Privacy coins have soared 213% since Bitcoin’s October 2025 peak, even though BTC itself remains well below that peak, according to an analysis released today by analyst Wise Crypto.
It’s a tight corner of the market, but one token in particular, Zcash (ZEC), has dragged the entire privacy sector into positive territory while most cryptocurrencies are still emerging from a year-long drawdown.
A sector, but above all a single room
Wise Crypto figures to show the combined market capitalization of the privacy sector has grown from $7.1 billion a year ago to $33.6 billion today. Zcash alone accounts for about 62% of that total, a 25-fold increase over the past year, with its market cap jumping from 82nd to 7th place at one point, although CoinGecko data currently places it in 9th place.
Glassnode data released last week also revealed something similar: Privacy was the only sector trading above its October high, with all other categories still underwater by double digits.
Grayscale’s Zcash ETF, ticker $ZCSH, surpassed $500 million in assets within two weeks of its launch, while Monero (XMR), the second-largest asset in the privacy category, roughly doubled in the same period despite delistings from several exchanges.
Among the 25 largest crypto assets, Wise Crypto noted that only four are still trading above their October levels: ZEC, HYPE, XMR and WBT.
Investor Dan Tapiero said The 9/11 Wolf of All Streets showed that the moves in ZEC and HYPE this cycle show that crypto is no longer just about Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. “Zcash has been a huge winner this year,” he said, pointing to the development of broader business outside the three biggest chains.
A day later, Egor Sidelska of Infinex argued that privacy is one of the only parts of crypto that hasn’t yet been built and cloned on other chains, calling ZEC “the last 100x in crypto that isn’t a random coin.”
Whether the rally is justified is still being debated
There have been less bullish readings elsewhere, with analyst filbfilb recently pushing back on how much Zcash’s rally can be trusted. He shared valuation models that compared ZEC’s transaction activity to that of Bitcoin at a similar issuance stage, which resulted in implied prices around $944, well below the coin’s current price, although their convergence scenarios put the fair value much higher if Zcash continues to close the gap.
At the time of writing, the asset was trading at around $1,140, flat on the day but up 32% over the past two weeks and over 2,100% over the past year, although still far from its 2016 all-time high near $3,190.
On the other hand, BTC was quite close to $77,000, having lost just over 1% in 24 hours and around 34% in a year, putting it around 39% below its own October 2025 ATH.
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