Privacy Has Quietly Become the Trade Crypto Could Not Ignore
Privacy has become the clearest outlier in a crypto market that has still not recovered from its October 2025 peak.
Summary:
- Privacy is the only sector above its level at Bitcoin’s October 2025 market peak.
- Sector value has expanded from $7.1 billion to $33.6 billion over the past year.
- Zcash leads the move, but removing ZEC still leaves the privacy basket substantially higher.
- ZEC and XMR are two of only four top-25 assets above their October 6 prices.
While Bitcoin remains 36% below that level and the median top-200 crypto asset is down 58%, Glassnode data shows the privacy sector has advanced 213%, making it the only major crypto category trading above its October level.
One Sector Has Escaped the Post-Peak Drawdown
Glassnode’s comparison starts on October 6, 2025, around Bitcoin’s market peak, and tracks how major crypto sectors have performed since.
The gap is unusually wide. Bitcoin is still 36% below that point, while the median asset among the top 200 sits 58% lower. DeFi, the closest sector to recovery, remains down 27%, while gaming has fallen 74%.
Privacy sits alone on the other side of zero.
The gap is not simply the result of a stronger rebound. Privacy has moved into positive territory relative to the October market peak, while every other major sector is still repairing losses.
The Privacy Market Has Nearly Quintupled
The longer-term numbers show that the divergence is not confined to the period since Bitcoin’s peak.
Privacy assets have grown from a combined $7.1 billion market capitalization to $33.6 billion over the past year, an increase of roughly $26.5 billion. Nearly half of that additional value arrived during the past month.
The breadth underneath the headline number is more useful than the aggregate market cap:
- All eight privacy assets with at least one year of price history are higher over that period.
- The privacy basket remains up approximately 85% over one year even when ZEC is removed.
- Since the October market peak, the ex-ZEC basket is still approximately 56% higher.
- XMR has more than doubled, providing a second large-cap contributor to the trade.
- Among the 25 largest crypto assets, only ZEC, HYPE, XMR and WBT are above their October 6 levels.
That last comparison is particularly difficult to dismiss as a Zcash-only phenomenon. Half of the four large crypto assets that have fully recovered their post-October losses belong to the privacy category.
Zcash Is the Accelerator, Not the Entire Trade
ZEC remains the obvious center of gravity.
Glassnode’s analysis puts Zcash roughly 687% above its October 6 level, giving it an outsized influence over the sector index. With ZEC representing around 60% of the privacy category’s capitalization, a simple look at the headline 213% sector return exaggerates how evenly the rally has been distributed.
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But removing ZEC produces a useful stress test.
The remaining privacy basket does not fall back into negative territory. It stays substantially positive both over one year and since the October peak. That changes the interpretation of the move: Zcash has amplified the privacy trade, but it did not create it by itself.
Broad Crypto Bounce, Narrow Full Recovery
The broader market has recently improved, but recovery and positive short-term performance are not the same thing.
A token can rise sharply for several weeks and still trade far below where it stood at the previous market peak. Glassnode’s October comparison strips away some of that recency bias by asking a more demanding question: which parts of crypto have actually created new value since the market topped?
For most sectors, the answer remains none.
Privacy is different because it has crossed the old baseline rather than merely recovering toward it. ZEC’s extreme performance deserves caution, particularly given its weight in the basket, but XMR’s strength and the positive ex-ZEC return make the sector harder to explain as a single-asset anomaly.
That sets up a cleaner test for the months ahead. The number to watch is no longer whether Zcash can keep rising vertically. It is whether the ex-ZEC privacy basket can retain its relative strength when ZEC eventually cools.
If it can, privacy’s 2026 move will look less like one exceptional token dragging an index higher and more like a genuine reallocation of capital toward a category that spent years outside crypto’s dominant narratives.
The information presented in this article is intended for informational purposes only and should not be interpreted as financial, investment, or trading advice. Coinspress.com does not promote or advocate for any particular investment strategy, asset, or cryptocurrency project. Cryptocurrency markets are highly volatile and unpredictable – always perform your own research and seek guidance from a qualified financial professional before making any investment decisions.
Alexander Stefanov
Reporter at CoinsPress
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coinspress and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
