Privacy sector surges to $33.6B market cap, ZEC rises 2,496% in one year

According to ME News, as of September 6 (UTC+8), over the past year, the strongest-performing sector in the crypto market has been privacy assets. The total market capitalization of privacy-themed tokens has risen from $7.1 billion a year ago to $33.6 billion, an increase of approximately 3.7 times, with nearly half of this growth occurring in the past 30 days. ZEC has been the core asset driving this surge, rising 2,496% over the past year and accounting for about 62% of the entire privacy sector’s market cap, with its ranking climbing from 82nd to 7th. During the same period, XMR doubled in price, while DASH, XMR, and ZEN all outperformed BTC over the past 90 days. Of the top 200 crypto assets over the past 30 days, 91.5% posted gains, but only 25 assets were up over the past year. The privacy sector is the only one whose total market cap remains above the market peak of October 6, 2025, currently up 213% from that level. Excluding ZEC, the privacy asset index still rose 85% over the past year, indicating that this rally is not driven solely by a single token. (Source: BlockBeats)