Privacy Is the Trade of the Year, Led by ZEC
PanewslabAuthor: glassnode
Bitcoin trades 36% below its October 2025 high, 335 days on, and the median asset in the top 200 sits 58% below its level on that day.
One sector is higher than it was at the top: privacy, up 213%.
One Sector Above The High
Every other sector is below its level at the high, from DeFi at -27% to Gaming at -74%. The last 30 days lifted all ten sectors, and privacy led that leg as well, at +90%. A month of broad gains has not changed the split: privacy above the high, everything else below it..
A $34B Sector
The privacy coins in the top 200 were worth $7.1B a year ago. They are worth $33.6B today, roughly the market cap of Tron, and close to half of that was added in the last 30 days. ZEC accounts for most of the growth, rising from rank 82 to rank 7 by market cap. XMR doubled underneath it over the same period.
Not One Coin
ZEC's +2,496% dominates the picture, and at 62% of the sector's capitalization it dominates the index as well.
The rally is nonetheless broader than one coin. All eight privacy coins with a year of history are up. Across the top 200, only one asset in eight is. Excluding ZEC, the cap-weighted privacy basket is +85% on the year and +56% since the Bitcoin high.
Over the last 90 days, DASH, XMR, and ZEN each outran Bitcoin.
What Else Made Money
Across the 25 largest assets, four are above their 6 October price: ZEC, HYPE, XMR, and WBT. Two of the four are privacy coins.
HYPE is a single-name story: DeFi is -46% on the year without it. Every major, from ETH to DOGE, remains below the high.
Dispersion and Breadth
91.5% of the top 200 are up over the last 30 days, the broadest month in that history. Only 25 of the 200 are up on the year, and the median coin is -55%.
The spread of trailing 30-day returns across the ten sector indices is the widest since 20 November 2025.
The past month's bounce is broad. The year's return belongs to one sector.
Data as of 6 September 2026. Universe: the 200 largest assets by market cap excluding stablecoins, wrapped, staked, and yield-bearing tokens. Sectors follow Glassnode asset tags; privacy comprises ZEC, XMR, DASH, BDX, NIGHT, DCR, H, RAIL, and ZEN. Sector indices are cap-weighted with current membership.
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