How Zcash Is Solving Bitcoin's Biggest Problem with Josh Swihart

Transcript

There's a recognition with regulators that actually transparent blockchains are national security problems. Um there just haven't been good tools for them to figure out how to fix it. And you can't fix it by backdooring code. You can't fix it by forcing KYC on um decentralized global public goods. >> But you wanted to always make sure regulation compliance, you know, you guys weren't weren't doing anything egregious. Well, could you just describe what that balance was like in the early days of Zcash?

>> Welcome back to the RUP. This is your home to learn from the biggest guests, the brightest minds at the tip of innovation. Our goal is to help spread the collective knowledge of everyone in our community. >> We are breaking crypto out of its echo chamber and taking it to the real world. Sit back, relax, and enjoy it. Josh, welcome to AI Super Cycle, founder of Zcash. Zcash has been on incredible tear. Uh you posted a recent update, kind of a an Elon inspired. What did I get done this week uh in Zcash, but it was much much more than a week. Uh you

guys recently had a a 9inth anniversary. Uh most crypto founders haven't been on this planet nine years, let alone have their crypto project running for nine years. I remember when Zcash launched, I was watching it on Paloni X and the first ticker, the first tick went up to like seven Bitcoin per one Zcash and I it really felt like the flipping was real and it was happening right before our eyes. Now people are rediscovering this and coming full circle that hey, maybe Zcash is the next Bitcoin. Josh, welcome. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me. So, first point of clarification, I'm not the founder of Zcash. Um, I came in uh I was in the community before it launched.

I joined um Zuko and the ECC team uh in early 2018 full-time. Um so, so I've been a fan and around since the beginning and like you watched the it pop off at at launch. But um but there were there was actually it's Zikesh has a kind of a a great story with um with the founding fathers kind of being the um the seven scientists who figured out how to use bring privacy to to uh Bitcoin blockchain and then uh Zuko assembled a team to actually realize it and make it happen.

>> Yeah man, maybe that's a good place to start. Could you tell us about sort of the founding fathers and the origin story because I think people who weren't around back then they didn't really see it happen and therefore they don't really understand the sort of zero to one invention that took place when it came to shielded transactions it came to bringing privacy to Bitcoin. Can you describe just in a concise manner what was the zero to one where these scientists they got in a room they invented this new thing? What could you could you just put a put a put a pin on that?

Yeah, great great question. Like so um there's a I mean there's a lot of history going back before even uh Bitcoin existed. Uh so zero knowledge cryptography has been around for 30 some years. Um but largely kind of theoretical math and used in academic settings without a lot of practical application. Um, when Satoshi launched Bitcoin, he had looked at zero knowledge and said he would love to figure out how to add anonymity to to Bitcoin or greater privacy to Bitcoin, but he couldn't

figure out how to use uh 0 cryptography to make that happen. famously Howal Finny was very interested in uh $0 cryptography um and trying to figure out how to bring that to to Bitcoin so that Bitcoin would have privacy. Um but it's very complicated math and so some scientists independently around the world started working on it. um there were scientists at Johns Hopkins, at uh Techneon, um at MIT, at um a number of universities. So they started working on it and eventually kind of found them found um kind of figured it out, wrote some papers. I won't go into all of that

history. Um brought it to the Bitcoin core team. The Bitcoin core team said, "No, uh it's too novel, but why don't you try it out on another chain?" So what they did is took the Bitcoin core um code, forked it, and added zero knowledge encryption. Um and that's that's where Zcash was born. >> Yeah. Yeah. Zero knowledge encryption. Shout out Zuko. Shout out Ellie Ben Sassan who's now gone to Starknet and done great things with CK uh Starks. Um this was the zero to one uh invention that really was a it was a cataclysmic change in math, cryptography, computer science that really drove uh Zcash to the world and made it a real thing. Um

