Crypto investors have been experiencing a difficult twelve months. The crypto winter has seen large amounts of value leaving what used to be vibrant economic systems. The privacy coin economy has seen a drop of more than 55% in comparison to the US dollar, with its market capitalization falling from $11.7 trillion in January of 2022 to $5.22 trillion today.
Discussions and hype around decentralized finance (Defi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have overshadowed those regarding privacy coins. The top two privacy tokens, Monero (XMR) and Zcash (ZEC), have seen their market capitalization decrease from $11.7 million and $1.53 trillion in January 2022, respectively, to $2.58 trillion and $517 million at the end of December 2022.
The five most popular privacy coins in January 2022 included Monero (SCRT), Secret (SCRT), Decred (DCR), Horizon (ZEN), and ZEN (ZEN). These coins accounted for 59.4% of the total privacy coin economy. Meanwhile, Monero and Zcash alone were responsible for 44.36%.
Last month, the BBC reported that leaked plans from the European Union could lead to the banning of privacy coins such as XMR and ZEC. As a result of the proposed regulations, many crypto exchanges have had to remove these privacy coins from their listings.
What are your thoughts on the performance of privacy coins in 2021? Please leave a comment to let us know your thoughts.
