In the past two rounds of privacy coin market action, there’s one phenomenon worth thinking about: XMR, which is genuinely praised by crypto OGs and has more thoroughly implemented privacy, actually lagged behind ZEC in terms of price gains. Many people would look for answers in terms of technology, community belief, or the project’s history, but I think the most core reason is actually not that complicated—not that XMR’s privacy isn’t good. Rather, it’s that its privacy is done so well that it sacrificed the most important thing in the secondary market: liquidity.

XMR uses a default privacy design in which the sender, receiver, and amount of a transaction are all hidden. Ring signatures, stealth addresses, and confidential transactions together form a privacy system that runs by default. Users can’t temporarily switch a particular on-chain transaction to a public mode just to satisfy the requirements of exchanges or regulatory bodies. This is also why XMR has been recognized and approved by crypto punks and crypto OGs: privacy is not an add-on feature—it’s the system’s default state. But from the perspective of centralized exchanges, this design also means higher anti–money laundering, funds tracing, and “Travel Rule” compliance costs. As a result, over time XMR has lost access points on some major trading platforms and regulated markets, with its liquidity becoming increasingly concentrated in a small number of platforms, OTC trading, and decentralized channels. Research literature also points to the delisting of major centralized exchanges as an important reason pushing the Monero ecosystem toward P2P and decentralized trading.

ZEC chose another route. It has both transparent addresses and shielded addresses, so users can choose public transactions or private transactions as needed. Fully shielded transactions can hide addresses and amounts, while transparent transactions are closer to Bitcoin’s public ledger. From a purely privacy-maximalist standpoint, this “selectable privacy” is not as good as default, fully comprehensive privacy, because if most funds remain in the transparent zone—or if they frequently move in and out of shielded pools—traceable on-chain footprints can still remain. But from the exchange perspective, selectable privacy means ZEC can be more easily integrated into existing deposit/withdrawal systems, risk-control workflows, and compliance frameworks. It’s worth noting that ZEC has also been delisted on platforms like OKX, so it’s not under zero regulatory pressure. The difference is simply that, compared with XMR, ZEC usually has more room to be explained in terms of compliance.

This also explains why once the market starts moving, ZEC often spikes faster. A short-term rise in coin price isn’t purely a technical popularity contest—it’s a trade driven by capital flows. When more exchanges offer spot markets, stablecoin trading pairs, market-making services, and even derivatives, ordinary retail traders, quant funds, and short-term leveraged capital can enter the market more easily, and market depth and trading activity can be amplified quickly. Conversely, even if XMR has steadier real demand and a more loyal community, if new funds need to pass through small exchanges, the P2P market, or atomic swaps to enter, its price elasticity will be constrained. It’s not that the market doesn’t recognize XMR; it’s that many funds that want to trade XMR simply don’t have convenient enough entry points.

Of course, liquidity cannot explain the entire market picture. ZEC’s period of strong performance may also be driven by a combined resurgence of privacy narratives, the concept of zero-knowledge proofs, capital concentration for speculative trading, and certain specific institutional events. As for each round of上涨 (price increases), you still need to judge it based on the trading volume at the time, open positions, and what catalysts came with the news. But the long-term divergence between the two already shows one reality: technical value and asset prices are never evaluated under the same set of criteria. XMR is more like a truly censorship-resistant privacy tool, while ZEC is more like a tradable asset that can switch between privacy and compliance. The former wins the faith of crypto/punk enthusiasts; the latter wins broader market entry points. And in bull markets and rebound phases, entry points often matter more than faith in determining how much prices rise.

The biggest paradox in the privacy track lies here: the more completely privacy is implemented, the harder it may be to enter mainstream liquidity. If privacy is allowed to remain as a switch, however, it becomes easier for the capital market to price it. XMR may be a purer privacy coin, but ZEC is more like a liquidity-friendlier privacy concept asset. In the short term, what the market chooses isn’t necessarily the most technically thorough project, but the one that capital can most easily buy, trade, and amplify.