ZEC is up 35% on the day and is up a whopping 1,700% in the past three months.
Privacy-focused cryptocurrencies are suddenly all the rage as traders move toward assets that offer on-chain confidentiality.
The “Privacy” category currently boasts a market capitalization of $29.9 billion, up 16.6% on the day and more than 38% for the week. According to CoinGecko, the sector significantly outperformed the broader crypto market capitalization, which rose just 1% on the day.
This growth has been particularly driven by a strong rally in Zcash (ZEC), which is trading around $718, up 35% on the day and more than 1,700% over the past three months.
Analysts say Zcash’s meteoric rise reflects a combination of market momentum, growing demand for privacy, and technology upgrades such as shielded pools to enable private transactions and expanded wallet functionality.
“There’s real momentum here, but it’s not just any old privacy coin hype from 2017,” said Maja Vijinovic, CEO and co-founder of FG Nexus Digital Assets. “Two things are happening: people seeking privacy are coming back on-chain as regulators have tightened KYC everywhere, and secondly, big coins are illiquid so traders are plowing into things with big upside potential.”
Vujinovic added that it is “no coincidence” that ZEC has risen more than 1,700% in three months, but noted that these coins continue to trade in a relatively shallow market.
“This is a combination of substantial interest and rotation into neglected assets. These movements can quickly reverse if BTC or ETH volatility spikes,” she said. “Privacy is once again a real theme, but this run is still very much about momentum and positioning.”
Other analysts say Zcash’s gains also reflect structural factors in the token’s design and privacy features. Jake Kenneth, a senior research analyst at Nansen, said privacy is seen as a necessity rather than a feature, and demand for private, autonomous transactions is once again on the rise.
Kenneth said that Zcash’s technical features such as zero-knowledge architecture, Zash wallet for shielded transfers, and integration with Solana make the coin easier to use and more accessible.
He also added that its Bitcoin-like structure (i.e. fixed supply of 21 million, proof-of-work consensus, and upcoming halving), combined with zk-SNARK-enabled privacy, positions Zcash as a type of “encrypted Bitcoin.”
“The new attention and positive price action has led to new attention from big names like Arthur Hayes and Barry Silbert,” Kenneth concluded. “After years of underperformance, the resurgence of ZEC brings new capital flows.”
After months of small movements, the recent rally has put privacy coins back in the spotlight. This momentum has spilled over into related areas such as the privacy-focused blockchain category, which rose 20% on the day and more than 45% for the week, according to CoinGecko.
Other privacy crypto tokens posting gains include Railgun (RAIL), which is up 50% in the past 24 hours, Litecoin (LTC), which is up 20% on the day and 8% on the week, and Monero (XMR), which is up 8% on the day and 14% on the week.