Analytics firm Glassnode published data on crypto market performance as of September 6. From its October 2025 peak, Bitcoin fell 36%, while the median asset in the top 200 lost 58%.
Privacy coins were the only one of the ten sectors to remain above their October 2025 level. Over that period, the sector grew by 213%, while DeFi lost 27% and the gaming sector fell 74%.
Zcash Accounted for Most of the Growth
The market cap of privacy coins in the top 200 rose from $7.1B to $33.6B over the past year. Almost half of that increase came in the last 30 days.
Zcash (ZEC) was the main driver of the growth. Over the year, the coin gained 2,496%, climbing from 82nd to 7th place among the largest crypto assets by market cap. ZEC now accounts for around 62% of the entire sector.
Monero (XMR) roughly doubled over the same period. However, the growth of privacy coins was not limited to the two largest assets: all eight sector coins with one-year performance data from Glassnode posted positive returns.
Even excluding ZEC, the sector grew by 85% over the year and was up 56% from its level at Bitcoin’s October peak. Over the past 90 days, DASH, XMR, and ZEN also outperformed BTC.
The Market Started Growing Recently
Over the past 30 days, the picture looks different. About 91.5% of the assets in the top 200 gained value, marking the broadest monthly advance in Glassnode’s sample. Privacy coins rose 90% over the month, once again becoming the best-performing sector among the ten.
At the same time, gains over the past year remain much less widespread. Only 25 of the top 200 crypto assets gained value over the year, while the median return was -55%.
Among the 25 largest coins, only ZEC, HYPE, XMR, and WBT are above their October 6, 2025 levels. Two of the four are privacy coins. Excluding HYPE, the DeFi sector lost 46% over the year.
Glassnode included the 200 largest assets by market cap, excluding stablecoins, wrapped tokens, staking tokens, and yield-bearing instruments. The privacy coin sector included ZEC, XMR, DASH, BDX, NIGHT, DCR, H, RAIL, and ZEN.