Winklevoss-Backed Zcash Treasury Plunges 37% on Privacy Bug Concerns

Fallout from a major bug that could've flooded the Zcash market with counterfeit coins hit Wall Street on Friday, as investors dumped shares in Cypherpunk Technologies and piled pressure on the firm backed months ago by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. The company, which late last year rededicated itself to hoarding Zcash, watched shares slide to their lowest level since early March.

As of writing, the stock (CYPH) was down 37% to 59 cents, clawing its way back from an intraday low of 53 cents, per Yahoo Finance.

Cameron rushed to Zcash's defense in an X post, arguing that "there will be bugs" in the software behind any blockchain. What's important, he added, is that "there are world class researchers focused on hardening the network and staying ahead of the bad guys." A bold pitch for a coin that just spent four years hosting an undetected counterfeiting flaw.

Cypherpunk's slide marked a sharp blow to the Winklevoss twins' crypto empire, which orbits around exchange Gemini. GEMI shares fell 4.4% to $4.41 amid broader weakness in U.S. equities, with the Nasdaq on pace to drop more than 2%.

The vulnerability, disclosed by Shielded Labs, went undetected for four years before an AI-assisted audit caught it, the organization said. An emergency fix was deployed this week, but investors flinched regardless, as the team conceded it could not guarantee the bug hadn't been quietly exploited.

Zcash changed hands around $329, a 37% drop over the past day, according to CoinGecko. It had earlier notched a multi-year high of nearly $700 in November — the same month Cypherpunk, formerly known as Leap Therapeutics, announced Winklevoss Capital had led a roughly $59 million private placement into the firm.

Since then, the company