[Opinion: Privacy sector moves out of niche territory, potentially becoming a key crypto narrative by 2026] BlockBeats news, January 12, Stacy Muur from the Crypto Research Institute shared her perspective, stating that market data shows privacy-related crypto assets are transitioning from a marginal sector to mainstream attention. In 2025, privacy coins outperformed Bitcoin and Ethereum overall, demonstrating stronger resilience during market volatility, while on-chain real usage continued to rise, with their transaction share increasing from approximately 9.7% to 11.4%. Currently, Monero and Zcash still dominate privacy transaction traffic, and the total market capitalization of the privacy sector has surpassed $24 billion. Meanwhile, multiple infrastructure teams are beginning to reconstruct privacy capabilities as the default layer design of blockchain rather than an optional feature, indicating that privacy is becoming an integral part of the underlying architecture. This trend appears to be more of a long-term strategy rather than a short-term rotation. Against the backdrop of intensified global regulation and on-chain monitoring, the demand for on-chain anonymity and transaction privacy is rising. Privacy coins and related tools are expected to become a significant narrative direction in the crypto market by 2026.