Global searches for “privacy coins” reached an all-time high of 98 points according to Google Trends, while Zcash’s shielded supply peaked at over $140 million, indicating surging worldwide demand for financial privacy solutions.
The mindshare and interest in privacy solutions appear to be rising worldwide, which includes privacy-enhancing cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin first gained popularity among privacy and encryption advocates known as cypherpunks, thanks to its pseudonymous accounts—later losing this appeal with the surge of advanced chain analysis tools. In this context, a few privacy-focused cryptocurrencies have surged, addressing this specific demand at the protocol level.
According to data from Google Trends on August 20, searches for the keyword “Privacy Coins” jumped significantly worldwide, reaching an all-time high marked by 98 points in the five-year timeframe. This is a contrasting metric to the recent plunge in “alt season” searches.
Global interest in “privacy coins” in the past five years from August 20, 2025 | Source: Google Trends
On that note, Vlad, host of the Bitcoin Takeover (BTCTKVR) podcast, commented this rise in interest “was obvious.” In a post on X, Vlad foresees “a massive exodus towards anything that offers financial privacy,” adding that this is not a matter of “if” but “when.” He mentions that there are “many Bitcoin OGs” interested in privacy coins like Monero, Zcash, Zano, and Beam “these days,” proving his point.
Been reading news about privacy coins becoming a hotter topic on Google Trends
To me, it was obvious since last year when I attended the Nashville Bitcoin conference
The revolution is dead, so there will be a massive exodus towards anything that offers financial privacy.…
— VLAD HOSTS THE BEST PODCAST IN BITCOIN (@TheVladCostea) August 20, 2025
More Metrics: Shielded Zcash, Price Analysis
Another interesting metric that reached an all-time high and reflects the growing demand for privacy coins and privacy-enhancing technology is the total supply of shielded ZEC. Zcash is the second most popular privacy cryptocurrency by market cap, which gives users the choice of using transparent or shielded (privacy-enhancing) addresses.
Data from the Zcash Dashboard retrieved by Coinspeaker shows shielded Zcash ZEC $39.11 24h volatility: 11.5% Market cap: $634.79 M Vol. 24h: $116.57 M peaked at over 3,645,047 ZEC (approximately $140 million) on August 20. With that, the percentage of shielded Zcash over its total supply is 22.32%, showing rising interest in the privacy feature while holding and using the coin.
Historical trend of shielded Zcash supply as of August 20, 2025 | Source: Zcash Dashboard
ZEC is up 10.2% in the last 24 hours, according to the CoinGecko index, following this trend. On the other hand, Monero XMR $265.3 24h volatility: 0.5% Market cap: $4.89 B Vol. 24h: $113.95 M is down 7.4% despite the growing interest in privacy solutions due to the challenges Monero currently faces related to Qubic Pool’s selfish mining attacks, as Coinspeaker reported.
Privacy coins category price index on August 20 | Source: CoinGecko
Besides privacy coins, other examples of privacy-enhancing technologies are also seeing an increase in mindshare, especially on X. VPN providers like Mullvad, Nym, and Proton; Brave browser; private AI, as teased by the Near protocol; and others like Railgun for Ethereum or the eERC token standard for Avalanche are a few notable use cases leading the privacy race.
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