1. ZCash at launch will have a whole host of competitors (that actually have users, infrastructure built, etc).
2. With the founders reward of 10%, having this be globally accepted and no less a replacement for Bitcoin is ridiculous.
3. Clones. This is a certainty. (If at all people even deem this coin worthy to copy).
Sure, total anonymity is preferred by some and one could say has a niche market. What's wrong with Monero here? ZCash will be a cluster fuck of epic proportions, and anyone that invests in it early on, will be looking to dump the f*** out of it at a slightly higher price. Bag holders, come grab some ZCash.
I'm saving every penny I have for the first fairly launched zcash clone without the 10% premine.
The premine is only part of the story. The trusted setup is another part. And finally, the optional anonymity is a total failure of the concept of fungible and anonymous transactions: those few anonymous transactions will stand out loud and clear on the chain ; easily blocked. Also, although ZKP has the *potential* of having a much larger anonymity set (than for instance monero), if only a few users use it for real, it has actually a much smaller anonymity set. It is not much better than mixers like with DASH in that case.
Finally, much of the crypto it entirely new. It should stand the test of time to see whether there are no big holes in it.
That said, a zcash-like clone without post-premine, which can solve the issue of the trusted setup (I have some ideas) and which makes the anonymity compulsory, would be very valuable.
And I wish all the best to zcash itself, which will bring the anonymity/fungibility discussion in the focus, and which will test the crypto.
A Zcash clone might not be necessary. Shadowcash was built from the ground up to use ZK snarks, they are both using a public/private chain and it shouldn't be too hard for Shadow to use ZK if it seems acceptable and workable.
A year or two ago nobody would have accepted the trusted setup with Zcash but maybe times are changing.