What’s Behind the Surge in Anonymous Cryptocurrencies

[Alpen]

In 2025, demand for privacy among crypto traders has surged. With Trump back in the White House and promising to introduce new crypto legislation, fears of blockchain surveillance have intensified. Meanwhile, the autumn market downturn made Zcash and Monero appealing as hedging assets.

Since September, ZEC has skyrocketed by 900%, while XMR has doubled over the same period — though demand for XMR has remained relatively stable throughout the year. Both cryptocurrencies run on independent blockchains that conceal recipient addresses and transaction amounts.

For this reason, regulators in many countries have banned them, and compliant CEXs have delisted them. Ironically, this lack of trading platforms has helped ZEC and XMR gain traction and build liquidity.

These coins might become the first in crypto history to re-enter the top 10 after such dramatic declines.

So, where can traders actually buy ZEC and XMR today?

[passwordnow]

So, where can traders actually buy ZEC and XMR today?

It's not that hard to find them, while there are exchanges that are delisting these privacy coins due to regulatory issues. But if you check on them, there are still plenty of exchanges that have them listed on their own platforms.

ZEC ~> https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/zcash/#Markets
XMR ~> https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/#Markets

[asriloni]

It seems ZEC pumped so hard due to the renew of privacy narrative. If you aware how there is no big news for ZEC. Even there is also FUD about ZEC's co founder is a transgender. Logically, it was not pumping, but it got a pump due to the the change of narrative.

Since meme token has no demand anymore. Every whales are moving out. They are going to the dino coin that is still underperform, and traded at the bottom.

That's why so many old coins are getting pumped together. It's not caused by organic pump, but it's a manipulation by the whales.

As for the place to buy ZEC, why are you lazy enough just to visit CMC, and see which place you can buy ZEC? You have plenties of market to buy ZEC here. Don't be lazy.

[Alpen]

So, where can traders actually buy ZEC and XMR today?

It's not that hard to find them, while there are exchanges that are delisting these privacy coins due to regulatory issues. But if you check on them, there are still plenty of exchanges that have them listed on their own platforms.

ZEC ~> https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/zcash/#Markets
XMR ~> https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/#Markets

As for the place to buy ZEC, why are you lazy enough just to visit CMC, and see which place you can buy ZEC? You have plenties of market to buy ZEC here. Don't be lazy.

CoinMarketCap is an old and respected stats service, but I've learned to be highly critical of their exchange listings for specific coins.

A while back, I tried to get into arbitrage and opened accounts on exchanges that CMC listed as having the lowest and highest prices. Half of those platforms turned out to be scams, or the listed price was just fake bait to lure in new clients. I actually lost crypto trying to make those trades.

Anyway, now I've just decided to trade Monero (XMR) through a crypto gateway. I'm holding off on ZEC for now—the token pumped way too high and is already dumping hard. But I'm officially buying XMR, with full KYC verification, on the Cryptomus platform.

[Frankolala]

I don't know the country that you are from, I just checked Kucoin exchange and they trade on ZEC. I don't know why you find it difficult to get an exchange that trades ZEC. It can be delisted in some exchange but not in all the exchange. Of course, I took my time to observe how this coin pymped even when the market is down. It shows that the price is being manipulated.

[BattleDog]

I've seen this ZEC/XMR surge before, it's the same privacy tide that rolls in every few years when folks remember Uncle Sam's watching their wallet balance. Add in election chatter and some new surveillance boogeymen, and boom, ZEC goes vertical like it's 2017 again.

But let's not pretend this is grassroots. When liquidity is thin and news cycles are spicy, it doesn't take much for a couple of well-fed wallets to light the fuse. Sprinkle in the narrative of "return to privacy," mix with a few CEX delistings (which ironically add to the mystique), and suddenly Telegram groups are buzzing like it's a freedom tech renaissance. Happens every time.

Don't get me wrong, I still respect what Monero's doing, slow, steady, no drama, just privacy. Zcash though? Between trusted setups, founder tax drama, and now being the darling of narrative-driven pumps... let's just say I'm keeping one eye open. As for where to buy? Come on. It's 2025. If you can find this thread, you can find ZEC. It's not hiding in a cave. Yet.

[Monzu778]

Secution of new market ideas and the advancement of technology. Although the popularity of secret-coins is growing, there are some caveats such as the risk of regulation, lack of liquidity, and local legal issues. Those who wish to participate should have in-depth storage and understanding of market conditions, and are advised not to view privacy as a fundamental issue.

