Privacy-focused cryptocurrencies have outperformed a weakening digital-asset market, with Zcash and Monero rising while Bitcoin remains below its October peak.
An analysis by Bitfinex published on Sept. 11, using Glassnode data from Sept. 7, found that leadership had shifted towards privacy coins. Of the 25 largest crypto assets, only Zcash, Hyperliquid’s HYPE, Monero and WhiteBIT’s WBT were trading above their Oct. 6 levels.
Glassnode’s privacy-coin basket had risen 213% since Bitcoin reached a record above $126,000 on Oct. 6, 2025. It had also gained 90% over the previous month, while the sector’s combined market value increased from $7.1 billion to $33.6 billion over the past year.
Zcash accounted for about 62% of the sector’s value in Glassnode’s Sept. 7 snapshot, following the strongest performance among the group. ZEC had risen more than 25-fold in a year, moving from 82nd to seventh in Glassnode’s market-cap ranking.
The token traded above $1,000 in early September, as leveraged short positions were liquidated and exchange-traded product inflows added to the rally.
However, the wider sector has also advanced. Glassnode’s privacy basket excluding ZEC rose by approximately 85% over the past year, while Monero roughly doubled. XMR had already surpassed its previous price record in January, before the latest rise led by Zcash.
Growing institutional access
Institutional access to Zcash expanded on Aug. 25, when Grayscale converted its existing trust into an exchange-traded product listed on NYSE Arca. The Zcash ETF began trading under the ticker ZCSH, giving investors spot ZEC exposure through brokerage accounts.
Investors hold shares in the product rather than ZEC directly, and the fund is not registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940.
A Sept. 8 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission disclosed that DCG International Investments Ltd., a Digital Currency Group subsidiary affiliated with the fund’s sponsor, bought roughly $100 million of ZCSH shares in exchange for 85,705.32563297 ZEC.
The contribution formed part of the more than $500 million in assets Grayscale said the fund held two weeks after launch, alongside more than $70 million in cumulative inflows.
Zcash allows users to make transparent transactions or use a shielded pool, which conceals senders, recipients and amounts through zero-knowledge proofs. Viewing keys can be used to disclose selected details to auditors, counterparties or regulators. Under Grayscale’s specified assumptions, Zcash mining rewards were estimated at twice Bitcoin’s daily rewards per machine.
Monero takes a different approach, hiding transaction details at protocol level without a transparent option. Ring signatures, stealth addresses and confidential transactions obscure the sender, recipient and amount.
That privacy by default has created difficulties for exchanges subject to transaction-monitoring and customer-screening rules. Despite delistings by several major centralised exchanges, TRM Labs found Monero transaction volumes in 2024 and 2025 remained significantly above levels recorded in early 2020 and 2021.
The European Union’s anti-money-laundering rules are scheduled to prohibit crypto-asset service providers from maintaining accounts that enable transaction anonymisation or increased obfuscation, including through anonymity-enhancing coins, from July 10, 2027.
