Crypto Economy's Top Privacy Coins Take a Hit After US Government Banned Tornado Cash

Following the U.S. government prohibiting the use of the ethereum mixing service Tornado Cash, the crypto economy’s top privacy coins lost more than 8% in USD value the following evening after the ban announcement. The top privacy coins like monero and zcash managed to recover the losses two days later, but during the last 24 hours, the top privacy coins by market capitalization today are around $6.44 billion, down 3% from the day prior.

While the Top Privacy Coins Have Seen Some Recovery, Most Took a Market Beating Last Week When OFAC Sanctioned the Crypto Mixing Service Tornado Cash

Last week was a bad week for financial privacy advocates, as the U.S. government’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) sanctioned the ethereum (ETH) mixing service Tornado Cash, and a great number of associated ETH-based addresses.

The banishment led to Github code removal and suspensions, a ‘celebrity dusting,’ the Tornado Cash Discord server deletion, and Dutch law enforcement arresting the 29-year-old developer known as Alexey Pertsev.

However, the ban did not lead to any significant price rises in any of the top privacy coins and in fact, most of the leading privacy tokens took a dive after the U.S. government made the official announcement.

The top privacy coin by market capitalization, monero (XMR), lost 8.82% during the 24-hour period from late in the evening on August 8, into the early morning trading sessions on August 9. Zcash (ZEC) followed the same pattern, losing 8.75% against the U.S. dollar following the ban.

A large variety of the top privacy coins by valuation saw a similar pattern losing anywhere between 5% to 15% after the ban. However, most of the top privacy crypto assets regained some of the losses felt last Monday roughly two days later.

Monero has gained 0.3% since last week and seven-day statistics show zcash has risen by 5.9% against the U.S. dollar. Although on August 15, the $6.44 billion market capitalization of all the top privacy coins lost 3% since the day before.

While the privacy coins with the largest market caps have seen lackluster gains compared to crypto assets like ethereum (ETH), some privacy coins have jumped by double digits during the last seven days.

Double-digit gainers include zclassic (ZCL) which jumped 76%, zero (ZER) rose by 74.5%, and lethean (LTHN) increased by 60.8% this week. The biggest losers in the privacy coin economy this week were navcoin (NAV) which lost 40.4%, bitcoin private (BTCP) shed 26.3%, and daps coin (DAPS) dropped by 19.7%.