Privacy-focused layer-1s and gold-backed tokens finished 2025 as rare bright spots in an altcoin market dominated by defensive positioning and “Extreme Fear” readings on sentiment gauges.
Fresh year-end data from CoinGecko shows privacy chains Zcash and Monero carrying the layer-1 basket into positive territory, while separate research and trading data on tokenized bullion from The Block and others confirm that PAX Gold (PAXG) and Tether Gold (XAUT) rode a historic rally in spot gold to new onchain highs. Bitcoin sits near $87,200, down about 8% year to date as of December 18, and Ethereum remains lower by roughly 15%, yet select privacy and gold-backed plays delivered triple-digit gains in the same window.
Privacy layer-1s sit on top of the altcoin leaderboard
In its December 24 narrative study, CoinGecko ranks Zcash (ZEC) and Monero (XMR) as core drivers of an 80.3% average gain for layer-1 tokens in 2025. ZEC logged a 691.3% year-to-date return through December 22, while XMR advanced 143.6% over the same span, placing both among the top crypto gainers of the year.*
Spot markets reflect that outperformance. Monero trades around $441 on CoinGecko, up about 1.8% over the last 24 hours and roughly 127% over the past year.* Zcash changes hands near $438 on CoinMarketCap, with a 24-hour move of around +2.4% and a gain of more than 2,600% from its July 2024 lows.* Beldex (BDX), another privacy coin, shows more modest progress, up about 25.7% on a one‑year basis and trading just under $0.10.*
The magnitude of the privacy rally stands out against the wider market. CoinGecko’s top-gainers review for 2025 lists Zcash as the second-best performer among large caps with a 573.72% year-to-date return as of December 18, while Monero sits sixth with 115.96%. Bitcoin and Ethereum appear much further down that same table at -7.96% and -15.25% respectively.*
Regulatory pressure did not halt that rotation. Binance delisted Monero in February 2024, and Kraken later removed XMR for users in the European Economic Area, shrinking centralized exchange access for the asset.* Even so, privacy usage and pricing climbed into year-end 2025, helped by new L1 launches like Midnight Network and fresh attention to zero-knowledge tooling in DeFi.
Tokenized gold tracks a 70% bullion surge
Gold itself delivered one of its strongest years in decades. Spot XAU is up around 70% in 2025, with StatMuse data showing a 69.8% gain and an average price of about $3,467 across the year.* On December 26, Reuters recorded spot gold at roughly $4,505 per ounce after an intraday high above $4,530, a fresh record that capped a 72% yearly advance.*
Onchain gold kept pace. CoinCodex’s profit calculator estimates that PAX Gold returned 71.13% in 2025, with PAXG rising from $2,629.53 to about $4,490 per token over the year.* Live converters show PAXG trading near $4,497 today,* while Tether Gold changes hands around $4,499 with a market cap close to $1.7 billion.*
Liquidity followed price. In early April, tokenized gold weekly trading volume topped $1 billion for the first time since the 2023 US banking stress, helped by President Trump’s tariff policy and a new phase in the gold rally.* By October 7, The Block reported that the combined market cap for gold-pegged tokens such as PAXG, XAUT and Kinesis Gold (KAU) had reached $3.04 billion, with 24‑hour volume around $640 million as physical gold briefly passed $4,000 per ounce.*
Tether’s own disclosures point in the same direction. In an October 28 update, the firm said XAUT had surpassed $2 billion in value and stressed that each token represents a troy ounce of vaulted gold in Switzerland.*
“Tokenized gold presents a compelling alternative for crypto-native investors who might otherwise look to Bitcoin or stablecoins,” CEX.io analyst Illia Otychenko told Cointelegraph earlier this year.*
Extreme Fear pushes capital toward privacy and hard collateral
The move into these niches unfolded against a backdrop of persistent stress in broader crypto sentiment. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index from Alternative.me dropped to 24 on December 23 and 23 on December 25, keeping the market locked in the “extreme fear” bucket as reported by KuCoin and other trackers.** A separate review from Tapbit places the total crypto market cap near $3.0–$3.09 trillion with Bitcoin dominance around 57–59% during this period, which confirms a strong tilt toward the largest asset.*
CoinGecko’s narrative study quantifies how little risk appetite remained outside a few pockets. Real-world assets (RWA) led all narratives with average token returns of 185.8% year to date, powered by names like Keeta Network, Zebec Network and Maple Finance.* Layer-1 tokens ranked second at 80.3%, thanks in large part to Zcash and Monero. In contrast, meme coins, DeFi and AI narratives showed average losses of 31.6%, 34.8% and 50.2% respectively, while gaming and DePIN dropped more than 75% on average.
That split mirrors the onchain “flight to safety” pattern. On one side sit privacy coins that offer transactional opacity at the base layer. On the other side sit gold-backed instruments that mirror a physical safe haven which just printed its strongest yearly gain in more than four decades. Both categories plug directly into RWA and settlement narratives that institutions already track.
The alignment is not accidental. AIXBT’s December meta note flagged loss aversion as the defining trait of late‑2025 crypto flows, with spot Bitcoin ETFs bleeding billions, the Fear & Greed Index deep in the 20s and rotation toward utility-driven stories such as ZK privacy and real-world assets.* In that environment, tokens tied to either censorship‑resistant settlement (XMR, ZEC, BDX) or to record‑high bullion (PAXG, XAUT, KAU) became the default way for crypto-native capital to stay onchain without embracing high beta.
Heading into 2026, those trades now sit at the intersection of two pressure points. Regulators continue to scrutinize privacy technology and exchange listings, while lawmakers and central banks refine rules for asset‑backed tokens. The way that privacy coins and tokenized gold navigate that policy path will decide whether 2025’s outperformance turns into a longer structural trend or remains a late‑cycle safety trade during a fearful year.
