Privacy Coins Crush Crypto Market With 213% Surge as Zcash and Monero Break Away

Privacy cryptocurrencies have become the strongest-performing segment of the cryptocurrency markets, increasing 213% from the peak price of Bitcoin in October 2025, according to data from the on-chain data provider Glassnode.

That gap is unusual. While Bitcoin remains about 36% off its all-time peak that was set in October 2025, the median asset among the 200 largest cryptocurrencies currently by market capitalization is off 58%. In contrast, privacy coins are the only tracked sector that has decisively moved above the previous 0.1% threshold.

A similar trend persisted in a shorter period. The 10 largest crypto sectors tracked in the dataset all saw gains in the past 30 days, the largest of which were privacy assets, growing 90%. In spite of this recovery, decentralized finance, Layer 1 networks, artificial intelligence, real-world assets, memecoins and Layer 2 projects have not returned to October 2025 levels.

The rise has been accompanied by a similar rise in the market capitalization of privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies. The top 200 privacy coins had a roughly $7.1 billion market capitalization a year before, which has grown to $33.6 billion, with close to half occurring in the past 30-day surge.