Arthur Hayes says Maelstrom has sold its entire Zcash position after new 
disclosures around the Orchard Pool vulnerability sharpened the perceived risk 
around ZEC’s monetary integrity. The move effectively ends his recent “Holy 
Trinity” trade across ZEC, NEAR and HYPE, while leaving Worldcoin as the AI- 
linked bet he says the fund still holds. “The Holy Trinity is dead,” Hayes 
wrote on X. “Sadly due to the Orchard Pool exploit, I had to dump our entire 
ZEC bag.” Why Is Hayes Dumping Zcash Now? The post followed a detailed 
statement from Zooko Wilcox, Jason McGee and Taylor Hornby, who described the 
issue as “The Orchard Counterfeiting Vulnerability.” According to their 
summary, Hornby discovered a critical vulnerability in Zcash’s Orchard pool on 
May 29 and disclosed it to Zcash Open Development Lab, which then coordinated 
an emergency response completed on June 2. The key line was stark: the 
vulnerability “could have been exploited to undetectably create an unlimited 
amount of counterfeit ZEC within Orchard.” Related Reading: Zcash Fixes 
Critical Orchard Vulnerability As ZEC Holds $600 Support That disclosure 
changed the market framing. Earlier ecosystem messaging had emphasized that 
the vulnerability had been remediated, that there was no evidence of 
exploitation, and that user funds remained safe. But Wilcox, McGee and Hornby 
added an important caveat: because of Orchard’s privacy properties, there is 
no way to cryptographically prove whether the vulnerability was exploited 
while it existed. That distinction sits at the center of Hayes’ decision to 
exit. “While I think it’s extremely unlikely of any minting, it cannot be 
formally cryptographically proved impossible,” Hayes wrote. “The privacy from 
AI, govt, big tech narrative demands perfection not improbability. I read 
about the exploit yday, and didn’t appreciate how it violated my narrative 
mental map.” Josh Swihart, founder and CEO of Zcash Open Development Lab, 
offered his own explanation in a post titled “Never Again.” He described the 
Orchard bug as a failure in one of the system’s rules: the rule was written 
loosely enough that it could accept false information and still pass. In other 
words, the problem was not a privacy leak but a soundness failure in the proof 
system, the kind of issue that can undermine confidence in whether invalid 
value creation was possible inside a shielded pool. The emergency fix required 
coordinated network action rather than a simple wallet or application patch. 
ZODL and the broader Zcash ecosystem moved to disable Orchard actions 
temporarily and then restore them with a corrected circuit. The remediation 
may have closed the vulnerability, but for a privacy asset, the reputational 
damage came from the residual uncertainty: no evidence of counterfeiting is 
not the same as a cryptographic proof that counterfeiting never occurred. 
Related Reading: Zcash (ZEC) Soars To Six-Month Highs After 110% Rally – Can 
It Break The $700 Barrier? Hayes said the roughly 30% selloff in ZEC forced 
him to reassess the position. “The 30% dump made me rethink, and I had to take 
profit on the entire position,” he wrote. His stated logic was not that 
exploitation had happened, but that the privacy thesis he had attached to ZEC 
required a higher standard than probabilistic reassurance. The sale completes 
a rapid reversal from Hayes’ May 22 “Holy Trinity” call, when he grouped HYPE, 
ZEC and NEAR as a three-token basket. “When you are in position, trading is 
easy, sit back and watch number go up,” he wrote at the time, naming “HYPE, 
ZEC, NEAR the holy trinity.” HYPE represented the on-chain derivatives and 
protocol revenue trade, NEAR the AI and chain-abstraction angle, and ZEC the 
privacy leg. A day before the ZEC sale, Hayes had already said he dumped his 
entire HYPE and NEAR positions, citing higher energy prices, looming major AI 
IPOs and political risk around artificial intelligence as reasons for taking 
profit. Still, Hayes did not close the door on Zcash. “We will consistently 
re-evaluate our thinking and if my assumptions are proven incorrect, will 
rebuy, hopefully at lower prices,” he wrote. “Privacy is priceless and I have 
no issue eating humble pie and rebuying much higher.” For now, Worldcoin is 
the remaining public expression of his AI-linked rotation. “We still hold WLD 
and are excited for Lord Elon to pump our bags,” Hayes added. That follows his 
recent public call for a WLD bull market, linking the move to renewed 
speculation around AI assets and an OpenAI IPO. At press time, ZEC was down 
more than 45% in 24 hours. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from 
TradingView.com

Arthur Hayes says Maelstrom has sold its entire Zcash position after new disclosures around the Orchard Pool vulnerability sharpened the perceived risk around ZEC’s monetary integrity. The move effectively ends his recent “Holy Trinity” trade across ZEC, NEAR and HYPE, while leaving Worldcoin as the AI- linked bet he says the fund still holds. “The &#8230;

Arthur Hayes Dumps Entire Zcash Bag, Keeps WLD Bet Alive

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Arthur Hayes Dumps Entire Zcash Bag, Keeps WLD Bet Alive

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