Privacy coins are up 213% since Bitcoin (BTC) peaked last October. Every other crypto sector is down, according to on-chain analytics firm Glassnode.
The median coin in the top 200 is 58% cheaper than it was that day. Bitcoin itself still trades 36% below its own record.
Privacy Coins Are the Only Sector Above the High
Glassnode tracks 10 sectors, scoring each against its price on October 6, 2025, the day Bitcoin topped out at $126,199 on Binance.
Privacy is the only green bar on the chart. DeFi is the best of the losers, down 27%. Gaming is the worst, down 74%.
Last month was kind to almost everything, with all 10 sectors rising.
Still, privacy coins led that leg too with a 90% gain. Therefore, the ranking did not change, with only 9% of the top 200 sitting above their October price, even after that broad bounce.
So the altcoin season never arrived in the shape holders wanted. Money picked one theme and stayed there.
Zcash Is Doing Almost All the Work
Privacy coins were worth $7.1 billion a year ago. Glassnode now values the group at $33.6 billion, just above Tron (TRX), the eighth-largest crypto. Zcash (ZEC) supplies most of that. It trades near $1,180 and ranks ninth by market value at $19.9 billion.
Notably, while the ZEC price is up 687% since Bitcoin’s high, the privacy sector is up 213%.
Only four of the 25 largest coins beat their October price. Two are privacy names, ZEC and Monero (XMR), which has roughly doubled.
That notwithstanding, the run was not smooth, with Zcash having to patch a critical bug in its shielded pool in June. It then sealed that pool with the Ironwood network upgrade in July.
In August, BeInCrypto asked whether ZEC could reach $1,000 this cycle, when it was trading near $675. It cleared that level days later, and Grayscale’s Zcash ETF assets have reached $463 million.
The Bottom of the Sector Is Thin
Glassnode says all eight privacy coins with a year of history have gained. Three of them barely have. Decred (DCR) showed a 2% gain on that reading. Two others managed 3% and 6%.
CoinGecko now puts Decred down 2.9% over 12 months. The claim’s weakest leg has already flipped. Zcash and Monero together hold about 90% of the sector’s value.
A stall in Zcash price action would wipe out the one green bar on Glassnode’s chart.
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