The Best Privacy Cryptos To Buy Now: GHOST, ZEC, and XMR

The privacy coin niche has moved from the fringes of the crypto market to a segment with around $19 billion in total market value, combining classic projects such as Zcash and Monero with newer solutions on high-performance networks like Solana. GHOST, ZEC, and XMR are all actively traded assets with visible price history and real liquidity, either on centralized platforms or on Solana-based DEXs.

Where they diverge is in their stage of maturity. ZEC and XMR sit in the large-cap bracket, with multi-billion-dollar valuations and deep books on major exchanges, while GhostwareOS ($GHOST) is still at the beginning of the curve, with a capitalization in the low millions. And when you are talking about the best privacy cryptos to buy now, that makes all the difference.

GHOST: Jumped From $7M To Over $10M

GhostwareOS builds on Solana’s liquidity and speed and offers modules for anonymous payments (GhostPay), encrypted messaging (Darkrelay), on-chain identity obfuscation, and tools to hide transaction metadata.

GhostPay And The Market Cap Rally

GhostPay is the product that reshaped the narrative around the token. Launched recently as the first native anonymous payment layer on Solana, the module lets users send transactions without exposing the sender, recipient, or amount, using HPKE encryption, a standard that combines public and symmetric keys, along with cryptographic proofs to validate everything on chain without revealing sensitive data.

On top of that, GhostPay plugs directly into the HoudiniSwap backend, a privacy-focused swap service that spans multiple networks. The fees generated by GhostPay are not parked in any foundation wallet; they are fully routed back to GHOST holders.

Before this launch, CMC’s AI tools were tracking GHOST at roughly $7.3 million in total valuation, trading below $0.0073 per token. Once GhostPay was confirmed and went live, the asset quickly pushed through the $10 million valuation band.

Zcash Price And XMR Price: Veterans Still Dominate

If GHOST represents the new guard on Solana, Zcash, and Monero are still the veterans. The way Zcash and XMR price action have played out in 2025 helps explain the size of the gap between these projects and GhostwareOS at its current stage.

Zcash was launched in 2016 by Electric Coin Company as a derivation of Bitcoin’s model with a pioneering application of zero-knowledge proofs, specifically zk SNARKs. The coin offers two types of addresses, transparent and shielded.

After the November 2024 halving, the Zcash price entered one of the strongest cycles in the project’s history. Reports point to a cumulative gain of more than 1,000% in a short period, with the asset moving from much lower levels to areas near or above $700 per coin, before a correction that brought the price back to the $500 range.

That Zcash price level puts ZEC in an interesting zone. On one side, the coin has cemented its status as a privacy blue chip, with a market cap in the billions of dollars and strong liquidity on several exchanges. On the other hand, some research desks already see the recent move as so fast that the room for new highs looks more limited when compared with smaller projects.

Monero, in turn, remains the reference point for privacy by default. From the start, everything on the network is obfuscated. Stealth addresses, ring signatures, and RingCT are combined to hide both who is sending and receiving and the exact amount of every transaction.

In market terms, XMR price currently trades around $400, with the circulating supply almost fully issued. That makes Monero one of the more stable assets within the privacy coin group, but it also keeps it out of the micro and small-cap range where GHOST is still found.

For many traders, this does not reduce Monero’s structural role. It does, however, reinforce the search for privacy solutions that can plug in more directly to ecosystems like Solana, which is exactly the gap GhostwareOS is filling.

Conclusion

Putting GHOST, ZEC, and XMR in the same sentence does not mean the three projects are at the same stage. Zcash and Monero have already proved their model across several bull and bear cycles, with billions of dollars in market value and global liquidity. GHOST is still a token worth only a few million dollars, going through price discovery and adoption.

What changes in 2025 is that, for the first time, there is a real privacy solution on Solana with a live product. GhostPay, with anonymous payments, integration with HoudiniSwap, and fee redistribution to the token, is starting to appear next to the veterans on lists of the best privacy cryptos to buy now.