Please use the title to explain what makes ZCash special. Nobody cares about just another Bitcoin clone, so "Zcash begins" is not enough as a title.
All of this is not great. This is why we say Bitcoin is not anonymous, but "pseudonymous".
So Zcash fixes this by obfuscating all of this: sender, amount, recipient are just obfuscated blobs of data. You don't know how much was sent, from who, to whom, but you cryptographically know the transaction is valid (didn't try to send more coins than the recipient has, etc). This is verified through fancy so-called "zero-knowledge proofs". See https://blockchainhub.net/blog/infographics/zcash-explained/
Bitcoin, to which it is most similar, is the currency it tries to differentiate itself from, but it is not its main competitor, and it looks like it shares most of its flaws compared to its main competition, the dollar.
In terms of availability, the US government has facilities in place to produce more cash without breaking the economy, while there is a limit to how many Zcash coins can be produced. In fact, since people cannot transfer Zcash after their death, there is absolute certainty that Zcash has an expiration date.
In terms of volatility, Zcash shares Bitcoin's (and most traded commodities') flaw in that the value of assets held can fluctuate tremendously, making Zcash one of the riskiest currencies on the market. Even buying pounds is a safer investment. The dollar has, yet again, facilities in place to avoid huge swings in its value.
In terms of ease of use, Zcash requires complex maintenance, careful security practices, and computing power. The dollar has a whole banking industry in place, from paper money to debit cards to Apple and Android Pay. All of that makes storing and transacting painless, and not that expensive, all things considered.
In terms of energy consumption, well, yet again Bitcoin's flaws shine through.
Most people want to exchange money for goods and services lawfully, which means adhering to taxes and audits and ensuring that no money laundering takes place, so Zcash's anonymity is not a huge selling point.
Bitcoin had the benefit of being the first practical currency of its kind, which was enough to surpass its flaws. Do you believe Zcash will survive ten years?
Tell me how I can anonymously send $10,000 to another country with dollars?
Sending $10,000 to another country should not be anonymous, to combat fraud and illegal activities. Many countries have laws about that kind of thing.
Do not underestimate how much a system like that is abused and that is where the problem is with not allowing anonymous transactions.
As much as I'd like to stop terrorism and activities that really are immoral to society as a whole, you can't circumvent the security of the people who are good because it's proven those systems become abused in ways that it was not originally intended.
zCash offers a level of anonymity beyond anything we have seen (Monero hasn't activated CT yet). Systems with similar properties as zCash ([see auditable eCash](http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~amnon/Papers/ST.crypto99.pdf)) have been discussed since the late 90's, today marks the first time to my knowledge one has been deployed in production. This is a big deal. I'll raise a glass to the zCash team.
tl;dr zCash is a very impressive cryptographic achievement.
At this point, in order for me to pay attention to any crypto-currency other than Bitcoin, it would have to allow for more than just one of the following:
- buy black-market without getting pinched, more easily than paper money
- pay bills with a verifiable proof of payment, more easily than checks
- buy from untrusted parties, more easily than credit cards
- save at lesser risk of theft than cash in the mattress
- save at lesser risk of confiscation/forfeiture than money in the bank
- save at lesser risk of market volatility than Bitcoin alone
- allow anyone to issue barter scrip
- facilitate trade-chain settlements and redemptions of barter scrips
- allow both anonymous transactions and provable-identity transactions
- facilitate honest trade while crippling scammers
- stable decentralization, such that N% attacks are impossible
- built like a pile of bricks, instead of a house of cards
- no excessive pre-mining or front-loading
- if not future-proof, at least future-resistant
And I think none of the schemes set up to reward those investing in the costs of development will succeed. In the end, a currency has to be a commodity, and you can't charge much more as seigniorage on a commodity currency than the actual cost of operating the mint, unless you have a monopoly. Otherwise, you're better off running the power plant than the data center packed with ASICs.