Also if Gmail lost all your email it would be bad, but you'd probably be ok. If ZCash causes you to lose a significant portion of your life saving, on the other hand...

That was my point, gmail was in beta for five years, but it wasn't in beta forever. Technology takes a long time to mature and it is hard to get to that level of maturity without having people use it for real things.

Do not put a significant potion of your life savings in ZCash.