#ZEC突破1200美元续刷新高 The Market Retraced 58%, Yet This Sector Surged 213%: Why Privacy Coins Became the Biggest Winners in Crypto This Year

It has been exactly 335 days since Bitcoin touched its all-time high on October 6, 2025. This has been a deep correction that has chilled the vast majority of crypto investors: the median price of the top 200 crypto assets by market cap has retraced 58% from its previous highs; once-hot sectors such as DePIN, Layer2, and Meme have been cut in half, while the gaming sector has plunged 74%, nearly returning to its starting point. But while the entire market was mired in a correction, one sector not only withstood the bear market impact but also reached a new all-time high against the trend—the privacy coin sector.
According to Glassnode’s latest sector index data, the market-cap-weighted privacy coin sector has risen 213% cumulatively since Bitcoin’s high last year, making it the only sector in the entire market to outperform Bitcoin’s previous all-time high.

The “Standout Winner” Amid a Broad Market Decline
A set of figures can give us an intuitive sense of how sharply the market has diverged during this cycle.
From Bitcoin’s October 2025 high to the present, all ten major crypto sectors have weakened:
The relatively resilient DeFi sector has fallen 27% from its high; exchange platform tokens, Layer1 blockchains, and the AI sector have declined 36%, 40%, and 42%, respectively; RWA, Meme, Layer2, and DePIN have all fallen by more than 55%; and the gaming sector, the worst performer, has plunged 74% cumulatively.
Over the past 30 days, the crypto market has seen a broad-based recovery, with all ten sectors recording positive returns, but the privacy coin sector still led the entire market with a 90% gain.
More importantly, this monthly broad-based rally has not changed the market’s long-term divergence: as of now, every sector except privacy coins still has an index below its previous high in October 2025. In other words, the broader market has merely rebounded, and the vast majority of assets are still on the way to “breaking even”; only privacy coins have entered a completely independent bull market.

Explosive Growth: From $7.1 Billion to $33.6 Billion, a Fourfold Sector Expansion in One Year
Many people still view privacy coins as “niche alternative assets,” but the size of this sector has undergone a qualitative leap in just one year. Glassnode data shows that one year ago, the total market cap of privacy coins among the top 200 was only $7.1 billion; today, that figure has surged to $33.6 billion, with the sector’s overall size nearly quadrupling and approaching the total market cap of the public blockchain TRON. Notably, nearly half of the market cap increase came in the past 30 days, demonstrating the speed and intensity of capital inflows.
The leader effect has been particularly pronounced in this cycle: ZEC (Zcash), the clear leader of the sector, has risen as much as 2496% over the past year, accounting for 62% of the privacy sector’s total market cap and serving as the core driver of the index’s rise. Its market cap ranking has also rocketed from 82nd a year ago to 7th, officially placing it among the top 10 mainstream assets by market cap; established privacy coin XMR (Monero) also doubled its market cap over the same period, with ZEC and XMR together forming the sector’s two leading pillars.

Not a Solo Performance: Sector-Wide Gains Validate the Underlying Logic
Seeing ZEC’s staggering gains, many people may question whether the privacy coin rally was driven solely by one token. The data gives a clear negative answer. Glassnode data shows that all 8 privacy coins that have been listed for at least one year generated positive returns over the past year; among the top 200 coins by market cap during the same period, only one eighth recorded gains. Looking at individual performance, DASH has risen 202% year to date, RAIL has gained 145%, and XMR has risen 101%; even the relatively weaker performers BDX, ZEN, and DCR all recorded positive returns, showing broad-based gains across the sector.
Even excluding ZEC’s leading influence, the market-cap-weighted privacy coin portfolio is still up 85% year to date, while its gain since Bitcoin’s October 2025 high has reached 56%, still vastly outperforming the overall market average. Over the past 90 days, major privacy coins such as DASH, XMR, and ZEN have all outperformed Bitcoin, further confirming that this was a sector-wide rally rather than an independent speculative run in a single token.
Expanding the scope to the 25 largest crypto assets by market cap makes this divergence even clearer: only 4 assets are priced above their highs on October 6, 2025—ZEC, HYPE, XMR, and WBT—with ZEC and XMR both belonging to the privacy coin sector. By comparison, HYPE represents an isolated individual rally; excluding HYPE, the DeFi sector as a whole is down 46% year to date. Well-known mainstream coins such as Ethereum and Dogecoin remain below their previous highs.

