PIVX (PIVX) is a proof-of-stake privacy coin, and on 28 September 2026 it closed 103.3% higher on CoinMarketCap's daily series, its biggest one-day gain since November 2023. Its own blockchain has run since January 2016, paying new coins to stakers and masternodes, and its SHIELD protocol can hide who paid whom and how much.
PIVX climbed from a $0.02008 close on 27 September to $0.04083 on 28 September, touching $0.06576 in the 19:00 UTC hour, on $815,747 of volume. At 12:53 UTC on 29 September, the 14 PIVX markets CoinMarketCap tracks held $1,463 of sell orders within 2% above the price. At that read, about $1,500 of buying spread across all 14 books would have lifted PIVX 2%.
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PIVX at a glance
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Detail
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What it is
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Proof-of-stake privacy coin on its own chain, genesis block 30 Jan 2016
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Supply
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106.90M PIVX at the 28 Sep 2026 close (CMC), no maximum supply
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Block reward
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10 PIV a block, about one a minute: 6 to masternodes, 4 to stakers
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28 Sep 2026 close
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$0.04083, up 103.3% on the day (CMC)
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Depth within 2%
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$1,463 above, $1,851 below, 14 pairs, 12:53 UTC 29 Sep (CMC)
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On Phemex
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PIVX/USDT spot pair delisted, no PIVX perpetual
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What Is PIVX (PIVX)?
PIVX is the coin of a standalone blockchain, so PIVX crypto has no token contract on Ethereum or any other network. The consensus settings in its open-source code on GitHub date the genesis block to 03:32 UTC on 30 January 2016 and set a target of one block every 60 seconds.
The chain started out with proof-of-work miners, and PIVX coin mining ended at block 259,201 in August 2016, when the network switched to proof of stake. Holders earn new coins by staking or by running a masternode. PIV is the unit the project's own pages use, and price trackers list the same coin under the ticker PIVX.
Privacy on PIVX is optional, a middle ground between the two camps our guide on how privacy coins differ from public coins lays out. A user can send from a shielded address that hides the payment or from a transparent one that anyone can read on a block explorer.
Why Is PIVX Trending?
PIVX is trending because of a single trading day. On 28 September 2026 it closed at $0.04083 on CoinMarketCap's daily series, up 103.3% from $0.02008 on 27 September. That series holds 3,881 daily bars from 13 February 2016, and only two of them closed with bigger gains. Those were 7 December 2016 and 15 November 2023, when PIVX rose 107.6%.
CoinMarketCap's hourly bars held between $0.0201 and $0.0212 until 13:59 UTC, so the whole move came late in the day. The price reached $0.04067 in the 15:00 hour and peaked at $0.06576 in the 19:00 hour, and the PIVX coin price finished the day 37.9% below that peak. CoinGecko's series puts the gain at 96.9%, and this page uses CoinMarketCap's figures throughout.
No announcement explains the jump. The newest post on pivx.org when read on 29 September was an essay on quantum computing dated 29 April 2026. The project's GitHub releases page shows no mainnet software after v5.6.1, published on 21 February 2024, so this page gives the move no cause.
Other privacy coins fell on the same bar. Phemex's ZEC perpetual closed 28 September down 6.54%, and Monero slipped 1.18% on CoinMarketCap's series, so PIVX moved alone.
Volume rose far less than the price. The day's $815,747 was 1.62 times the $504,331 PIVX averaged each day from 29 August to 27 September, and the most for any day since 12 August. The last jump this size came on 15 November 2023 on $26.06 million of volume, about 32 times as much money. A price that doubles on that little turnover points to thin order books, and our guide on how slippage works and how to manage it shows what thin books do to a buyer's fill.
How Does PIVX Work?
PIVX runs on proof of stake, so wallets holding coins take turns writing blocks, and the wallet that writes a block collects 4 PIV.
Masternodes take the other 6 PIV of every block. PIVX's economics page says that share goes to the next masternode in the payment queue. The coin specs page sets a node's collateral at 10,000 PIV, about $408 at the 28 September close. Masternode owners also vote on the budget proposals the treasury funds.
SHIELD is the privacy layer. The project's SHIELD announcement of 5 November 2020 calls it a custom build of Sapling, the zk-SNARK protocol first developed by the Electric Coin Company. The code switched it on with the v5.0 upgrade at block 2,700,500. Sapling also carries Zcash's older shielded pool, which our report on Zcash's shielded pool crossing $1 billion covers next to the newer Ironwood pool.
A shielded payment carries a proof that it's valid without revealing the parties or the amount, the trick our explainer on what a zero-knowledge proof is walks through. The announcement adds that a user can grant permission to view a payment's details, case by case, through a viewing key.
The roadmap page says a future 6.x wallet release will let holders stake shielded coins and collect the rewards to a shielded address.
PIVX Tokenomics
PIVX has no maximum supply. Each block creates 10 PIV for stakers and masternodes. The treasury can add up to another 10 PIV per block, created in a lump of at most 432,000 PIV per 43,200-block cycle once masternodes approve proposals. The economics page puts the yearly ceiling at 10,512,000 PIV and says the network burns transaction fees. The 21,000,000 PIV figure in the code's consensus settings bounds the size of a single amount, and the supply passed it years ago.
