The privacy coin sector is the only part of the crypto market trading above last year’s peak, while the US market’s main settlement house has just launched a tokenisation service on a confidential blockchain. Since the crypto market peaked in October 2025, most sectors have lost ground. However, privacy coins have surged 236%, while the average crypto asset, excluding stablecoins, has fallen 26%. On October 28, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) introduced its tokenisation service on the Canton Network, a blockchain designed to show each participant only its own transactions. Twenty institutions, including JPMorgan, Citi, and Morgan Stanley, have signed up.
Public blockchains expose every balance and transfer, which retail traders may tolerate but financial institutions cannot. Privacy technology addresses this weakness. Once seen as a regulatory red flag, onchain privacy is now becoming a necessity for institutional finance. The privacy sector covers technologies that hide transaction amounts, addresses, or both, often using zero-knowledge proofs. This capability has historically been associated with illicit activities, but institutions now distinguish between anonymity and confidentiality.
For financial institutions, full transparency is a practical obstacle. No bank will trade on a network where competitors can watch its positions in real time. Companies also face issues with payroll, supplier payments, and treasury operations revealing commercial information. Individuals value privacy to avoid being targets for hackers and scammers. Usage data suggests demand is not purely speculative. On the Zcash network, 28% of all ZEC in circulation now sits in shielded pools, up from 9% in 2023.
Investor access is broadening, with Grayscale launching the first US-listed spot Zcash ETF in August, accumulating over $750mn in assets by late October. The broader growth of tokenisation adds to this demand, with McKinsey expecting tokenised financial assets to reach around $2tn by 2030. The privacy sector is taking shape through dedicated privacy coins, institutional infrastructure like Canton, and generalist blockchains integrating confidential transactions.