Zcash jumps 12% as NU7 upgrade set for 5 November; Ether ETFs lose $1.08bn in October

Zcash (ZEC) jumped about 12% in 24 hours to around $1,270 on Wednesday after its developers agreed a date for its NU7 upgrade, which cuts the time between blocks from 75 seconds to 25. At the dollar rate of Rs 276.87 on our USD to PKR page, one ZEC is worth about Rs 351,600. The coin is up more than 148% this year, Cointelegraph reported, citing CoinGecko.

Ether went the other way. US spot Ether exchange-traded funds have lost $1.08 billion of investor money so far in October, the biggest monthly outflow since November 2025.

Zcash NU7: the date and what changes

Developers agreed to switch NU7 on at block 3,543,405, which should arrive around 5 November, CoinDesk reported. Developer Sean Bowe filed the proposal on GitHub on Tuesday and wrote "Height agreed at ZIP editor meeting." The upgrade has run on Zcash's test network since early October.

What NU7 does, according to CoinDesk:

• Faster payments. Blocks every 25 seconds instead of 75. An exchange that waits for three confirmations will credit a deposit in about 75 seconds instead of nearly four minutes.
• Fee burning, for now. 60% of the fees in each block are taken out of circulation temporarily and paid back to miners from around February 2031. The halving schedule does not change.
• Sprout shuts down. The old Sprout privacy pool closes. Coins still in Sprout at activation become unspendable, so anyone holding them must move them first.

The date is not yet final in code. The chosen height still has to be merged into the specification and shipped in node software, and the Zcash Foundation's tracker showed six of 12 tasks complete, Cointelegraph reported.

Ether ETFs: $1.08 billion out in October

Figures from SoSoValue, reported by Cointelegraph, show:

• October net outflows of $1.08 billion from US spot Ether ETFs, wiping out September's $832 million of inflows, with eight trading days still left in the month.
• Year-to-date net inflows down to about $485 million.
• Ether itself is down 9.7% in October, from $2,700 to about $2,438, and nearly 18% this year.

Bitcoin funds are holding up better: US spot Bitcoin ETFs took in $527 million on Monday and $23 million on Tuesday, leaving October only about $67 million in the red.

Prices in rupees

On our data pages, bitcoin was at $83,317 (about Rs 2.31 crore) and ether at $2,451 (about Rs 678,600) on 21 October. Follow the daily readings on the bitcoin price and ether price pages.