasingly popular. Unsurprisingly joining the best GPU ZEC mining pool is a high priority for many. ZCash will use the hashing algorithm Equihash. This is an asymmetric memory-hard PoW algorithm. It works much like Ethereum. It comes with high hardware requirements, including significant RAM to narrow the generation of proofs and ensure ASIC development isn’t possible.

You can test ZCash with a free cloud mining contract from the Genesis. Flypool has also attracted a number of perspective USB and other miners.

However, it’s worth bearing in mind you need to do more than learn how to mine. There are also risks to consider. For example, CPU Linux and Mac mining rigs will require an expensive amount of electricity. You will need to consider this price in your earnings calculator. Also, conduct a hardware comparison before you start to ensure you explore the most viable route.

Fortunately, detailed guides can walk you through everything you need to know, from network hashrate calculators and hashing power to mining hardware and pool lists.

What’s Next for ZCash?

It has been clear since the launch date that this cryptocurrency had potential and historical prices so far have confirmed that. In fact, some even suggest the digital currency remains undervalued.

Having said that, the crypto world has set a high benchmark. Furthermore, the Zerocash protocol’s zk-SNARKS is relatively untested. As a result, many classic price forecasts have been purely speculative. Therefore, it is likely that future prices will depend on supply and demand, with the former rising while the later remains unclear. Thankfully this promises intraday traders precisely the volatility needed to yield profits.

For more crypto guidance, see our cryptocurrency page.