The anonymous cryptocurrency Dash (DASH) surged by 67% in just a few hours. According to Coinmarketcap, the price of the coin rose from $40 to $67 on January 13. This is the highest level in two months. In November of last year, the price of Dash reached these levels following its listing on the OKX cryptocurrency exchange.
Dash was launched 12 years ago—on January 18, 2014. Initially, the coin was called Xcoin; just 10 days after its launch, it was renamed Darkcoin, and a year later, it adopted its current name. Dash translates from English as "swift movement," and according to the developers, the name combines the words "digital" and "cash."
The creator of Dash, Evan Duffield, envisioned it as a payment method. He made it more anonymous, faster, and cheaper to use than Bitcoin. As of now, its market capitalization is $735 million, ranking it 76th among cryptocurrencies.
As of 5:00 PM Moscow time, Dash is trading around $60. Despite the significant growth, the cryptocurrency is trading 96% below its all-time high set eight years ago, in December 2017, at $1,642. After retreating from that record, Dash's price has mostly fluctuated within the $30-$100 range over the years, only rising to $400 during the peak of the 2021 bull market.
Dash mining operates on the SHA-256 algorithm (the same as Bitcoin). According to Bitinfocharts, the network's hash rate (computational power indicating miner activity) increased by 8% over the past 24 hours, reaching 2.59 PH/s, but it did not reach new highs. Two months ago, it was around 4 PH/s.
The rise of Dash followed a similarly sharp surge in another anonymous coin—Monero (XMR). On January 12, the price of the largest cryptocurrency in the privacy sector updated a record that had held for about five years. On January 13, XMR continued to rise and set a new all-time high of around $686. As of 5:00 PM Moscow time, the price of Monero corrected by 4%, with the coin trading around $658.
The rise of another anonymous cryptocurrency, Zcash (ZEC), has been actively discussed for several months. It had not seen growth for several years but surged by 300% in September 2025.
DASH and ZEC differ from Monero in that their privacy features are optional, while in XMR, privacy is built-in by default. However, regardless of this, in 2025, anonymous tokens unexpectedly outperformed the entire cryptocurrency market, and interest in them remains strong. In just the past 24 hours, the trading volume of privacy-focused cryptocurrencies increased by 37%, reaching $5.4 billion.
At the same time, regulators in various countries are imposing restrictions on the circulation of privacy-focused cryptocurrencies. At the end of last year, the Bank of Russia proposed a concept for regulating the cryptocurrency market, which includes a ban on the acquisition of anonymous coins, as it is impossible to track the movement of funds in them.
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