Privacy Coins Are the Only Crypto Sector Above Bitcoin's 2025 Peak, Up 213% as Zcash Climbs to Seventh Largest

Published data shows privacy coins trading 213% above their level at Bitcoin's October 6, 2025 peak, making privacy the only one of ten tracked crypto sectors above that mark while Bitcoin sits 36% below its own high and the median top-200 asset is down 58%. The privacy sector's market capitalisation has grown from $7.1 billion to $33.6 billion over twelve months, an increase of roughly $26.5 billion that puts the category near Tron's total valuation, with close to half of that growth arriving in the past 30 days. Zcash has driven the majority of it, rising 2,496% over the year and climbing from 82nd to 7th by market capitalization while accounting for around 62% of the sector's total value. Among the 25 largest cryptocurrencies, only Zcash, Hyperliquid's HYPE, Monero and WhiteBIT Coin trade above their October 6 prices, and two of those four are privacy assets. Excluding Zcash entirely, the cap-weighted privacy basket is still up 85% over one year and 56% since the Bitcoin peak, with all eight privacy assets holding at least a year of trading history in positive territory.

 

 

Three hundred and thirty-five days after Bitcoin topped out at $126,199 on October 6, 2025, most of the crypto market is still working its way back. Bitcoin trades roughly 36% below that high, the median asset among the top 200 sits 58% lower, and every narrative that defined the previous cycle has given ground, with gaming down 74%, decentralised physical infrastructure down 67% and Layer 2 tokens down 63%. Privacy is the exception, and by a considerable margin. Glassnode data puts the sector 213% above its level at the Bitcoin peak, the only one of ten tracked categories in positive territory against that benchmark, and the firm's own framing described the sector as up 213% and not only because of Zcash. The market capitalisation of privacy assets within the top 200 has grown from $7.1 billion to $33.6 billion in twelve months.

 

Bitcoin topped at $126,199 on Binance on October 6, 2025, and Glassnode scores every asset and sector against where it traded on that date, which as of the September 6 data cut is 335 days of history.

Among the 25 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, only four trade above where they stood that day. Zcash leads the group after its rise into the top ten. Hyperliquid's HYPE token is the second, carried by a perpetual futures venue that has grown into one of the largest derivatives markets in crypto, with open interest recently around $11 billion including roughly $3.6 billion tied to real-world assets. Monero is the third, having broken out of a multi-year trading range earlier in 2026 when it moved above $600. WhiteBIT Coin, the exchange token of the European trading platform, completes the list.

The composition of that group is as informative as its size. Two of the four are dedicated privacy protocols, one is the token of a derivatives exchange generating real trading fees, and one is an exchange token. None of the four belongs to the sectors that defined the previous cycle's narrative cycle, which means no Layer 1 competitor, no Layer 2 scaling token, no artificial intelligence protocol, no gaming asset and no decentralised physical infrastructure network has recovered its position at the top of the market. Capital that has held its value over this period sits either in assets with a specific monetary thesis or in assets attached to a business that collects fees.

The breadth data underneath reinforces how narrow the recovery has been. Only 25 of the top 200 assets are positive on the year, with the median asset down 55% over twelve months and down 58% when measured from the October peak specifically. Set against that, all eight privacy assets holding at least a year of trading history are positive over the same window, compared with roughly one in eight across the top 200 as a whole. A category in which every constituent with sufficient history is up, inside a market where seven in eight assets are down, is a statistical outlier in itself.

 

Glassnode divides the market into ten sectors and scores each against its price on the day Bitcoin peaked. Privacy is the only category in positive territory, at 213%, and the distribution of the other nine describes which parts of the last cycle have held value and which have not.

 

 

Decentralised finance has held up best among the losers at roughly 27% below its October level, which is notable given that DeFi protocols generate measurable fee revenue rather than trading purely on forward expectations. Exchange tokens follow at about 36% down and Layer 1 networks at around 40%, with artificial intelligence tokens close behind near 42%. Real-world asset protocols sit roughly 57% lower despite tokenization being among the most heavily promoted institutional themes of the year. The steepest damage is concentrated in the sectors that ran hardest on narrative during the previous cycle, with memecoins down about 62%, Layer 2 networks around 63%, decentralised physical infrastructure near 67%, and gaming worst of all at 74% below its October level.

Reading down that list, the pattern separating the top from the bottom has less to do with technology than with whether an asset represents a claim on something. The categories that held up carry either revenue or a monetary argument, while the categories that fell furthest were valued primarily on adoption that had not yet arrived. In absolute terms, the privacy sector's expansion adds roughly $26.5 billion of market value over the year, taking the category from $7.1 billion to $33.6 billion and placing it near the total capitalisation of Tron. Close to half of that growth arrived within the past 30 days, which describes a rotation that accelerated sharply toward the end of the period.