now you guys have recently had a lot of u a lot of attention, a lot of popularity, a a wide following that has now encountered Zcash who wasn't around then but has gotten involved more recently. uh this is probably a multiffactorial there there's quite a few factors that that go into why this is taking place now one of them I think to shout out Nar uh who is who is sponsoring AI super cycle um you guys have hooked up with near to do near intents and this has sort of built a bridge between Zcash and the rest of the onchain economy previously Zcash because of all of its property sort of had it set aside almost on an island where it wasn't connected or compatible with a

lot of other blockchains. Now, onchain finance digital assets has really exploded on several different blockchains and now Zcash has composability and compatibility with all if not if most if not all of these other blockchains. Near Intense helps to power that. Is this what you would say is one of the more prominent reasons as to what has driven Zcash's recent success or do you think this is sort of out there with a few other factors? What are some of these factors that you think have driven uh Zcash's recent success?

>> Yeah, I I do think it's a confluence of things and near was a massive massive unlock. So um you know when Zcash for years you know wasn't performant it didn't scale the the user experience was awful um and largely because the cryptography was so novel and there's a lot of things we had to figure out. So we got all that stuff figured out a couple years ago um Orchard would was um activated with something called network upgrade 5 um and it allowed us to really start building up the stack. So, uh, I came in I, you know, I I took over as the CEO of ECC in January of of 2024.

And what we decided to do is really focus on the user experience. Um, yes, we were going to continue to do core. So, the ECC team uh does core development. We we were the ECC team was the the the um the group that that Zuko founded. Um, and we built a wallet called Zashi. And if you look at the timeline when Zashi released in roughly the end of the first quarter of 2024, the shielded pool, the total number of shielded transactions or shielded uh tokens um started to grow exponentially.

We worked with Keystone to provide hardware wallet support and the slope increased even more. In December of of 2024, we added the ability in Zashi. So Zashi's the wallet to to um to swap in and out of Ze uh just about eight weeks ago. And if you look at the graph with a shielded pool, it's like straight line up. And what that tells you is that is this is not just speculative um purchases where somebody's going onto a centralized exchange, buying the token, sitting on it, watching candles, putting in orders. they taking it off the exchange into a shielded wallet, so self-custodying and and using it as it

was intended. Um, so yes, we've seen this kind of great attention in the price go up, but if you look at the real chart, the real chart is the amount of Zach that's being stored in the shielded pools. It's gone absolutely perpendicular. >> Yeah, I love it. Hockey stick growth. Could you explain to and I I think there's a lot of people that are now curious about Zcash where you know maybe they've been around for a while maybe they they got into crypto through either Bitcoin or the Ethereum ecosystem. Now the the benefit of the other graph the price graph catches a lot of people's attention and then a lot of people come in and they actually appreciate what Zcash might have to offer them. Could you describe for anyone who's curious about Zcash and not as familiar with its

depth? Could you describe the shielded pool? What is the purpose of it given the broader uh mechanism of Zcash? How does it help facilitate privacy on Zcash? >> Yeah, so like I mentioned before, Zcash is a fork of the Bitcoin uh codebase. So it has the same kind of tokconomics. So 21 million fixed supply. Um there's some changes that have been introduced um as it relates to block times and things like that. The block sizes are slightly bigger because they have to accommodate proofs. Um and there's some other innovation that's going on there as a and but the basis of it was Bitcoin. Um so you take Bitcoin and you add the

ability we know Bitcoin is not is traceable. Um it's trackable and so you add this kind of privacy guarantees and people like there's a people don't want to have their their wealth uh exposed on the internet. So, if you think about it, anytime you you you've got Bitcoin, you're storing at an address. Um, that that address data gets tagged. Um, if you buy it on an exchange and you move it off, you know, you buy your Bitcoin, you move it off into your own address, then then that address is then associated with you. Um, if you've transacted with somebody that did something maybe not good, um, wasn't any fault of yours, uh, that Bitcoin is tainted. It's not fungeable. Um, so

there's a kind of all of these problems with the transparency. What people want is the ability to securely store their wealth um in a place where it's not trackable. It can't be censored. It's completely funible. Um, and that's what the that's what the encryption provides. Now, the Zcash does provide two types of addresses. It pro it provides a transparent address which is the uh the bitcoin style address and then it provides the shielded address. So you get the privacy uh guarantees with Zcash when you move your tokens into into the shielded address and the shielded the the um shielded pool is the total amount of um Zcash that's stored in shielded

