Author: Cathy

Produced by: Vernacular Blockchain

While the entire crypto market was still debating whether Bitcoin could break through new highs, an "old face" quietly staged a comeback.

In early October 2025, Zcash (ZEC) saw its price surge by over 242% in just two weeks, and a staggering 570% within a month. ZEC's price broke through $230 for the first time since 2022, peaking at over $285, and its market capitalization briefly exceeded $4 billion.

This wasn't just a run-of-the-mill market rally; it was the powerful return of a grand narrative about "privacy" in the crypto world. More notably, the entire anonymous coin sector was ignited, with its total market capitalization increasing by 17.4% in a week to $12.2 billion. So, what exactly sparked this "privacy resurgence"?

01. Multiple forces converge to ignite Zcash

Zcash's counterattack was not caused by a single factor, but a chemical reaction resulting from the convergence of several forces.

Ticket to Wall Street

It all started when asset management giant Grayscale announced the launch of the Zcash Trust. The Grayscale Trust is a tailor-made "cryptocurrency purchase package" for Wall Street institutional investors, allowing accredited investors with significant financial resources but limited regulatory compliance to indirectly own ZEC by purchasing trust shares, without having to worry about complex issues like private key management and wallet security.

The signal significance of this news far outweighed the direct inflow of funds. It announced to the entire market: "Wall Street is paying attention to Zcash and has already rolled out the red carpet for it." The expectation of institutional capital entering the market became the first spark that ignited the price of ZEC.

The reverse stimulus of tightening regulations

A seemingly contradictory phenomenon is that increasingly tightening global regulations have become the fuel for the rise of anonymous coins.

At the time, the EU was intensely debating a draft bill called "Chat Control," which proposed using artificial intelligence to monitor users' private information on a large scale. Meanwhile, the EU's new Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations were on the verge of being implemented, with plans to ban the use of anonymous crypto accounts and coins from 2027.

This sounds like bad news, but the market has interpreted it quite the opposite. Former White House adviser Thor Torrens aptly noted, "Surveillance and censorship are not diminishing, but intensifying. Privacy is only becoming more valuable." This is a "bad news is good news" logic—the stricter the regulation, the stronger the demand for escaping it.

Strong endorsement from KOLs

Venture capitalist Naval Ravikant posted a highly viral tweet on social media: "Bitcoin is insurance against fiat currency, Zcash is insurance against Bitcoin." This sentence instantly went viral, positioning Zcash as an essential tool to hedge against the privacy risks of Bitcoin's transparent ledger.

Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius Labs, described a crypto world without privacy as a "dystopian nightmare" and praised Zcash's "stronger privacy and scale design," even predicting a price of $1,000.

The endorsements of these heavyweights completely reversed Zcash sentiment on social media, turning it positive for the first time in months. This created a perfect storm orchestrated by institutions, regulators, legal professionals, and influencers (KOLs).

02. Why did Monero fall behind?

Amidst this collective frenzy surrounding privacy coins, one detail stands out: Monero (XMR), once the king, has performed relatively flat, with a weekly gain of -1.94%. This is a tale of two cities, a battle between technological advancements, security and trust, and market narratives.

Zcash’s Smart Choice: Optional Privacy Model

Zcash's core technology is "zk-SNARKs" (zero-knowledge proofs), which allow transactions to be verified in a fully encrypted manner. However, Zcash's most clever design lies in its "opt-in privacy" model—users can freely choose to conduct fully transparent transactions or completely anonymous "shielded transactions."

This flexibility is interpreted by the market as a potential path to regulatory compliance. For institutions like Grayscale, a privacy coin that offers the option of transparency is clearly more palatable than a "black box" where all transactions are strictly anonymous. Coupled with the Electric Coin Company (ECC) team's continued push for wallet usability and future plans to transition to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) for enhanced interoperability, Zcash presents itself to the market as a positive, professional, and future-oriented cryptocurrency.

Monero's plight: A crisis of trust that shakes its foundations

While Zcash was making great strides, Monero was caught up in a serious security crisis.

In August 2025, a mining pool called Qubic claimed to have successfully launched a "51% attack" on the Monero network, resulting in a "blockchain reorganization" of 6 blocks.

Although researchers later pointed out that this was more of a PR stunt using the "selfish mining" strategy than a true 51% network control, the damage was done. This incident exposed the potential centralization risks of Monero's network computing power and shook its foundation as the most secure and anonymous coin.

When investors have to choose between two anonymous coins, one is Zcash, which has just been endorsed by Wall Street and is on the rise, and the other is Monero, which is dealing with a cybersecurity crisis. Which side will the capital scale lean towards? The answer is self-evident.

03. The revival of the entire anonymous track

Zcash's explosive growth is just the beginning. After pouring into ZEC, capital began searching for the next "potential stock" within the sector. Consequently, we've seen smaller, more resilient, anonymous projects experience astonishing gains in the past month: Railgun (RAIL) is up 245%, PIVX is up 42%. Even the established privacy coin Dash (DASH) has seen a 43% weekly gain and a 90% monthly increase.

This clearly shows that the market is undergoing a thematic capital rotation. When "large-cap stocks" such as Bitcoin enter a period of adjustment, smart money begins to look for new narratives with high growth potential, and "privacy" has obviously become the hottest choice at the time.

From a technical perspective, mainstream privacy coins each have their own strengths and weaknesses. Zcash, with its zero-knowledge proof technology and optional privacy model, has gained the strongest institutional appeal; Monero insists on default privacy and asset fungibility; and Dash emphasizes fast transaction speeds and low fees. However, in this round of market fluctuations, Zcash, with its regulatory flexibility and institutional recognition, clearly has the upper hand.

04. Summary

This event is more like a successful roadshow for the concept of "institutional-grade privacy." It suggests that projects like Zcash, with cutting-edge technology, compliance options, and institutional recognition, will likely continue to be the first choice for mainstream capital entering the anonymous space. Meanwhile, projects like Monero, which adhere to a "hardcore" privacy approach, must address their own security and decentralization challenges.

For each of us in the crypto world, this “privacy renaissance” raises a profound question: In an increasingly transparent and surveilled digital age, how much are we willing to pay to protect our financial privacy?

The market rally in the fall of 2025 may be just the first public market valuation of this question. When Wall Street begins rolling out the red carpet for privacy assets, perhaps it's telling us: privacy has never been more valuable than it is today. And this revaluation has only just begun.