A cryptocurrency designed to obscure sender, receiver, and transaction amount on the blockchain. Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, where transactions are pseudonymous but traceable, privacy coins use cryptographic techniques—ring signatures, zero-knowledge proofs, stealth addresses—to break the on-chain audit trail.
Monero (XMR) is the reference standard: mandatory privacy by default, no opt-in. Zcash (ZEC) offers optional shielded transactions. Dash mixes coins but isn't truly private.
Why it matters: If you're registering a domain with crypto, a privacy coin means your payment history stays off-chain. No blockchain analyst can correlate your identity to a payment date, amount, or recipient address. Law enforcement and chain surveillance vendors hate them.
Trade-off: exchanges increasingly delist privacy coins under regulatory pressure. Self-custodial wallets remain viable. Some registrars accept them; most don't. We do, no questions asked.
Related: mixer services offer privacy retroactively; privacy coins bake it in. Not synonymous with illegal activity—journalists, dissidents, and privacy engineers use them routinely.