Zcash (ZEC) tanked over 6% in the last 24 hours, currently sitting at 520.05 USD as traders take profits after a solid bull run over the past few months. Meanwhile, Monero (XMR) surged 11% to hit 396.75 USD following a mysterious 23 million USD buy on the network.
This event has ignited a long-standing debate about which privacy coin has the stronger product
Capital seems to be rotating back from a market focus on ZEC towards the privacy features by default of XMR
Zcash cooled off after a 56% monthly surge
ZEC is trading near $520 after touching above $640 earlier in May, a level last reached in 2017. This token has still gained nearly 57% over the past 30 days and over 900% year-on-year
The recent surge is attributed to the following events:
The SEC's decision in January to conclude the investigation into the Zcash Foundation without legal action,
The reveal of Multicoin Capital's holdings in May, and
Grayscale's application to convert the Zcash Trust into a spot ETF
Grayscale's spot ETF filing has sparked institutional momentum driving the price surge
Currently, about 30% of the total ZEC supply is in the network's shielded pools, which has reduced circulating volume significantly
This dip has brought the token closer to the 200-day moving average around $500, which has been identified as a critical level for a new leg up
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The price spike of Monero is linked to the $23 million purchase of XMR, the reasons for which remain unknown
The movement of XMR has accelerated following a series of transactions, where a single wallet withdrew $29.3 million USDC from Coinbase, converted some to DAI, and then swapped about $23 million to XMR through Wagyu's OTC platform
…$29.3 million worth of USDC was withdrawn from Coinbase and started converting to DAI (likely hacked or fraudulent funds). Yesterday, they began converting DAI back to USDC and then USDC to XMR via Wagyu(.)xyz using multiple wallets. Over the past 17 to 4 hours, they bought $23 million worth of XMR, pushing the price up nearly 15% due to this event. This was revealed by on-chain analyst MLM through a post
There has been no public confirmation of the hacking or theft events that could have led to the deposits, and the assumption that funds were transferred from a compromised wallet has yet to be verified as well
This event is similar to many past instances where opaque high-value purchases of XMR have led to short-term price spikes
The rotation within the privacy coin group
XMR employs RingCT signatures and stealth addresses to automatically ensure all transactions are private
Zcash uses zk-SNARK technology, but only applies it when users opt for shielded transactions
Critics have used this distinction to question the ZEC price surge every time there’s a market correction in this group
$Zec is a narrative, $XMR is the real deal
— CryptoCat.hl (@Cestlavierix) May 30, 2026
Assets in the privacy coin segment are a standout theme in crypto for 2026, building on last year's returns where privacy-focused coins outperformed mainstream assets
The market cap of XMR is currently around $7.43 billion while ZEC is at $8.67 billion, ranked separately at 16 and 18 on CoinGecko
The newly formed gap also reflects the ongoing debate in the community about the design of Zcash versus Monero for users who consider untraceability a fundamental standard, not just an option