Privacy coins sector is up but not uniformly, and the profit sharing is much more telling than headline numbers. Top five privacy coins by market capitalization are trading between +31.21 percent (Zcash) and -0.03 percent (Beldex) on a 24-hour basis. This kind of range is not seen when there is a planned sector rotation. The market is seeing targeted demand toward select coins.
Zcash (ZEC)
ZEC has pumped 31.21 percent in 24 hrs to $567.40 on a $9.45B market cap. The $1.90B 24 hr volume implies almost 20 percent of ZEC market cap changes hands within 24 hours. That is buy-side conviction driving the price and it is not noise.
To put it in terms of percentages: the largest privacy coin by circulating supply, likely the most battle-tested: XMR produced $219.18 million on a $7.61 billion market cap. This is under 3 percent volume-to-market-cap in the same 24 hours. XMR, at 18.45 million circulating supply vs. 16.66 million for ZEC, but priced at roughly the same cost per coin, barely made a move. The difference in momentum isn’t a rounding issue-it is entirely different demand.
Dash
Dash put in a 17.90 percent jump, closing at $54.23 for a modest $688.14 million market cap. So far, that’s already impressive but analytically it’s particularly interesting for two reasons: the volume at which this happened, $447.97 million over 24 hours at a $688.14 million market cap. That’s a 65 percent market cap to volume ratio and the largest ratio within this group, by far and wide, and again, bigger than Zcash even at a considerably larger dollar value in the market cap.
This means the coin itself traded $448M worth in one day with a market cap just under $700M. That kind of volume on a sub $700M coin indicates an actively traded asset. This could refer to either speculative rotation or a singular event. However, the ratio indicates Dash is the most actively traded asset within this cohort relative to its market cap.
Monero (XMR)
The 1.47 percent gain and $219.18M volume in XMR is probably the least interesting stat in this view. Monero is the privacy coin with the largest track record in actual usage, widest darknet market adoption and most ongoing developer work. It usually doesn’t require a narrative trigger to be a flight to safety.
If it was almost flat while ZEC & DASH pumped, then this 24-hr move is probably not an overarching privacy narrative play; the capital flows into assets, not the entire asset class. Monero’s relatively flat movement in comparison is actually another sign that it could be a short-term, or ticker-focused, move, as opposed to a structural repricing of the entire privacy sector.
Decred (DCR)
The 7.54 percent gain in Decred seems ok when we look at it standalone. At a market cap of $363.19 million and a 24 hour volume of $4.92 million-which is a measly 1.4 percent ratio of market cap to volume-it is a very illiquid market. This means it will take less capital comparatively to other mentioned assets to create the huge percentage swings found at low volumes, but the price could also move violently in either direction. With that number in mind, DCR should be seen as having made that gain against that volume:
Beldex (BDX)
Beldex hardly registered at all. When looked at a daily movement of -0.03 percent with a volume of $27.58 million and a circulating supply of 7.74 billion coins, the latter number jumped out. The supply for every other currency in this grouping was a fraction of that. (18.45 million coins for Monero to 7.74 billion coins for BDX: a factor of 420 in individual units). At $.08 a coin and a $617.20 market cap, BDX is now mostly a function of supply and there’s a reason for that near-zero movement: the market isn’t currently willing to add a premium for the privacy.
What this data actually implies
Both ZEC and DASH are excellent for follow-through, but for very different reasons. Zcash’s $1.9 billion in volume is almost 20 percent of its market cap moving in a single trading day, which shows demand with the weight of that volume, and what the next day or few days do will determine if demand will fade or be sustained.
The urgency of the DASH trade, however, is far higher, and 65 percent of its total market cap traded in 24 hours is on a sub-700-million-dollar market cap. That doesn’t generally drift and it plays out sharply. XMR is a watch and wait; the almost flat trading day means it is either being left behind, indicating that demand was never fundamental in the first place, or it is simply being ignored in light of the move higher in ZEC and DASH, both of which have very different readings.
DCR and BDX round out the list. Decred’s volume to market-cap ratio of 1.4 percent is so low that its 7.54 percent movement will not be significant until confirmed for a second day of volume. Beldex only saw an almost negligible movement and with a supply of 7.74 billion coins, a negligibly small move can tell the market participants a lot about where privacy is being valued in a market (at the current price point, not very highly) to warrant an expansion in a position. ZEC and XMR are the only two coins in this list that are liquid enough to trade in size.
