Zcash (ZEC) Rockets 2,200% as Privacy Coins Become Crypto’s Biggest Outlier

Bitcoin is currently 36% below its October 2025 high, 335 days after that level was reached, while the median asset among the top 200 cryptocurrencies is down 58%.

But Glassnode found that privacy is the only sector that has moved above its October peak after gaining 213%, while every other sector remains below its level at the time, ranging from DeFi at 27% lower to Gaming at 74% lower.

Only Sector Above its October Peak

The divergence has persisted despite a broad market rebound over the past 30 days, during which all ten sectors posted gains. Privacy again led that monthly advance as it rose by 90%.

The biggest contributor to that expansion has been Zcash. Its market-cap ranking has jumped from 82nd to 10th, while its value has increased by more than 2,200% over the same period. It now represents 62% of the privacy sector’s total capitalization. Monero, meanwhile, doubled over the same period.

Despite ZEC’s outsized contribution, the gains extend beyond a single asset: all eight privacy coins with a full year of trading history are higher, compared with only one in eight assets across the broader top-200 market.

Excluding ZEC, the cap-weighted privacy basket is still up 85% over the year and 56% since Bitcoin’s October high. Over the past 90 days, DASH, XMR, and ZEN have each outperformed Bitcoin. Among the 25 largest assets, only four are above their October 6 prices: ZEC, HYPE, XMR, and WBT. Two of those four are privacy coins.

Sector Returns Diverge

HYPE is the clear exception among the major assets. Without HYPE, the DeFi sector would be down 46% for the year. Every other major crypto asset, including ETH and DOGE, is still trading below its October high.

A total of 91.5% of the top 200 assets posted gains over the past 30 days. That marks the broadest monthly advance in the history of the dataset. The picture changes considerably when the timeframe extends to a full year. Just 25 of the 200 assets are in positive territory, and the median coin has lost 55%.

The ten sector indices are also showing their widest gap in 30-day returns since November 20, 2025.