Privacy Coins Rally as Networks Hold, Smart Money Stays Short

Privacy-focused tokens rose 4.5% on Monday, led by Zcash, which gained about 7%, and Monero, which rose roughly 7.6%. The privacy coin sector remains down about 12% for the month.

Market weakness followed a reported software bug affecting Zcash’s shielded pool. Sentiment measures for Zcash fell from about 163.9 on June 5 to roughly 0.73 in the days after the report. Monero’s positive sentiment declined from about 35 to 1.72 after the token was placed in an audit queue.

Zcash developers have scheduled an upgrade called Ironwood for late July 2026. The outlined change includes a repaired shielded pool and a mechanism for nodes to verify total circulating ZEC by summing balances across pools.

On-chain metrics showed mixed trends across privacy networks. Dash’s active addresses decreased from near 66,000 in late May to about 34,000, and daily transactions fell from about 18,400 to 13,000. Thirty-day exchange volume for Dash totaled near $2.96 billion with a recent single-day peak near $210 million.

Monero’s daily transactions rose from about 23,900 on June 7 to roughly 28,600, and its mining hash rate remained close to 5.9 GH/s after a small dip. Decred’s price fell about 54% over a 90-day window while transactions declined roughly 12% in the same period.

An active-address index comparison placed Zcash near 342, above its baseline, while Cardano’s index sat near 91, below its baseline. The figures reflect differing patterns of user engagement across chains.

Wallet positioning data showed a net short by smart-money cohorts. Analytics indicate smart-money wallets were short about $9.6 million of Zcash and about $1 million of Monero. Large whale positions were mixed: major Zcash long positions entered below $410 and were showing unrealized gains in the range of about 15% to 37%, with combined unrealized profit above $8.5 million. Major Monero long positions entered between roughly $337 and $407 and remained underwater but were not liquidated.

Exchange flow data recorded Zcash inflows of about $42.5 million over seven days, roughly 3.3 times the recent average for inflows. Historical patterns have sometimes linked elevated exchange inflows to selling by large holders.

Available data show on-chain activity and network metrics diverging from price action and trading positions. On-chain transaction counts, mining metrics and exchange flows present concurrent but different signals for privacy coins and large holders.