Monero and Dusk Lead Privacy Coin Rally Amid Market Drop

Privacy-focused cryptocurrencies have outperformed the market, driven by increasing demand for financial anonymity amid tightening regulations.

Monero and Dusk have registered positive gains in the last 24 hours amid a broader crypto market sell-off that liquidated nearly $1 billion in positions.

The BTC price dropped 2.2% to trade at $92,964 as of 6:16 a.m. EST, while Ethereum dropped 3.1% to $3,216. Broader crypto prices also fell in tandem with BTC and ETH, with various coins experiencing profit-taking after last week’s gains.

The crypto market capitalization fell over 2.5% in the last 24 hours to a $3.22 trillion market capitalization.

While the crypto market was rattled, mainly caused by a trade-war threat between the US and European Union, the privacy coin sector, as shown by Coingecko, gained around 4% in the last 24 hours to $21 billion, with Monero’s price rising 9% to $638.75, while DUSK recorded a 92% jump to $0.2609.

Retail sentiment around both privacy coins trended in extremely bullish territory over the past day. Chatter was consistently at extremely high levels for Monero.

Markets Rewarding Privacy Tokens

According to Grayscale’s Crypto Sectors Quarterly: A Preference for Privacy report, privacy-oriented assets outperformed all other crypto sectors in Q4 2025 despite broadly negative market turns.

Grayscale argued that demand for confidentiality is increasingly influencing capital allocation, mostly as regulatory oversight intensifies across major jurisdictions.

The prevailing macroeconomic and geopolitical conditions, along with a push towards increased regulatory and capital controls and data surveillance, have pushed privacy from a niche ideology to a legitimate risk-management feature.

Despite the surge, Zcash is down 6% in the last week after turmoil at the Electric Coin Company earlier this month.

Meanwhile, Grayscale’s longer-term outlook suggests that the bullish trend may persist.