 

Zcash is responsible for most of the headline figure. The asset has risen 2,496% over the past year and climbed from 82nd to 7th by market capitalisation, and it now accounts for roughly 62% of the privacy sector's total value.

 

 

When one asset represents nearly two-thirds of a category's capitalisation, a cap-weighted sector return is substantially a report on that asset rather than on the category, so the 213% figure and Zcash's own performance are not independent observations. The recent leg has drawn support from institutional access. Grayscale's Zcash ETF began trading on NYSE Arca on August 25 as the first US-listed exchange-traded product offering spot exposure to a privacy asset, and it had attracted roughly $34.4 million in net inflows by September 4 as ZEC pushed above $1,000. Those inflows are the meaningful number from that launch, since the fund opened holding about $304 million that had already been sitting in a private trust since 2017 rather than representing new capital. Network fundamentals moved alongside the price, with Zcash hashrate rising from around 25 GSol/s in late August to above 30 GSol/s.

 

Removing Zcash entirely, the cap-weighted privacy basket is up 85% over one year and 56% since the October peak, which leaves the category comfortably ahead of every other sector even without its largest constituent. Monero has doubled over the same twelve months, and Monero, Dash and Horizen have each outperformed Bitcoin over the trailing 90 days. The strength was also visible earlier in the year and across different names. Dash gained 71% during an earlier 2026 stretch alongside advances in Monero, Decred and Horizen, and Monero broke out of a multi-year trading range when it moved above $600. When Bitcoin cleared $81,000 in late August, privacy assets led again, with Zcash and Dash among the strongest performers. A pattern that repeats across separate assets, separate codebases and separate periods is harder to explain as a single squeeze.

 

All ten sectors Glassnode tracks posted gains over the past 30 days, and 91.5% of the top 200 assets rose during that window, the broadest monthly advance in the dataset. Privacy led that rally at 90%, but it led a rising market rather than climbing against a falling one. The decoupling is visible on the twelve-month view and on the measurement from the October peak, and it is not what the last month looks like. This matters for how the rotation should be understood. A sector that outperforms while everything else falls suggests defensive positioning and capital seeking a specific property. A sector that leads while everything rises suggests high beta to a broad recovery, which is a different mechanism producing a similar chart. The twelve-month record supports the first reading and the past month supports the second, and both are in the same dataset.

 

Two exposures sit underneath these returns and neither shows up in a sector performance chart. The first is leverage; Zcash futures open interest has reached roughly $2.3 billion, which makes the asset carrying 62% of the sector increasingly sensitive to positioning rather than to spot demand. A leveraged rally amplifies moves in both directions, and an unwind in the largest constituent would reprice the sector figure regardless of what the smaller assets do.

The second is regulatory. Privacy assets have continued to gain while facing anti-money-laundering scrutiny and exchange delisting pressure across several jurisdictions, and that scrutiny has not eased as prices have risen. The property that generates the demand thesis is the same property that generates the regulatory exposure, so the two scale together.

Privacy is the only sector that has recovered its position from the market top, the strength extends across every asset in the category with a year of history rather than resting on Zcash alone, and roughly $26.5 billion of market value has moved into the sector over twelve months. Whether that reflects a durable reassessment of financial confidentiality or an unusually strong rotation into a small, leveraged category is the question the next drawdown will answer, because a sector that has only been tested during a recovery has not yet been tested.

 

Among the 25 largest cryptocurrencies, only four sit above their October 6, 2025 levels: Zcash, Hyperliquid's HYPE, Monero and WhiteBIT Coin. Two of those four are privacy protocols. Across the wider market, only 25 of the top 200 assets are positive on the year, with the median asset down 55%.

Published Glassnode data shows privacy as the only one of ten tracked sectors trading above its level at Bitcoin's October 2025 peak, up 213%. Every other sector remains below that mark, ranging from decentralised finance at roughly 27% down to gaming at 74% down, while Bitcoin itself trades 36% below its high.

Zcash accounts for roughly 62% of the sector's market capitalisation and has risen 2,496% over the year, so it drives most of the headline figure. But excluding Zcash entirely, the cap-weighted privacy basket is still up 85% over twelve months and 56% since the October peak. Monero has doubled, and Monero, Dash and Horizen have each outperformed Bitcoin over the past 90 days.

The category has grown from $7.1 billion to $33.6 billion over the past year, adding roughly $26.5 billion in market value and reaching a scale comparable to Tron's total capitalisation. Close to half of that growth occurred within the past 30 days.

Leverage and regulation. Zcash futures open interest has reached roughly $2.3 billion, which makes the asset representing 62% of the sector sensitive to positioning rather than spot demand alone. Privacy assets also continue to face anti-money-laundering scrutiny and delisting pressure across several jurisdictions, and that exposure scales with the same property that drives the demand thesis.

The fund began trading on NYSE Arca on August 25 as the first US-listed spot product for a privacy asset, and it had drawn roughly $34.4 million in net inflows by September 4 as ZEC moved above $1,000.