Winklevoss Files a Zcash ETF Around Its Own Stack

Winklevoss Asset Services filed a spot Zcash ETF on Oct. 6 that would list on Nasdaq as WINK and charge 0.25% a year. Gemini Trust Company would hold the coins. Cypherpunk Technologies would advise the trust. Winklevoss Capital Fund has a nonbinding interest in buying up to $100 million of shares.

The same family already stores ZEC, mines it, and would collect the custody line. Grayscale’s live fund, ZCSH, still charges 2.5% while money has started leaving.

The Sponsor Was Five Days Old When It Filed

Winklevoss Asset Services, LLC was formed in Delaware on Oct. 1. Five days later Cameron Winklevoss, its chief executive, signed a preliminary S-1 registration statement for the Winklevoss Zcash ETF. The trust itself was formed the same day as the filing. CSC Delaware Trust Company would act as trustee. The sponsor is wholly owned by Winklevoss Asset Services Holdings.

The fund would hold ZEC directly, with no leverage and no derivatives, and would try to track the coin’s price after fees. Shares would trade on Nasdaq under WINK once the SEC declares the registration effective and the exchange posts a notice of issuance. That has not happened. Several blanks remain in the prospectus, including the pricing benchmark, the administrator, and the seed investor.

Gemini, the exchange the twins founded, posted the news on Oct. 6. The post said they had filed for a spot Zcash ETF and wanted the WINK ticker on Nasdaq.

The Winklevoss twins have filed for a spot zcash:native ETF, seeking a Nasdaq listing under the ticker $WINK pic.twitter.com/V2HGJg2Phw

— Gemini (@Gemini) October 6, 2026

Gemini Trust Company, LLC, which the filing calls an affiliate of the sponsor, would keep all of the trust’s ZEC. The custodian is a New York-chartered firm under the New York State Department of Financial Services. It is not FDIC-insured. The coins would sit in segregated cold-storage addresses. Khing Oei signed the same S-1 as principal financial officer. He also chairs Cypherpunk, the Nasdaq-listed ZEC treasury named in the filing as ecosystem partner.

The twins have been here before. Their first U.S. spot bitcoin ETF fight ended with a March 2017 bitcoin ETF disapproval, and the new S-1 arrives 13 years after that first bitcoin filing. Around the Zcash submission, ZEC traded above $1,376 and was up more than 5% over 24 hours.

THE FILING IN FOUR FIGURES

• Sponsor fee: 0.25% a year, accrued daily in ZEC, with ordinary operating costs covered.
• Seed interest: up to $100 million from Winklevoss Capital Fund, through affiliates, from dealers or in the market.
• Binding status: the prospectus says those indications are not agreements or commitments to buy.
• Ticker and venue: WINK on Nasdaq, subject to notice of issuance after the SEC clears the registration.

On Oct. 7 Cameron Winklevoss wrote that the fund would give investors exposure to Zcash and called the coin “unstoppable private money.” The product he signed still has to clear the SEC before anyone can buy that exposure in a brokerage account.

Cypherpunk Holds 323,394 ZEC and 18% of the Hashrate

The S-1 names Cypherpunk Technologies Inc. as the trust’s “Zcash Ecosystem Partner.” Under that contract Cypherpunk may help with coinholder polling and voting, offer guidance on protocol changes, and advise on other Zcash matters. It is not a side vendor the twins found last week.

Winklevoss Capital led a $58.88 million private placement in October 2025 for Leap Therapeutics, the biotech that then renamed itself Cypherpunk and shifted to a ZEC treasury. As of Aug. 11, 2026, Cypherpunk said it held 323,394.38 ZEC at an average purchase price of $341.83, about 1.92% of circulating supply, and that it wants 5% over time. Will McEvoy, a Winklevoss Capital principal, is the company’s chief investment officer.

On Aug. 18 Cypherpunk said it had bought a Zcash mining fleet from Moria Mining, an affiliate of Winklevoss Treasury Investments, in a $33.33 million deal paid with a pre-funded warrant. The company put the fleet at 4.2 GSol/s of Equihash hashrate, about 18% of the network, across 4,902 Z15 Pro machines hosted in Texas, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss said in that announcement that investors had had limited options for Zcash mining exposure and that the fleet changed that. A Sept. 22 Cypherpunk update said the operation produced 3,023.13 ZEC between Aug. 18 and Aug. 31, all added to treasury.

WHO COLLECTS IF WINK LISTS

• The sponsor: Winklevoss Asset Services would take the 0.25% fee on the fund’s ZEC.
• The custodian: Gemini Trust Company, an affiliate, would hold the coins and earn the custody relationship the S-1 flags as a conflict.
• The adviser: Cypherpunk would be paid to advise on the network whose token it already holds and mines.
• The seed pocket: Winklevoss Capital Fund may buy up to $100 million of WINK shares, or none.
• The miners: the same group sold Cypherpunk the machines that now produce new ZEC for that treasury.

A brokerage client who buys WINK would not hold a z-address, would not mine a block, and would not sit in a coinholder poll. The twins’ companies would still touch the fee, the vault, the advice line, and a large pile of the coin.

Grayscale’s ZCSH Still Charges 2.5%

WINK would not be the first U.S. spot Zcash fund. Grayscale converted its old Zcash Trust into ZCSH on NYSE Arca on Aug. 25, 2026, with $304.59 million in net assets that day. By Sept. 8 Grayscale said the fund held more than $500 million. Bitwise has a Zcash ETF filing of its own, so Winklevoss is the third sponsor in the queue. If WINK is declared effective while Bitwise is still only paper, it would be the second fund that actually trades.

