On December 11, privacy coins stole the spotlight as the market surged, led by notable gains across key tokens.

Data collected from crypto price tracking websites revealed that Verge (XVG) rose by 37.4% across 24 hours, with Zcash (ZEC) and Monero (XMR) also posting significant gains, up 15.4% and 12.3%, respectively.

Privacy Coin Resurgence

The sector repeated the feat on December 12, with figures from CoinGecko indicating that privacy coins have increased 10.3% over the past day.

At the time of writing, their combined value stood at $7.53 billion, with NuCypher (NU) leading the pack of gainers. Its price had jumped 85.6% to $0.1805, with Verge climbing 51.8% to reach $0.01704. Additionally, XVG’s trading volume skyrocketed to $361 million, the highest among its peers.

Collectively, the category recorded a 24-hour trading volume of $908.6 million, an improvement of more than $262 million over the previous day, when it raked in about $646 million.

Many of the higher-capped tokens registered more modest upticks, with XMR gaining an extra 5.7% on its price, pushing its market value to $3.6 billion. At $197.22, the coin also experienced a surge in its one-day trading volume, which hit $147 million, indicating substantial volatility yet strong investor appetite.

On its part, ZEC went up 6.9% in 24 hours to trade at $64.33, while Dash (DASH) grew by 5.5% in the same period and is currently changing hands at $49.61.

Across seven days, the little-known Cloakcoin (CLOAK) posted the biggest returns, jumping more than 104%. However, most of the more popular privacy coins were in the red in that timeframe, with Dash down 13.5%. ZEC also registered an 11.4% loss, while Verge dropped 6.7% from its previous price. Monero’s retraction over the week was much less significant at only 0.8%.

Monero, Zcash, Catching a Bad Rep

Privacy coins allow users to move funds confidentially using advanced cryptographic techniques and technologies, including ring signatures and stealth addresses.

However, their ability to obscure transactions has put them on the radar of law enforcement authorities in several jurisdictions. In July, financial regulators in Dubai prohibited any transactions involving several such cryptocurrencies, including XMR and ZEC. This was intended to help prevent bad actors from leveraging them for money laundering and insider trading activities.

Similarly, in 2018, Japan’s financial watchdog warned against using privacy coins, causing major exchanges such as Huobi and Bittrex to delist them. Earlier in the year, crime prevention units in the country apprehended 18 suspected scammers after analyzing their XMR transactions. The group is alleged to have conducted more than 900 money laundering transactions worth $670,000 using Monero.