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The wait is over. The Talis testnet is live. Be part of the revolution. Join now at testnet.talis.network. The the concept of shielded like every once in a while there's there's sort of a term that gets coined and and it has real sticking power. Te tell me more about how you guys came up with shielded. Why did you choose this as sort of the the concept around privacy on Zcash? >> Um, I think it was actually Paige. It was it was somebody that's not um at ECC anymore and she I believe the lore is that she uh came up with Shielded and recommended that to Zuko um before I joined ECC. So, I don't have all of those details, but that's my

understanding. >> Okay. Um well, we'll we'll we'll keep it rolling. There is deep deep lore uh around Zcash multiples. Maybe maybe we'll find more pockets uh as we continue. Um I I'm curious there there was a friend of ours, Tulip King, who tweeted uh he's been been a big big fan of Zcash as of recently. He said over two trillion in Swiss banks private money and only 1.8 billion in shielded Zcash so far. Is this a fair comparison? What what in your mind is the TAM for shielded money?

Well, part of the problem the part of the problem with using um Swiss banks as a TM um like I almost think it's it's it's too small. So, the intention with Zcash, yes, you'll be able to store your wealth. Yes, you'll be able to self custody. You don't have to go to a third party, but you also want to be able to spend it. And we see that through the Zashi wallet as well. Like near near did a really clever thing with near intents. um they allowed us to send to an exact uh ex exact amount out. So normally with a normal swap, right, like I'm say I'm going to swap um one BTC for Zcash and then I get a variable amount of of Zcash based upon liquidity and current price

and so on. what what they allowed it to do is to say actually I want to receive exactly 10 um and I'm going to swap in whatever amount of BTC it's going to take to give me 10 seconds. So, what that allows me to do is like Robbie, if you're selling a t-shirt for $10, you you want it in USDC, that's the only currency you take. I can send from my shielded deck, from my shielded storage to you exactly 10 USDC. Um, it's couple clicks through the wallet makes it super easy. So, what is the market size for that? Yes, I've stored it in um in my Swiss bank account in my pocket as some people kind of view it. Um, but I've easily spent it with

very low fees, very quickly. Um, and you've received exactly the amount of of currency you want to receive. So, I'd say the the TAM and what we're actually trying to do is to billions of users. Um, not just a select few who can afford to move their wealth into an some kind of offshore account. Um, it's anybody that wants to store their wealth privately, securely, and then interoperate with anybody else in the world. Incredible. This is fulfilling on some of the promises that Bitcoin originally made. Like you're saying, it's private money, but it's not just for the elites that can go to Switzerland, put their money in Swiss bank accounts. This is privacy at scale for users globally around the world and available to

everyone. And and I think that's incredibly powerful. I think other people are starting to realize this is incredibly powerful. You've had Bitcoiners that I think were lifelong Bitcoiners now with Zashi, with Near Intense. They're coming into Zcash. I think you've also seen on crypto Twitter uh some of the louder personalities and characters are now also sort of seeing the light. They're realizing the vision, the value proposition of Zcash. What has it been like? Have you had any interactions with the Mertz of the world who kind of came over from Salana or Anom who's starting to really really get jazzed up about Zcash? You had conversations with these guys. What is their take? What is your take seeing the recent popularity and adoption of Zcash as a as a as a

