Zcash Market Cap Surpasses Monero, Privacy Coin Landscape May See Power Shift

BlockBeats News, November 3rd, according to CoinDesk's report, privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash (ZEC) has surpassed the long-standing dominant Monero (XMR) in market capitalization, potentially marking a "changing of the guard" in the privacy coin space.

ZEC's market capitalization exceeded XMR's for the first time last Friday after rising nearly 50% in the previous seven days, maintaining its position above its "elder" for several hours. Throughout the weekend, ZEC held onto its lead, with its market capitalization reaching as high as $7.2 billion, while XMR remained around $6.3 billion. Currently, both their market capitalizations are around $6.4 billion.

Zcash was launched in 2016, while Monero was born in 2014. The most significant difference between the two lies in their privacy mechanisms:

Zcash uses an "opt-in privacy" model, where users can choose between transparent or shielded transactions;
Monero encrypts all transactions by default, lacking selectivity.

This flexibility makes Zcash more easily accepted by traders and institutions, especially those users who seek to balance privacy and compliance. In contrast, Monero has been delisted from several mainstream exchanges due to anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) concerns.