As Bitcoin surges above $42,000 amid a big crypto announcement from the White House, privacy-focused altcoins are also sizzling with impressive gains.
Among the leaders is decentralized payment gateway and original privacy coin Monero (XMR), which aims to hide not only the identity of senders and receivers but also the transaction amount itself.
Monero witnessed an incredible 68% move to the upside, with its Tether pair (XMR/USDT) surging on Binance from $170 to $280 in minutes before correcting.
The Monero website says that the untraceable nature of its system means users are censorship-resistant and XMR is a truly fungible means of exchange.
XMR is the 39th-ranked digital asset by market cap and remains up 10.5% on the day to $188.84.
The rally comes as multiple countries, including the US, pressure cryptocurrency exchanges to track and in some cases outright ban crypto addresses linked to Russian users.
Also on the move is fellow privacy-focused Zcash (ZEC) which harnesses zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs to protect users’ privacy while operating on public blockchains.
The project says it’s self-funded and balances community governance with stakeholder incentives.
Zcash has been on a roll this week, up 33.8% from $106.24 to $142.23 over the past seven days. The #67 crypto asset by market cap is up 13.3% today alone.
Pirate Chain (ARRR) relies on zk-SNARKS (succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge) to keep peer-to-peer transactions private and anonymous.
According to the project website, Pirate Chain supports the open-source TOR Network and employs delayed proof-of-work (dPoW) to protect its blockchain from malicious interference.
Pirate Chain is also experiencing major gains, having vaulted 12.3% from $1.05 to $1.18 almost instantly yesterday.
ARRR weathered a brief correction and remains up 19.8% today with a trading price of $1.22.
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