[Ahli38]

So, where can traders actually buy ZEC and XMR today?

Monero was once delisted from certain exchange due to privacy issues that made the exchange cautious about it due to increased regulatory scrutiny (Source). And Monero is considered more private than Zec, where Zec still allows for transparency. But currently we can still find Monero and even Zec on several exchanges that still list them. And you can see the list on several websites that provide this information. You can see it on Coinmarketcap (Source). Coinpaprika (Source) or even on CoinGecko (Source). But first you have to check whether there have been any changes to the rules on an exchange if you want to buy it. It could be that a particular exchange has made changes or delisted the coins recently. So you have to check it. In addition you also have to choose a more trustworthy or even more well-known exchange so that you feel more comfortable when making transactions.

[virasog]

So, where can traders actually buy ZEC and XMR today?

Monero was once delisted from certain exchange due to privacy issues that made the exchange cautious about it due to increased regulatory scrutiny (Source). And Monero is considered more private than Zec, where Zec still allows for transparency. But currently we can still find Monero and even Zec on several exchanges that still list them. And you can see the list on several websites that provide this information. You can see it on Coinmarketcap (Source). Coinpaprika (Source) or even on CoinGecko (Source). But first you have to check whether there have been any changes to the rules on an exchange if you want to buy it. It could be that a particular exchange has made changes or delisted the coins recently. So you have to check it. In addition you also have to choose a more trustworthy or even more well-known exchange so that you feel more comfortable when making transactions.

Privacy coins has gained a hype recently but this time ZCash has become the more popular privacy coin as compared to the Monero. I don't think the stance about the privacy coins have changed but people have realized that due to the possible surveillance by the government on the crypto and Blockchain, ZCash provides the solution as it has both shielded and non-shielded addresses and that people can hide the transactions when needed, making it a better privacy coin in current circumstances.

However XLM isn't listed on much exchanges but ZCash is already present on most of the centralized exchanges. However the thing to note is that is this only a hype or will these privacy coins continue to add value and do not dump to previous low prices.

[TastyChillySauce00]

They are actually still getting listed everywhere especially ZEC where binance still lists it. For XMR it's being listed in kucoin, mexc, etc. You definitely can buy them easily if you want to.

The surge was caused by shifting of narrative as usual and crypto friendly regulation. For these past few weeks I've been seeing influencers bought them as well amplifying the hype. It could be that people liked privacy coin or it's just another random surge.

[fullfitlarry]

Very hard to tell what is the reason behind, there could be the narrative that this could be manipulation from behind? And maybe just one more pump before the bear market? This is prevalent in some notable coins though in the past.

But I guess, maybe the best question is that those holders going to take profit or not?

Because if my speculation is correct then it's really the best time to sell and take that profit as you might regret it later when the price goes down hard again and might not see that kind of surge entering the bear market.

[ultrloa]

Very hard to tell what is the reason behind, there could be the narrative that this could be manipulation from behind? And maybe just one more pump before the bear market? This is prevalent in some notable coins though in the past.

But I guess, maybe the best question is that those holders going to take profit or not?

Because if my speculation is correct then it's really the best time to sell and take that profit as you might regret it later when the price goes down hard again and might not see that kind of surge entering the bear market.

I guess the growing trend of platform having KYC triggers the wants of people to use privacy coins.

Because some people have this concerns about growing numbers of financial privacy and growing numbers of unsafe transaction tracking in this space.

I also think they are not for taking profit for deciding to use that privacy coin but rather they are thinking about their safety towards possible censorship that happening in some platforms.

[MArsland]

So, where can traders actually buy ZEC and XMR today?

It's not that hard to find them, while there are exchanges that are delisting these privacy coins due to regulatory issues. But if you check on them, there are still plenty of exchanges that have them listed on their own platforms.

ZEC ~> https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/zcash/#Markets
XMR ~> https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/#Markets

However, it will still not be immune from pressure as exchanges look to expand more widely so regulatory pressure on privacy coins will continue to be an obstacle. For now privacy coins are the last line of defense in the era of regulation. Freedom and anonymity must be maintained, so all privacy coins depend on the community to continue to provide support.

The question is how long will coins like ZEC and XMR survive the pressure of global regulation?

