The opening day of Zcash (ZEC) mining was crazy, with volatility, reward for savvy traders and, of course, a few losses along the way.

Leading up to launch, futures have been trading on BitMEX, helping to build anticipation before mining began Friday morning. Of course, the delay in finally launching the first day of mining probably didn't hurt as miners prepared their machines to vie for the first batches to reach the market.

Genesis ZEC Mining Closed - For Now

For those of us who aren't tech savvy enough to fire up our own miners, Genesis offered an opportunity to get involved. I shared some info about the opportunity in an article the other day, hoping to get some Steemsters on board. As far as I know, only a couple did as a result of the article.

Hopefully more did. However, if you didn't, apparently they're sold out, at least for now. A couple of friends tried to sign up this morning, but couldn't find the option. When I checked it out, there wasn't even an option to increase hashrates for Zcash mining. As successful as the offering was, I would think they'd get more soon.

ZEC Mining Begins

This launch was a bit different than ICOs we've seen. I suppose it was more like Bitcoin's launch, but with marketing and crypto-history leading up to opening day. As a result, there's expected to be a huge number of miners vying for those precious blocks.

You can read the Zcash announcement of mining here. Those with the technical skills will find information regarding downloading their software in the article. The rest of us will have to rely on others to figure it out and provide end user tools for us.

Futures Promise the Moon

Futures started trading on BitMEX on September 15, offering early entry and helping to prime the market for the launch.

BitMEX is committed to providing price discovery for new and promising digital currencies. We are proud to be the first exchange to allow trading of any kind for ZEC/XBT. The BitMEX Zcash / Bitcoin futures contracts allow traders to go long or short with leverage on the ZEC/XBT exchange rate.

Product Details:

• Symbol: ZECZ16
• Underlying: ZEC/XBT
• Contract Value: 1 ZEC
• Quote Currency: XBT
• Expiry Date: 30 December 2016 12:00 UTC
• Settlement Currency: Margin and PNL are denominated in Bitcoin
• Leverage: 2x

It was surprising to me to see futures as high as they were within the next couple of weeks, getting up to 1/10 of a BTC. But what happened in the last hours before launch was incredible. At one time early Friday morning, contracts sold for as much as 10 BTC per 1 ZEC. It was a crazy show of what appeared to be irrational euphoria. Tulips come to mind, as do dot.coms in the 90s and real estate a decade ago. As of this evening, the futures have settled a little below 2 BTC/ZEC.

This just seems incredible, and to be promising far more than Zcash should be able to offer. So, the futures market made big promises, but...

First Day Delivers, and Then Some

It wasn't clear which exchanges would have Zcash first, nor if they would immediately. But both Kraken and Poloniex offered markets for ZEC right away. Within a couple hours, ZEC was being traded. What followed made the futures' market look like kids' play.

As @kevinwong pointed out in his refections regarding early trading:

Where else in the world will you see assets sprouting into life, entering the market, and be bestowed monetary value, almost instantly? The first Zcash entered Cryptoland a few hours ago. It went on to be bought and sold at insanely high prices, for a while. It's almost like a joke. Maybe Satoshi's having some fun.

The price ended up hitting the "insanely high price" of over 3299.99999999 BTC/ZEC briefly. I guess the buyer didn't want to spring for another Sat. To be fair, it was a tiny order, just a fraction of a BTC worth. Bragging rights?

As the day wore on, some semblance of sanity took over... some. Still, with ZEC trading just below 12 BTC this evening, it still seems awful bubbly to me. But, what do I know? I don't own any yet anyway. :) We'll see how the miners do.

Is it Wrong for the Zcash Team to Profit from Others Mining?

A friend who wasn't really interested in Zcash passed an article on to me where the writer calls Zcash a scam. He's whining because the founders and investors are getting 10% of the total ZEC mined (20%/yr for first four years). I'm a little reluctant to provide a link to his articles because giving him traffic is probably a very bad idea. But, for the sake of honest and opern sourcing, here they are (1 & 2). If you have any understanding of economics and particularly free markets, don't say I didn't warn you.

This person's complaining because, as he puts it:

The Zcash founders make $858.916,6 per day at the current price.
They have their total investment back in several days and from that moment they make an extreem amount of money after they did everything to hide these details from the rest of the planet. If prices stay at this level the ZEC marketcap will be reach $1,5 billion in 12 months. The founders own 20% of that which adds up to a number of $313,5 million. And that’s not even all as they get 20% of all mined coins in the first 4 years. That’s right, there’s a piece of code in the mining part of the software that forces all miners to “give” 20% of rewards to the founders. They don’t have to mine it themselves.

Just in this statement, there are multiple examples of some sort of marxist thinking.

• The founders were very open about what they were going to do. It's not like they were secretive. You can read all about it in their FAQs.
• There's no way the founders could know how much the coins would go for on opening day. The markets have decided on the current prices. Frankly, the better the founders do, the better the rest of us will do. I hope they get rich!
• The payback doesn't just cover the foundres, but the investors. Investors don't invest to break even. They invest to make profits, hopefully massive profits.
• The founding team worked their butts off to make this happen. Now it's reward time. Good for them. Why anyone would begrudge them of that is illogical. There's nothing dishonest. That's just business.

Some folks seem to look for reasons to complain. I guess this "author" feels a need to for some reason. Meanwhile, I'll thank the devs and investors all the way to the bank, and celebrate their wealth with my tiny piece of the pie.

Crazy markets

Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

Markets get crazy. That's just the way things are. And cryptos are no exceptions. Most ICOs go through an initial period of volatility before finding their equilibrium. Later on they'll often go through a rocket stage, then correct again. Sometimes this is withing weeks, other times it's a year or so later. It sure would be nice to have a road map before they hit the market, but we don't. We just watch the craziness and hope to enjoy the ride.

Did you get into a miner? I hope so. And I hope a lot of Steemsters get to enjoy greater wealth as a result, both in their ZEC and in their Steem.

Steemin' on,
Another Joe

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^{Logo courtesy of @oecp85}

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