Privacy Coins Surge 213%, Led by Zcash
The crypto sector focused on privacy has seen significant gains since Bitcoin's October 2025 peak. According to analyst Wise Crypto, this sector is up 213% over that time, with one token in particular driving the growth.
Zcash (ZEC) now represents about 62% of the privacy market and has climbed 25x over the past year. Its market-cap ranking has risen from #82 to #9 on CoinGecko data. Grayscale's Zcash ETF, ticker $ZCSH, crossed $500 million in assets within two weeks of launch.
Multiverse tokens such as HYPE and Monero (XMR) have also seen significant gains, with the latter doubling over the same stretch despite facing delistings from several exchanges. Only four of the 25 biggest crypto assets are still trading above their October levels: ZEC, HYPE, XMR, and WBT.
Egor Sidelska of Infinex argued that privacy is one of the only parts of crypto that hasn’t already been built out and cloned across other chains. However, analyst filbfilb has pushed back on how far the Zcash rally can be trusted, sharing valuation models that compared ZEC’s transaction activity against Bitcoin's at a similar stage of issuance.