Bitcoin Mining Giant Enters Zcash With Institutional Service

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Foundry, the operator of the largest Bitcoin mining pool in the world, has announced plans for a Zcash mining pool geared at institutions.

Foundry Aims To Launch Zcash Mining Pool In April 2026

As revealed in a press release, Foundry is expanding into Zcash with a new mining pool aimed at filling a gap in ZEC mining infrastructure for institutional entities and public companies. Foundry is the operator of Foundry USA, the largest Bitcoin mining pool based on total computing power or Hashrate. A mining pool refers to a collaboration between miners spread over a decentralized network who combine their Hashrate to better compete with the wider network and increase their chances of earning block rewards.

With its latest move, Foundry is now bringing in an institutional-grade mining pool to ZEC. “Zcash has matured into an institutional-grade asset, but the mining infrastructure supporting it hasn’t kept pace,” said Mike Coyler, Foundry CEO.

Zcash is a privacy-focused token that was first launched in 2016. While cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are “anonymous” in that they involve no identity verification, their addresses and transactions are still available on a public ledger to be viewed by anyone. Privacy coins like ZEC involve truly anonymous blockchains, hiding such information by default. The press release noted:

By combining strong, cutting-edge privacy technology with transparent blockchain verification, Zcash demonstrates how financial privacy and compliant digital infrastructure can coexist.

Zcash was originally based on Bitcoin’s codebase, so its token economics work similarly; the supply grows when miners add a new block to the chain and receive the corresponding block reward. There is also a supply cap of 21 million ZEC, and the block reward is cut in half about every four years via Halving events.

Foundry’s ZEC mining pool will have US-based operations just like its Foundry USA pool and is expected to launch in April 2026. “We at Shielded Labs are delighted that Foundry—the largest Bitcoin mining pool, and one based in North America—is launching an enterprise-grade Zcash mining pool,” said Zooko Wilcox, the cryptocurrency’s founder and Shielded Labs chief product officer. Shielded Labs is an independent support organization for ZEC based in Switzerland.

Foundry’s expansion into Zcash has come after the privacy coin has seen a network Hashrate boom. As data from BitInfoCharts shows, the computing power connected to the blockchain has gone up significantly over the past few months. In October, the ZEC Hashrate sat at less than 8 Ghash/s, but today, it’s floating at over 13 Ghash/s.

The trend in the ZEC Hashrate over the last three years | Source: BitInfoCharts

ZEC Price

At the time of writing, Zcash is trading around $209, down more than 11% over the past week.

Looks like the price of the coin has retraced some of its recovery | Source: ZECUSDT on TradingView

Featured image from Dall-E, chart from TradingView.com

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