CoinMarketCap's circulating count rose from 96.62 million PIVX on 28 September 2025 to 106.90 million on 28 September 2026. That's 10.28 million new coins, a 10.64% rise and 97.8% of the yearly ceiling, so issuance ran close to the maximum the rules allow. A holder who neither staked nor ran a masternode saw their share of the network shrink by 9.6% over those twelve months. At the 28 September close those 106.90 million coins added up to a market value of $4.36 million.
Which PIVX Contract Is the Real One?
None of them, because PIVX has no token contract. A DexScreener search at 13:00 UTC on 29 September returned two BNB Smart Chain tokens using the name, one called "Pivx Finance" and one called "PIVX". Their pools date to 4 August and 15 February 2026, and neither token can be staked or used for a masternode.
How to Buy PIVX Safely
Phemex's product list, read at 13:06 UTC on 29 September 2026, shows its PIVX/USDT spot pair as delisted and no PIVX perpetual. The pair opened on 16 January 2026, and its last daily bar in Phemex's own market data carries the date 4 August 2026. Our guide on what happens when a coin is delisted covers the timeline and what a delisting does to balances.
Anyone buying PIVX elsewhere should withdraw to a PIVX wallet they control, such as the desktop Core wallet or the web wallet that pivx.org lists. The real coin lives at a native PIVX address, so a venue or swap that asks for a BNB Smart Chain contract is selling one of the copies.
Order size matters more than venue with books this thin. At 12:53 UTC on 29 September the 14 tracked markets held $1,851 of bids within 2% below the price, so a holder selling $2,000 of PIVX into them at once would have pushed it more than 2% lower.
What Are the Risks of PIVX?
The Last Big Spike Faded Within Five Weeks
PIVX's previous jump of more than 30%, 61.7% on 27 June 2026 on $15.78 million of volume, gave back 21.4% the next day. By 29 July the close was below where the spike started, and on 16 August PIVX hit $0.009611, its lowest close of 2026. The 28 September close was the highest since 6 July.
New Coins Meet Thin Bids
The chain creates about 14,400 PIV a day for stakers and masternodes, or roughly $588 at the 28 September close. If the people earning those coins sold a full day's worth at once, that alone would take almost a third of the $1,851 of bids sitting within 2% of the price on 29 September.
Venue Access for a Privacy Coin
Privacy coins draw regulators' attention, the tension our explainer on Monero and why it divides regulators sets out. PIVX has already lost its Phemex spot pair, and every venue that drops it thins books that are already this shallow.
Upgrades Still on Testnet
Shielded staking waits on a 6.x release, and v6.0 runs only on testnet. In the code read on 29 September 2026, v6.0 has no mainnet activation height, and the developers restarted its testnet with a fresh genesis block on 20 August 2026. Holders buying the roadmap are buying a date the code doesn't carry yet.
A 99.7% Drawdown
PIVX's best close was $13.90 on 10 January 2018, and the 28 September close sits 99.7% below it. It's also 88.3% under the $0.3481 close of 5 November 2025, the peak of its 2025 run, and below its 200-day average of $0.0495.
Is PIVX a Good Investment?
The honest answer is that nothing dated on 28 September changed what PIVX is. The coin that doubled had the same code, the same issuance and the same thin books it had on 27 September.
For PIVX to hold a gain like this, demand has to outgrow issuance of close to 10% a year, and v6 has to reach mainnet with shielded staking. The dated record points the other way. The 28 September close stands 77.4% below the $0.1806 close of 16 January 2026, the day Phemex's pair opened, even after rising 324.8% from the August low. It's above the 50-day average of $0.0173 and below the 200-day, which is the shape of a bounce inside a longer slide.
It suits someone who wants to stake or run a masternode, uses SHIELD for private payments and sizes a position to the $1,463 of asks within 2%. It doesn't suit a trader who needs to exit $10,000 of PIVX in one order, because the books on 29 September couldn't absorb a fifth of that within 2% of the price.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is PIVX legit?
PIVX is a working network with public code that has produced blocks for more than ten years. Its economics page calls it a fair launch with no pre-mine, and the block-value function in its code pays 60,001 PIV at block 1 under the comment "Premine for 6 masternodes at block 1". That block holds about 0.06% of the supply counted on 28 September 2026.
Can you mine PIVX?
No. The coin specs page on pivx.org lists PIVX as stakeable and not mineable. Under the chain's consensus rules, coins must be 600 blocks deep before they can stake, about ten hours at one block a minute.
Who created PIVX?
PIVX has no company behind it, and the footer of its website credits the PIVX Community. The 2020 SHIELD announcement thanks core developers by their handles, including Furszy and Fuzzbawls.
What is the PIVX price?
PIVX closed 28 September 2026 at $0.04083 on CoinMarketCap's daily series, the last settled close this page uses. Its intraday record is $14.5587 from 23 January 2018, and its 2025 high was $0.4154 intraday on 4 November 2025.
Final Thoughts
PIVX's 28 September gain came without news and on about 1.6 times its usual volume, which says more about the order books than about the coin. Books that let $815,747 double the price will charge the same toll on the way out, while the chain keeps paying stakers and masternodes new coins to sell into them. For a holder, the PIVX number that matters most is the depth within 2% of the price, and it has to grow well past a few thousand dollars before a close near $0.04 means much.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.
