Recently, I've been pondering the circulation structure of ZEC, and the deeper I look, the more interesting it becomes.

Most people know that the total supply of ZEC is 16 million coins, but that's not the full picture.

What is truly easy to overlook is that over 5 million ZEC are locked in shielded addresses for the long term. These coins share a common characteristic: extremely low liquidity, almost no participation in any transactions, and their prices' fluctuations do not affect them.

In other words, if we exclude this portion, the actual ZEC that can be freely bought and sold in the market and traded at any time is only a little over 10 million coins.

But this is just static data. Once the price starts to rise, the situation will worsen further. The higher the price goes, the stronger the holders' reluctance to sell, and the fewer chips they are willing to part with.

Suppose ZEC is pushed close to $1,000. I tend to believe that the freely circulating amount will further shrink to the range of 8 to 9 million coins. Under this structure, the spot inventory on exchanges might only be in the tens of thousands of coins.

What does this situation truly imply?

The core constraint of the market has shifted from "Can I buy it?" to "Are there coins to sell?"

From another perspective, the current market discussion about supply and demand tightness may still be at a superficial level. The real liquidity squeeze has probably not yet truly begun. When both price and available chips shrink simultaneously, the market usually doesn't give much warning in advance.