We have recently received a number of enquiries regarding the settlement of the Zcash December 30 Futures contract, ZECZ16:
Choice of Reference Exchange
Zcash will begin mining on October 28, 2016. There has been no indication yet as to which markets may list ZEC after this date. Furthermore, ZEC mining will have a slow start, with the block reward linearly increasing from 0 to 12.5 ZEC over the first 20,000 blocks (approximately 34 days).
Because of this difficulty to source ZEC, it may delay listing on a spot exchange. As such, BitMEX will choose a reference exchange by December 1, 2016 based on liquidity and reputation.
Contingency Plan
If there does not happen to be any spot trading at all for ZEC by December 30, 2016 then BitMEX will settle the contract at the Bitcoin equivalent price raised in the last round of investment.
Last summer, Zcash raised $2m for 6.25% of the company, which includes the Founder’s Reward of 2.1m coins (10% of total supply). Hence the investors effectively paid $15.24 per ZEC in this last round of funding. Further information can be read in the z.cash blog here.
Hence, the Bitcoin equivalent of $15.24 will be the Settlement Price in case of no trading at Expiry on December 30, 12:00 UTC.