The Illusion of a Broad-Based Rally: Long-Term Divergence Beneath the Monthly Frenzy
Over the past month, the crypto market seemed to have returned to a bull-market atmosphere: 91.5% of the top 200 coins by market cap recorded gains, making it the month with the broadest-based rally under this statistical measure. But when viewed on an annual basis, reality remains harsh: only 25 coins achieved positive annual returns, while the median price decline across all coins reached 55%. In other words, behind the seemingly lively broad-based rally, the vast majority of assets remain deeply entrenched in a bear market.

An even more concerning signal is that the dispersion of the 30-day gains and losses among the ten sector indexes has reached its highest level since November 20, 2025. This means that behind the seemingly broad-based rally, the performance gap between sectors is rapidly widening, with market capital flowing toward a handful of strong sectors and the 80/20 effect becoming increasingly pronounced.
In short: the past month was a period of rebound and recovery for the overall market, but over the annual cycle, the wealth effect has been highly concentrated in the privacy coin sector.

Deep Dive: The Underlying Logic and Risk Warnings Behind the Rise of Privacy Coins
This independent privacy coin rally is by no means short-term narrative speculation; it is supported by profound underlying logic:
1. As regulation tightens, privacy becomes a scarce necessity
The overall direction of global crypto regulation is moving toward greater transparency and compliance, while on-chain analytical tools are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Address tracing and fund-flow penetration have become standard tools for regulators and institutional investors. In this environment, the “native privacy attributes” of crypto assets have instead become a scarce resource—for users and institutions seeking financial autonomy and hoping to protect the privacy of their on-chain assets, privacy coins are an irreplaceable choice. Rigid growth in demand is the core underlying logic of this rally.
2. Technological advances break stereotypes, making privacy compatible with compliance
Privacy coins have historically struggled to escape their “dark-web tool” label, largely because technology could not balance privacy and compliance. However, a new generation of privacy coins represented by ZEC has achieved “selective transparency” through continued advances in zero-knowledge-proof technology: they can satisfy ordinary users’ need for transaction privacy while also providing audit interfaces for institutions and compliant use cases. This technological feature has enabled privacy coins to officially move out of the gray area and gain recognition from mainstream capital.
3. Bear-market return to value: Necessity-based narratives always defeat story-based narratives
Looking back at the crypto market over the past two years, AI, RWA, DePIN, SocialFi, and various other new concepts emerged one after another, but most remained at the storytelling stage without real demand to support them. When a bear market arrives, capital withdraws from conceptual themes and flows toward sectors with genuine necessities and practical utility. Privacy is crypto’s original purpose and one of its most rigid needs; its rise is essentially a return to market value.
Of course, we must also view the risks rationally: on the one hand, privacy coins continue to face regulatory uncertainty, and restrictions on privacy tokens remain in place in some countries and regions, representing a sword of Damocles hanging over the sector; on the other hand, the gains have been too large in the short term—the sector has nearly doubled over the past 30 days, accumulating substantial profit-taking pressure, creating a need for a short-term pullback and digestion, while valuation divergence within the sector will intensify further.

Finally
From a longer-term perspective, this privacy coin explosion is only the beginning. As digital assets become more widespread, users’ demand for asset privacy and autonomy will only grow stronger, and the privacy sector will gradually move from an “edge sector” of the crypto market toward “core infrastructure.” For investors, rather than merely envying short-term gains, it is more important to focus on a project’s technical capabilities, real-world use cases, and compliance. After all, the long-term value of any sector must ultimately return to fundamentals.$ZEC