[JeffBrad12]

A lot of shill for ZEC right now, no wonder the price keep going up.
The increasing demand for privacy coin could be one of the trigger too. I bet it's 80% trader or money flippers 20% people who actually interested in privacy and thinks of them as the next bitcoin, I however could be very wrong about this.

[Alpen]

Privacy coins has gained a hype recently but this time ZCash has become the more popular privacy coin as compared to the Monero. I don't think the stance about the privacy coins have changed but people have realized that due to the possible surveillance by the government on the crypto and Blockchain, ZCash provides the solution as it has both shielded and non-shielded addresses and that people can hide the transactions when needed, making it a better privacy coin in current circumstances.

However XLM isn't listed on much exchanges but ZCash is already present on most of the centralized exchanges. However the thing to note is that is this only a hype or will these privacy coins continue to add value and do not dump to previous low prices.

I have to disagree with your point about ZEC being more popular than XMR. If you look at the charts, Monero has demonstrated steady, consistent growth over the last 1.5 years. ZCash's recent spike in value, on the other hand, is almost entirely due to that single pump in September.

[Hispo]

...

So, where can traders actually buy ZEC and XMR today?

Probably people use P2P markets which run on opensource and they are very difficult to censor, think of Bisq, but instead trading Bitcoin for FIAT, it is used to trade Monero for FIAT and vice versa.

There are also some non-custodial exchanges which are based in countries in which the United States and the European Union do not have much power to regulate them or take them down, some of them are based in Russia. The government of Russia are pretty much indifferent to those exchanges, as they do not mess with the government of Putin.

Anyways, the lack of liquidity from western exchanges is not going to make Monero and Zec stronger through time, that is for sure.

[bitgolden]

Very hard to tell what is the reason behind, there could be the narrative that this could be manipulation from behind? And maybe just one more pump before the bear market? This is prevalent in some notable coins though in the past.

But I guess, maybe the best question is that those holders going to take profit or not?

Because if my speculation is correct then it's really the best time to sell and take that profit as you might regret it later when the price goes down hard again and might not see that kind of surge entering the bear market.

I am not sure these all about manipulation. But we are not talking about one or two coins here, but we are talking about many coins. We must be in the bear market already, so we can instead say that this is their attempt to retain the glow in the crypto market. On to your question there, the answer is> once a hodler, always a hodler. They can endure temptation and short time pumps in exchange for a bigger pump and bigger profits.

However if in the case of privacy coins only, this should be a great opportunity for selling if we still have them and got interfered by regulations last time because they may get hunted down by the regulators again and they can make sure that these privacy coins will never come to life anymore.

[wiss19]

They are actually still getting listed everywhere especially ZEC where binance still lists it. For XMR it's being listed in kucoin, mexc, etc. You definitely can buy them easily if you want to.

The surge was caused by shifting of narrative as usual and crypto friendly regulation. For these past few weeks I've been seeing influencers bought them as well amplifying the hype. It could be that people liked privacy coin or it's just another random surge.

Oh really? I thought they are being hunted down one by one before? But, it could also be that the listing only occurred lately when the trend about privacy coin is starting to form. There are people that likes or value their privacy more and then there are also some that don't care too much about it. For now, I would say that that majority of the people who are involved with it are only riding the hype in the hopes of earning a quick buck. Coins just don't surge randomly but every reaction must always have an action done by the people.

[nelson4lov]

Idk if it's the full reason but over the last 2 months, there's been report that the government in EU are probably doing like full tracking of their citizens life especially the financial aspect including their transactions, what goes where and for what. This caused a huge response from a lof of people and it started getting picked up by some influencers that started pointing out Zcash as the banger solution to the world's privacy problem. I don't blame them much. I just blame myself for not being a party of the cyberpunk rallies.

[FinneysTrueVision]

The Winklevoss twins announced they started a treasury company and have already bought more than 1% of Zcash’s supply. They are trying to accumulate 5% of its supply, which would be more than 1,000,000 ZEC. All the people you see on Twitter shilling Zcash as “encrypted Bitcoin” are likely early insiders in the treasury company, so you should take the marketing with a grain of salt.

Zcash is also very popular on the no-kyc swapping protocol NEAR Intents. You can see the top swaps in the past 24 hours are all for Zcash. I think people might be swapping into ZEC similar to how people were using eXch to swap for XMR and then swap back to their original currency.