Taiki Maeda gets liquidated on ZEC perps, says he'll relong into January's Tachyon upgrade

A forced liquidation closes out a leveraged Zcash trade

Taiki Maeda opens by explaining that he had his "entire net worth" in Zcash perps on leverage through Variational, and that a sharp market dump this week forced him to sell despite remaining bullish. He says the position's total P&L, including remnants of an earlier ETH short, was around $3 million, with the Zcash-specific gain closer to "two and a half or 2.3" million, down from a peak of $6.4 million.

He describes the breakdown: Zcash had been ranging between roughly $1,100 and $1,400 before breaking down, prompting him to sell "coping" along the way. He says his spot bags in Zcash, Hype and Bitcoin remain, and that his portfolio is now mostly cash with no leverage, waiting for a Variational airdrop next month as a possible next trade.

"I'd rather be up a lot, not sell, and then roundtrip some, and close at a healthy profit, than to not risk anything at the beginning, have less drawdowns, but be up a couple hundred thousand." — Taiki Maeda

The case for ZEC above $2,000: Tachyon, not privacy

Taiki argues the market misunderstands why Zcash has rallied. He says the real driver is the Tachyon upgrade, which he says developer ZK Dragon targeted for January 2027 (referenced in the episode as "January" / "late January") to ship a shielded pool and post-quantum transparent op codes, scaling toward 50,000 TPS and addressing quantum risk — something he says Bitcoin's roadmap lacks.

He points to Zcash's price bottoming around when Tachyon's blog post was published and argues "smart money" has accumulated around the project, not the privacy narrative most holders cite. He notes that fund managers he's spoken to own Zcash for "privacy" reasons but don't know what Tachyon is, which he treats as a knowledge gap he's trying to exploit.

"I think the real reason Zcash is pumping is because Tachyon... the market doesn't understand Tachyon and that I think is a source of alpha." — Taiki Maeda

He compares this to Zcash's prior Ironwood upgrade on July 28th, after which the price rallied several times over, though he's careful to say he isn't claiming Ironwood directly caused the pump. He plans to consider relonging ZEC perps around December or January, reasoning that catalysts are typically priced in roughly two months ahead of the event, citing LayerZero and Kinetic as past examples of coins bottoming months before their respective launches.

Bitcoin's "crisis of confidence"

Taiki argues Bitcoin could trade similarly to how Ethereum performed last cycle — failing to make fresh highs and instead ranging, in his words, possibly for "the next couple of years." He bases this on weak Bitcoin-to-gold and Bitcoin-to-S&P ratios and what he calls unresolved quantum and scalability issues.

He cites growing criticism of Michael Saylor among "OG Bitcoiners" such as Matthew Crader, along with Strategy CFO Andrew King's resignation and the company's removal from MSCI indices, as signs that Bitcoin's narrative momentum is fading. He frames this as part of a broader thesis that marginal capital will rotate from Bitcoin into Zcash as holders "silently" hedge.

"Why do we need Michael Saylor to turn Bitcoin into money with his Wall Street product? Bitcoin is money. We don't need Michael Saylor to turn Bitcoin into money." — a guest view cited by Taiki (Matthew Crader)

Other signals: PRL, Monero, Zama and the privacy trade

Taiki highlights PRL as a token he finds interesting but doesn't own, built around the idea that Bitcoin miners pivoting to AI inference weakens Bitcoin's network security while PRL can be mined using the same GPUs. He says it ran from roughly 30-40 cents to near $3 before pulling back, and admits he doesn't fully understand the demand case given AI labs could mine and dump it.

He also points to Monero and Zama as other privacy-related tokens showing strong charts — Monero's chart he calls "insane," and Zama he describes as in "vertical accumulation" — though he stresses he owns neither and flags this could simply be noise following Zcash's own rally rather than independent signal.

Why he was "punished" for ignoring top signals

Taiki recounts hosting a Coinbase trading competition in Singapore, where a fan who had made money following his Zcash calls tracked him down with a printed photo of an edited "Chad" version of his face and shouted a $50,000 Zcash price target on camera. He says this happened on October 8th, when Zcash was already down 10%, and jokes that he should have read it as a top signal.

He also flags that stablecoin market cap has been declining, which he calls "a little bit concerning" since it implies dollars leaving the ecosystem, something he says was part of his short thesis on Ethereum and altcoins last year. He notes stablecoin market cap had been "pretty resilient" since October 10th despite this, though recent events like a Binance hack and AI-related exploits may be prompting capitulation.

Where he goes from here

Taiki says he's going on a "dopamine detox" after the liquidation, as he's done following prior large wins and losses, before considering relonging Zcash into the Tachyon catalyst and preparing for the Variational airdrop. He maintains that most of crypto, including memecoins and influencer-driven tokens, "should not be touched" and is "worthless," arguing that outsized returns will come from concentrated bets like Zcash and perp-DEX tokens such as Hyperliquid, plus farming new perp exchanges.

He frames overall market sentiment as deservedly poor given grifting and rug pulls, but says he intends to keep focusing narrowly on Zcash and perp-DEX farming rather than chasing broader altcoin moves, acknowledging his reputation as a sometimes "counter signal" while standing by his directional calls over the past six months.