CoinShares Zcash ETP Resumes Trading in Paris

Euronext suspended trading in CoinShares’ new Zcash exchange-traded product on Wednesday, its first day on Euronext Paris, then lifted the suspension the same day. The exchange’s instrument page for the product lists a trading-suspension notice and a trading-resumption notice, both dated 28 October, and was showing live buy and sell quotes in the afternoon.

CoinShares told Unchained that trading restarted “at noon CET”, or 11:00 London time. Euronext said the halt was about settlement at the securities depository, not about the product or crypto regulation.

In brief

CoinShares’ physically backed Zcash ETP, ticker ZCSH, was suspended on Euronext Paris on its first trading day and resumed the same day.
A Euronext spokesperson tied the halt to “operational settlement requirements” at the central securities depository.
CoinShares says settlement “has absolutely nothing to do with CoinShares”.

What CoinShares launched

CoinShares’ launch release says the CoinShares Zcash ETP, ISIN GB00BNRRG954, is “100% physically backed” by ZEC, the native token of the Zcash network, trades in euros and charges 1.50% a year. Investors buy a security through an ordinary brokerage account while the coins sit in institutional custody, “with no wallets or private keys to manage”.

CoinShares describes Zcash as a blockchain launched in 2016 from Bitcoin’s code, with the same 21 million coin cap, that lets users shield transactions with zero-knowledge proofs. Shielding is optional, and holders can share “viewing keys” so an auditor can inspect specific transactions.

“Privacy is one of the oldest requirements in finance, and one of the hardest to engineer on a public blockchain,” said chief executive Jean-Marie Mognetti. “ZCSH is that route for ZEC — one security, one ticker, on an exchange investors already use.”

The release had not been updated to mention the halt when TSN checked on Wednesday afternoon.

How the halt unfolded

Cointelegraph first reported the suspension on Wednesday morning. According to Unchained, Euronext’s notice listed the suspension as starting at 09:00 Paris time and gave as its reason only “upon the decision of Euronext and until further notice”.

Euronext spokesperson Flavio Bornancin-Tomasella told Unchained the product would stay suspended “until standard settlement operations can be fully supported by the Central Securities Depository (CSD)”. He said the measure “is strictly limited to these operational settlement requirements and is not tied to broader concerns or regulatory trends regarding crypto-based ETPs”. A CSD is the back-office body that records who owns a security and moves it between buyer and seller when a trade settles.

CoinShares press contact Benoît Pellevoizin told Unchained that “settlement has absolutely nothing to do with CoinShares”, in the same message that reported the resumption.

A plumbing fault, fixed within hours

A day-one halt of a privacy-coin product invites a regulatory reading. The evidence points the other way. Euronext called the problem operational, the suspension lasted about three hours on CoinShares’ account, and the exchange has now published its own resumption notice. Other Zcash products already trade in Europe: Unchained counts ZCSH as the fourth, after products from 21Shares, Virtune and Valour.

What remains unexplained is why the depository could not process this security on launch morning when rivals settle without trouble. Euronext moved to a new settlement model in September, making its own Euronext Securities the default depository for many Paris trades, but neither Euronext nor CoinShares has linked that change to ZCSH. Nor has either side said whether trades placed before the halt were affected.

For investors, the bigger point is access. Privacy coins remain awkward to hold through mainstream platforms. Kraken still caps individual Monero withdrawals, and ZEC only recently became tradable on Solana through Sunrise. A listed note that settles like any other security is the gap CoinShares says it fills, and a few lost hours do little to change that.

The launch also shows CoinShares running two routes at once. Earlier this month it started OnChain Strategies with Safe Labs and Kiln, reaching clients directly on blockchains. ZCSH wraps a coin whose privacy rests on cryptography, which researchers are already testing against future quantum computers, in a conventional exchange-listed security.

Note that the ticker ZCSH is shared with Grayscale’s Zcash ETF on NYSE Arca in the US, a separate product. The next thing to watch is ZCSH’s first full day of normal settlement, and whether Euronext or CoinShares explains what the depository could not handle.