A side-by-side look at Bitcoin, Zcash, Monero, and Beam — block rewards, speed, supply, and the one question that matters most: can you actually verify the coins are real?
| Metric | Bitcoin (BTC) | Zcash (ZEC) | Monero (XMR) | Beam (BEAM) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core idea | Transparent sound money | Optional privacy | Mandatory privacy | Mandatory privacy |
| Privacy technology | None (public ledger) | zk-SNARKs (shielded pool) | RingCT + stealth addresses | Mimblewimble + Lelantus |
| Privacy by default | None | Off — opt-in | Always on | Always on |
| Block time | ~10 min | 75 sec | 2 min | 1 min |
| Block reward (2026) | 3.125 BTC | 3.125 ZEC | 0.6 XMR tail | ~25 BEAM verify |
| Max supply | 21,000,000 | 21,000,000 | Unlimited (tail) | 262,800,000 |
| In circulation (~) | ~20.1 million | ~16.9 million | ~18.8 million | Grows toward cap |
| Trusted setup (“toxic waste” risk) |
No | Yes — legacy pools | No | No |
| Can you audit the supply? | Yes — trivially | Shielded: no | Amounts hidden | Yes — balances prove it |
| Consensus | PoW · SHA-256 | PoW · Equihash | PoW · RandomX (CPU) | PoW · BeamHash III |
| Launch | 2009 · fair | 2016 · founders reward | 2014 · fair | 2019 · fair, no ICO |
Reward/supply figures reflect the 2026 halving era. Beam’s exact per-block reward steps down on its halving schedule from an initial 100 BEAM/block — confirm the current value before recording.
Bitcoin is the original and most secure cryptocurrency — a fully transparent, public ledger with a hard cap of 21 million coins and no privacy layer at all. Every coin that has ever existed can be traced and audited by anyone in seconds, with no trusted setup and no hidden amounts. That radical transparency is exactly why its 21-million supply is beyond dispute: you never have to trust a company, a cryptographer, or a secret ceremony — you verify it yourself. Its trade-off is privacy: because every transaction is public, chain-analysis firms can often link addresses to real identities.
Zcash is Bitcoin’s privacy-focused cousin: same 21-million cap and Proof-of-Work roots, but with optional “shielded” transactions powered by advanced zero-knowledge cryptography (zk-SNARKs). Users can send transparently, like Bitcoin, or shield the sender, receiver, and amount. That power comes with baggage — its earliest shielded system relied on a trusted setup, and the shielded supply cannot be directly audited the way Bitcoin’s can. Zcash has also suffered real counterfeiting vulnerabilities (see below). Newer technology (Orchard / Halo 2) removes the trusted setup, and a spot ETF (ZCSH) recently brought it Wall Street exposure.
Monero is the most widely used privacy coin, with privacy switched on for everyone, all the time. It hides senders, receivers, and amounts using ring signatures, stealth addresses, and confidential transactions (RingCT) — and crucially, it uses no trusted setup, so there is no “toxic waste” counterfeiting risk. The catch for a sound-money purist is emission: Monero has no fixed cap. After its main issuance ended, it switched to a permanent “tail emission” of 0.6 XMR per block forever to keep miners paid. Its mandatory privacy also makes it a frequent target for exchange delistings.
Beam is the most interesting answer to the whole debate. Built on Mimblewimble (plus Lelantus for a larger anonymity set), it hides transaction amounts by default — yet its math lets anyone verify that the total supply is exactly correct, with no inflation, without ever revealing individual amounts. It uses no trusted setup and launched fairly with no premine or ICO, capped at 262.8 million coins. That makes Beam the closest thing to “private money you can still audit.” The trade-offs: it’s a much smaller network with less liquidity, and Mimblewimble leaks somewhat more transaction-graph metadata than Monero.
Zcash’s privacy is powerful, but it has repeatedly bumped into the hardest problem in private money: if amounts are hidden, how does anyone know coins aren’t being counterfeited? Here is the honest history to cover on camera:
For balance: Monero’s mandatory privacy has led to exchange delistings and its tail emission means no hard cap; Beam is a smaller, less liquid network; and Bitcoin’s transparency means weak on-chain privacy. Every design trades something.
All four are Proof-of-Work coins trying to be honest money — but they answer one question very differently: can you, personally, verify that no fake coins exist? With Bitcoin the answer is an effortless yes. With privacy coins, hiding the amounts always costs you some of that certainty — the only question is how much, and whether the cap can still be proven.
The takeaway: Bitcoin trades privacy for perfect, trustless auditability. Every privacy coin trades some auditability for privacy. If you want money you can verify with your own eyes, Bitcoin still stands alone — and the smartest privacy designs are the ones that let you keep proving the supply is real.