Zcash, Bitcoin, And Solana—Catalysts Ahead That Could Fuel Another Upswing Before May Ends

While the rest of the crypto market has shown more signs of an intensifying bear market, Zcash (ZEC) is making major waves. Over the last 30 days, the privacy-focused coin has surged by around 60%, while Bitcoin (BTC) and Solana (SOL) have remained relatively quiet, each slipping by single digits in the same timeframe.

Nevertheless, Alex Cardichi, market expert from The Motley Fool, argues that Bitcoin, Solana and Zcash have several potential catalysts remaining this month that could trigger a fresh rebound rally.

In his latest report, Cardichi starts by discussing Bitcoin, citing the United States’ holdings of around 328,000 seized coins. He refers to comments made by White House advisor Patrick Witt on 6 May, when Witt revealed that a significant update on the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is anticipated ‘in the next few weeks’.

Cardichi argues that a positive announcement, especially one that provides clearer details on the status of the reserve, could push Bitcoin back towards six-figure levels. Currently, the market’s leading cryptocurrency has fallen from $82,000 last week to $76,300. 

Solana is the second focus. Cardichi calls out a major technical development: the chain’s upcoming Alpenglow upgrade. If everything goes to plan, the upgrade could roll out as soon as the third quarter of this year. 

From Cardichi’s perspective, the upgrade’s improvements aren’t only about performance for its own sake. He suggests that if Alpenglow delivers the results Solana developers expect, it could become a practical incentive for financial institutions looking to transition parts of their workflows onto blockchains.

In that context, he points to this year’s third quarter as a possible turning point for Solana and its native token, particularly if testing supports the Alpenglow upgrade’s promised impact. For now, SOL is trading at $84, down 11% over the past seven days. 

Finally, Cardichi turns to Zcash, one of the best-performing tokens in the market,  noting that in January, the entire engineering team behind Zcash’s original developer—Electric Coin Company (ECC)—resigned amid an internal governance dispute. 

Despite that upheaval, Zcash has since surged, rising about 127% over the last three months. Instead of proving fatal, Cardichi argues the disruption became the start of a new phase. 

After the engineering team exited, they formed a new organization called Zodl and raised $25 million from firms including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Winklevoss Capital in early March. 

Cardichi says the funds are intended to recruit new talent and build out Zcash’s development roadmap, and he expects further updates to emerge soon as that work progresses.

At the time of writing, Zcash was trading at around $533, having risen by almost 1,200% year-to-date. However, Cardichi suggests that a rally to the coin’s prior all-time high of $880 could be sparked by any catalyst arising from the new dev roadmap.

Featured image created with OpenArt, chart from TradingView.com