ZCSH still charges 2.5% a year, ten times the Winklevoss rate. Coinbase Custody holds that fund’s coins. On Sept. 30 Grayscale executed a 3-for-1 share split. Then the flow flipped. Fund-flow tallies put net withdrawals at $93.56 million in the week ended Oct. 2. As of Oct. 6, ZCSH’s net assets were $789.34 million and cumulative net inflows since listing were $209 million, according to ZCSH daily creation and redemption figures drawn from the issuer’s own share counts.

TWO ZCASH FUNDS, ONE OF THEM LIVE

At ZCSH’s Oct. 6 size, a 2.5% fee is a much fatter sponsor line than 0.25% on the same pile of coins. Winklevoss does not need ZCSH to fail. It needs enough of that 2.5% book to notice a 0.25% share class with a familiar last name on the vault.

Why the ETF Cannot Vote in Coinholder Polls

Zcash uses zk-SNARKs so a user can hide sender, recipient, and amount in a shielded transaction, while unshielded sends remain public. The S-1 describes that split in plain terms and then walks into a governance wall. In 2026 coinholder polls on the NU7 upgrade, about 2.4 million ZEC took part. Those polls are advisory, not binding. Participation, the filing says, currently requires shielded ZEC in a self-custodied wallet.

The trust does not expect to take part. Gemini would hold the fund’s coins, and that custody setup does not give the sponsor a vote in the shielded polls that Cypherpunk is contracted to help with. A large ETF position would show up in net assets, not in the poll that protocol teams actually read.

That is the odd bargain inside WINK. A retirement account can buy a privacy coin without ever touching a shielded address, while the one public vehicle that might amass a huge ZEC pile is written out of the only coin-weighted signal the network runs. Buying the share still means a name, a tax lot, and a broker. The shield stays on the chain the shareholder never opens.

Conflicts of interest may arise among the Sponsor or its affiliates, including the Custodian, and the Trust.

Winklevoss Zcash ETF, Form S-1, Oct. 6, 2026

The same prospectus warns that shielded features can raise the odds of lawsuits or lost banking services if they clash with anti-money-laundering checks. It also recites the Orchard bug that a Shielded Labs researcher found in late May, patched in early June, and that developers say they have no evidence was used. The filing still states there is no cryptographic method to know conclusively whether the flaw was exploited before the fix.

Cash In, Cash Out, No Coins for Brokers

Creations and redemptions are built so Wall Street can trade the wrapper without walking ZEC across its own desks. The prospectus prices a subscription in the cash needed to buy the ZEC behind a basket of shares. Authorized participants may deliver cash or ZEC. On the cash path, the trust buys the coin. On a cash redemption, the sponsor arranges a sale and sends dollars back. Dealers can stay in dollars the whole way.

That design is how a privacy asset gets into a Nasdaq tape. The shareholder owns an interest in a Delaware statutory trust, not a key. The trust is not a 1940 Act fund, and the sponsor is not an investment adviser under the Advisers Act, so the extra federal wrappers those statutes give other funds do not apply. Secondary trades would go through ordinary brokers, at ordinary commissions, at a premium or discount to net asset value.

For Gemini, every creation that settles in coin is more ZEC under its watch. For Cypherpunk, a listed 0.25% product is another bid for the token it already holds and the hashrate it already runs. For Grayscale, it is a cheaper share class aimed at a book that has already shown it can shrink when redemptions open.

What NU7 Changes Before the Fund Can Trade

The S-1 cannot go effective on a timetable the prospectus names, and Zcash has a separate clock. Developers have a NU7 mainnet activation timeline that puts a go-or-no decision on Oct. 20, after testnet results, with Nov. 5 as the target date for mainnet. NU7 is already running on the public testnet. It activated at block 4,465,026 on Oct. 4, two days earlier than the first published estimate.

THE NU7 CLOCK

1. Oct. 4, 2026: NU7 activates on public testnet at block 4,465,026.
2. Oct. 20, 2026: engineers set a mainnet height, or they slip the date, after watching testnet.
3. Nov. 5, 2026: target mainnet activation, still conditional on that Oct. 20 call.

The upgrade’s headline change is ZIP-218, which would cut target block spacing from 75 seconds to 25 seconds and divide the per-block subsidy by three so issuance per hour stays the same. NU7 would also turn off v4 transactions, which freezes spending from the old Sprout pool, and fold in a Network Sustainability Mechanism that withholds part of fees for later. Wallets are not supposed to break. Full nodes, indexers, and explorers might.

That is not an ETF approval. WINK still needs the SEC to declare the S-1 effective and Nasdaq to list the shares. Until then the Winklevoss ZEC stack is the thing that already trades: a Gemini vault business, a Cypherpunk treasury of 323,394.38 ZEC as of Aug. 11, a mining fleet the company puts at 18% of hashrate, and a live Grayscale fund at 2.5% that has started handing coin back. The Oct. 6 filing is the public wrapper they want to set on top.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of a securities filing and related fund-flow figures. It is for information only and is not investment advice, tax advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell ZEC, WINK, ZCSH, CYPH, or any other security or digital asset. It is also not a forecast that the SEC will declare the Winklevoss registration effective or that NU7 will activate on the target date. Readers should consult a licensed financial adviser, and a securities lawyer if they are considering an ETF or crypto position, before acting. Figures and statuses reflect the named filings and tallies as of the dates given in the piece and can change as the SEC review, share creations, and the NU7 process move.