Apart from Zcash, check out SmartCash. It's a hardfork of ZEC that I find pretty interesting. Other privacy respecting currencies are Dash and Monero, but I don't know much about them. I heard Monero is very difficult to use as they are still developing the wallet etc.

Thanks for mentioning ProtonMail. I've set up a basic account and I'll add you to my contacts, just in case :)