Privacy Token Horizen (ZEN) Soars 22% After Listing on Coinbase

On Wednesday, Coinbase announced that it is listing the cryptocurrency Horizen (ZEN), prompting a 22% rise in the price of the privacy token.

The token is the top-performing digital asset today of any crypto with a market cap of over $1 billion, according to data tracked by Messari. At press time, the token was trading at $103.62.

After the announcement, Barry Silbert, founder and CEO of Digital Currency Group wrote a bullish tweet stating that he owns ZEN personally and that DCG has a large position, too. (DCG is the parent company of CoinDesk.)

The token’s increase in price is almost certainly related to the “Coinbase Effect,” the price pump that almost all smaller digital tokens experience after their listing on the U.S.-based exchange because of the exposure to a new set of market participants.

Messari conducted its own research into the effect and found that Coinbase listings lead to higher returns, compared with listings on other exchanges.

Horizen is a privacy-orientated cryptocurrency with sidechains that enable anyone to build privacy-based applications. It was launched in 2017 under the name ZenCash.

ZEN, is a mineable proof-of-work (PoW) coin that reached an all-time high of $166.27 on May 8. The token is about 60% below that peak.