Bitcoin is down for the week and most large coins are bleeding, yet two privacy tokens are green. If you're wondering where money goes when traders stop trusting the rest of the market, this is one answer.

Zcash rose about 7% to roughly $1,375 on Friday, November 6, while Bitcoin fell 3.8% and Ether 5.3% over the same 24 hours, according to CryptoTicker. That put Zcash's market cap at $23.4 billion and 10th in the crypto rankings, with $1.56 billion traded in a day. Monero, the older privacy coin, traded near $621 on Saturday, up 5.4% on the week, which SecureShift's weekly recap called one of the few large-cap gains.

One correction to what you may have seen in older headlines: the $10 billion Zcash market cap and the $510 price are from last year. Zcash is now worth more than double that, and the story today is how it behaves when everything else is falling.

The trigger was a software upgrade. CryptoTicker reported that Zcash's NU7 network upgrade activated at block 3,543,405 on November 6, shortly after 02:34 UTC. It cuts block times from 75 seconds to 25, sends 60% of transaction fees to a reserve instead of miners, closes the old Sprout pool (12,224 ZEC frozen) and caps the number of private transactions per block. Faster blocks and a fee reserve are concrete, checkable changes, which is more than most altcoins can offer in a week like this.

Frankly, that doesn't explain all of it. Traders buy upgrades that are scheduled, and the move on Friday looks like the market finding the one chart it still liked. Zcash has also been the volatile one. Bitcoin.com reported that on November 3 it dropped from $1,250 to $1,125 in a few hours, wiping out $14.55 million in liquidations, 85% of them longs. A coin that can lose 10% and recover within days isn't a safe harbour, it's a high-beta trade that happens to point the other way from Bitcoin right now.

ZEC's spot ETF, ticker ZCSH, topped $500 million in assets within two weeks of its August 25 NYSE Arca debut, while Zcash's shielded supply nearly tripled to 31% of circulating coins. - zcash spot ETF approval drives cryptocurrency hedge demand - how privacy coins attract institutional bitcoin alternative investors

Monero is the quieter story

Monero's move is smaller and steadier. Bitcoin.com put its 90-day gain at 75% as of November 3, and KuCoin News listed its market cap near $11.45 billion that day. On Thursday it was trading around $636 before easing to about $621, so you can see the dip buyers around the $600 level that one KuCoin analysis flagged as support.

The comparison matters if you're choosing between them. Zcash gets its lift from a dated upgrade and a futures market that can swing 10% in a session. Monero gets it from being the hardest of the two to track, and from holders who aren't leaving. It has no upgrade headline to sell into, so there's less for fast money to trade.

What's pulling the rest of the market down

SecureShift's recap has Bitcoin holding near $75,800 after a rough week, with $870 million flowing out of US spot Bitcoin ETFs in the first four November sessions. It put resistance at $77,533, the 50-week moving average, and support at $74,762, Friday's low. Its warning: a break under $75,500 could open the road to $69,000.

Compare the two groups and you can see why privacy coins stand out. ETF flows and macro data move Bitcoin and Ether. Neither Zcash nor Monero has a US spot ETF pulling money out when sentiment turns, so they're less tied to those flows, for better or worse.

The regulatory risk hasn't gone anywhere

Don't read this rally as the regulators backing off. Bitcoin.com noted that the EU's Anti-Money Laundering Regulation will bar regulated service providers from handling anonymity-enhancing cryptocurrencies from July 1, 2027. Monero has been through this before: OKX delisted it in late 2023 and Binance followed in early 2024, and the same report said daily transactions fell nearly 50% afterwards.

For you, the practical risk is access. If a coin can't be listed on regulated European venues, you'll rely on a thinner set of exchanges, and thin liquidity is exactly what turns a 10% dip into a 25% one.

The next test is concrete: whether Bitcoin holds $75,500 over the weekend, and whether Zcash can stay above the $1,200 support level analysts are watching.

Zcash now makes up about 62% of the privacy coin sector, which grew from $7.1 billion to $33.6 billion in the past twelve months. Haven Protocol jumped 217% and Verge climbed 188% in the same rally. - monero price surge regulatory changes privacy coins - privacy coin market cap growth 2021 levels

Also read: Ethereum ETFs lose $365 million in a sixth straight week of outflows • Democrats' midterm win leaves crypto exposed over its Trump ties • XRP drops 7% in a week while Ethereum holds, with no ETF buyers to step in

This article is posted in Crypto News, check it out for more related stories.

Join the discussion