Privacy Coins Refuse To Die: Firo And Zano Surge Amid Regulatory Headwinds

Two privacy-focused cryptocurrencies, Firo (FIRO) and Zano (ZANO), are drawing attention as they surge in price. In a time when global regulators are intensifying pressure on the entire privacy coin sector, these tokens have seen more than 12% gains over the past 24 hours.

The broader privacy coin sector is facing challenges from FATF guidance and EU regulations. However, despite losing access to major centralized exchanges, on-chain activity metrics for leading privacy coins have not collapsed.

Monero's daily transaction count has risen by approximately 22% between Q1 2021 and Q1 2026, even as the number of major exchange listings fell by more than two-thirds. Firo and Zano represent second-generation privacy coin architecture, moving beyond basic CoinJoin mixing toward cryptographic unlinkability and confidential amounts at the protocol level.

Zano's market cap rank is 204, placing it firmly in the mid-cap tier. The project has never pursued a centralized exchange listing strategy and maintains its own full-featured wallet with built-in exchange functionality powered by atomic swaps.