When Bitcoin was first introduced, many early users assumed it offered privacy. It felt new, unfamiliar, and outside the traditional banking system, so it was easy to believe that your activity could not be traced. Over time, however, people learned that this was not the case. Bitcoin is transparent by design. Anyone can view any transaction, follow any wallet, and analyze the entire chain of activity going back to the very first block. You can visit a public block explorer today and watch transactions happen in real time.
Although Bitcoin feels private on the surface, every address sits openly on the blockchain. There may not be a name attached to it, but some users prefer that their financial activity is not visible to the public at all. That realization sparked an entirely new category of cryptocurrencies aimed at solving the problem Bitcoin could not. These became known as privacy coins. They were designed to hide details such as the sender, the recipient, and the transaction amount.
For a period in the mid-2010s, privacy coins represented some of the most advanced cryptography in the entire industry. Eventually the momentum faded. The narrative shifted elsewhere and privacy coins became a smaller part of the larger crypto conversation. But today, they are suddenly back.
Privacy coins prices are moving. Search interest is rising. Communities that had gone quiet are showing new energy. Many newer investors do not fully understand what privacy coins are or why they ever mattered. Even more importantly, they may not realize that privacy in crypto has expanded into something broader and far more advanced than the original privacy coin model.
To understand why privacy coins are resurfacing, it helps to revisit what they were designed to fix and why their core idea still matters.
So why is privacy a topic again?
Crypto is no longer a small hobbyist ecosystem.
Millions of people are in it and even at the institutional level. Analysts and on-chain tools can track transactions across networks with incredible precision.
As the space grew, people began to understand how transparent it really is. Your wallet history is public. Your transactions are public. Even interactions with apps can reveal patterns about your behavior.
This means that whenever someone places a transaction on a public blockchain, other people can see it before it is completed. Because everything is visible, it led to a problem known as front running. It usually happens because automated bots, advanced traders, and even specialized firms constantly watch the public list of pending transactions, often called the mempool.
If these bots spot a transaction that might move the price of an asset, they quickly submit their own transaction with a higher fee so it gets processed first. This is a way for them to profit from the price movement your transaction will create once it settles.
This is harmful because it can change the price before your transaction goes through. You might pay more than expected, receive less than you intended, or miss out on the opportunity you identified. The front runner profits, and you take the loss.
In traditional finance, this type of behavior is restricted or illegal because it relies on privileged, non-public information. Brokers, insiders, and financial professionals are not allowed to use client information for personal gain.
On public blockchains, however, the information is available to everyone. Pending transactions are visible to the entire network, which means this version of front running is not illegal. It is often referred to as MEV, which stands for Maximal Extractable Value, and it happens simply because the blockchain is transparent in real time.
Larger investors and institutions faced a different problem. If they wanted to buy or sell a significant amount of an asset, anyone watching the blockchain could see it coming. Competitors could react instantly and the market could move against them before their transaction was finalized. Even something as simple as sending money to a friend or moving funds between accounts suddenly felt far more public than it should.
Once people realized how exposed they were, the search for better privacy solutions became understandable. Not because users are trying to hide anything improper, but because they want a normal, reasonable level of financial privacy. The same kind of privacy they already expect from a bank account, a debit card, or a paycheck.
The Return of Privacy Coins and Why the Conversation Has Shifted
As all of this became clearer, people started to rethink the role of privacy in crypto. This is why privacy coins like Zcash and Monero have started appearing in conversations again. They were originally created to fix the exact issues people are facing today; open transaction histories, visible balances, and a lack of personal financial confidentiality.
They hid the sender, the receiver, and the amount being transferred. For a time, they represented some of the most advanced cryptography in the entire industry. If someone wanted to send money without exposing their financial life to the world, privacy coins were the solution.
However, even with their renewed attention, many people do not realize that privacy coins were built for a much simpler version of the crypto ecosystem. When they became popular in the mid-2010s, most of crypto was still focused on basic transfers and early experiments with smart contracts. There was no decentralized finance movement. There were no large trading platforms, derivatives protocols, or complex applications running on-chain.
Privacy coins solved one kind of problem extremely well, but they were never designed for everything that crypto has become. Today, users need privacy not only when they send funds, but when they trade, borrow, lend, mint assets, manage positions, or interact with applications. Privacy coins alone cannot support all of those needs.
This is why the conversation has shifted from privacy coins specifically to a much broader category of privacy-focused blockchain technology. Instead of only hiding transactions, the new wave of privacy solutions aims to provide confidentiality across entire networks and applications.
The Evolution: From Privacy Coins to Privacy Layers
This brings us to one of the biggest changes quietly happening in crypto today. The conversation is shifting toward a topic called privacy layers.
Instead of focusing on making a single coin private, these systems make the entire network more private. That means privacy is built into everything you do, not just when you make a transaction.
With a privacy layer, users can do things like trade, use apps, manage positions, or even verify their identity without exposing every detail publicly. It turns the blockchain into a place where everyday activity can stay private, rather than something that anyone can examine in full detail.
This is an evolution from the early days of privacy coins. Instead of offering one private asset, privacy layers offer a private environment.
One example of this shift is Starknet.
Starknet is not a privacy coin, but it is built on the same type of advanced cryptography that made early privacy coins like Zcash possible. Because of this, it can verify activity securely while revealing as little information as necessary.
Starknet is not the only project working on this kind of technology, but it is one of the most developed. It already allows developers to build applications where user activity can be kept private by default. This expands the idea of privacy far beyond what traditional privacy coins were designed to handle.
Why Starknet Is Showing Up in the Privacy Conversations
As privacy moves from individual coins to full environments, some networks naturally stand out. Starknet is one of them, and its role in this shift is becoming hard to ignore. People often think of Starknet as an Ethereum scaling solution, but it has become one of the most interesting places for privacy-focused development.
A big reason for this is the type of technology Starknet is built on. It uses advanced cryptography to verify activity without exposing every detail. This is the same kind of foundational research that powered Zcash, one of the most well-known privacy coins. In fact, Starknet’s co-founder helped develop the original form of zero-knowledge proofs that made Zcash possible, so the connection is deeper than most people realize.
Starknet is now being used to build applications that go far beyond the capabilities of traditional privacy coins. One example is a new project called Privacy Perps. It is designed to let traders open positions and place orders without broadcasting their strategy to the entire network. For traders, this is a major step forward. Instead of having your moves exposed to bots or competitors, your activity stays private until the trade is finalized.
There is also ongoing discussion in the community about something called Ztarknet. This idea explores what it would look like to combine Starknet’s technology with the Zcash ecosystem. While it is still in the early stages, the concept shows just how much interest there is in creating more powerful privacy systems that go beyond the limits of older models.
Starknet is not trying to replace privacy coins. Instead, it expands what privacy in crypto can look like. It supports private interactions, private trading environments, and new forms of privacy-preserving applications. This is the type of system that can grow with the industry rather than stay limited to a single use case.
Buy and Sell Privacy Coins and Starknet on iTrustCapital
As the crypto privacy conversation returns, many people want a simple way to access the assets shaping that narrative.
On iTrustCapital, users can buy and sell Zcash (ZEC) and Starknet (STRK) within a Premium Custody Account or a tax-advantaged* Crypto IRA, giving them a path to engage with both the original privacy movement and its next evolution.
Click here to learn more and open an account today!
*Some taxes may apply.
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