community? >> Yeah, I know Merc um he's been amazing. Uh you know, he he's been hugely important in kind of spreading the word. So you had mentioned earlier people get interested because they see the price go up. It's very reflexive. Um and then they go down the rabbit hole and they try to you know it's like what is this token? How does it work? What does it do? Um and and and he has been a huge driver of that. He's just been he's a machine. He's been everywhere um talking about uh why privacy is important. Um and uh and he's doing he's doing God's work. So um I'm very thankful for him in the ecos and some I haven't met uh so I don't know but um

but yeah there are these kind of koss there's these pe these these people and influencers out there both I would say both publicly and a lot of conversations um among people I know that don't like to be public um but are very kind of serious about uh what we're doing what we're building and and them being a part of in their own ways. >> Yeah, understandably so. Zcash being a private chain, private money. Um, it makes sense. A lot of the largest proponents of Zcash aren't necessarily in the limelight. That that is a no-brainer. Um, now you you mentioned something earlier that a lot of the flows you're seeing coming through Zashi coming from Bitcoin. Could you just

elaborate on some of the data that you're seeing? I think there's been just a a wave of attention coming into Zcash and flows. Is is this really is Bitcoin where most of these flows are coming from? Uh or can you just kind of unpack that >> please? >> I probably have it as of uh a couple days ago. So >> Sure. >> So Zashi's been out for about um eight weeks, but the the the swap to Zack has only been um it's a much shorter amount of time. It's like a couple weeks. So we had the ability to swap out of Zach first, then the ability to pay crosschain, then the ability to swap into Zach. So in about 8 weeks, we've driven about $und00 million of of flow um through near intent specifically. Um

and so it's about 2.2 mil a day. And then the currencies, USDC by far is the most swapped in Tuzac. Um it's about 11.5 mil and then BTC is at about 6.6 six mil >> um as of a couple days ago. >> And that's number two. That's number two. >> Um and then it's like Salana, USDT, and and ETH. Uh probably who you'd expect based on market cap, right? But >> yeah. >> Yep.

>> USDC and then and then Bitcoin. Um and twice as much USDC as Bitcoin. So I think the the narrative that you know there's a lot of uh hardline Bitcoiners out there that are that are now coming over. There is some truth to that certainly via the numbers, but more than doubled the amount of Bitcoin uh that's flown into Zcash has has been from USDC. Now, when you're thinking eight weeks, $100 million in flows, let's get those numbers up, those are rookie numbers, or is this blowing away your wildest expectations?

>> No, I don't think they're rookie numbers because again, like this is this is to scale the billions of people. >> Yeah. So, um I was uh I I mean I'm I'm happy seeing that amount of flow. Um especially because it's like something we um we just launched and clearly there's product market fit. Clearly people want to swap in and and shield their wealth from from prying eyes. Um so it's great it's great to see that that usage and that adoption. Um, and I I have expectations that that will continue to grow.

>> Yeah. Um, part of what could drive further growth, further adoption, more activity on on Zcash is, uh, more builders, which you guys are one of the, you know, the labs company essentially, uh, behind Zcash. But now that you've got kind of this bare f this basic foundation, it's very, very solid with Near. You guys have this intense protocol. You now have the the wallet protocol. you you mentioned you're working with Keystone. All of these fundamental building blocks are taking place. We're also sort of in another world seeing perpetuals, prediction markets. We're seeing all of these applications start to reach consumers.

Is there a network of builders, an ecosystem of applications that are starting to build on Zcash? Now that we have the capacity to to flow back and forth between other applications, we're going to start to see that ecosystem flourish. What is the Zcash builder ecosystem like and the applications that are currently live or going to go live on Zcash in the near future? >> Yeah, so basically there's a number of core development organizations now in the Zcash ecosystem. It didn't always used to be that way, but there's the Zcash Foundation, the Separate 501c3, there's Shielded Labs, which is a Swiss-based charity. Uh that's where Zuko is now. Um along with uh Nate and Jason McGee and some others there. um they're working on core protocol things.

There's uh like some like KEDIT uh which is uh a like a strong um cryptography company that is is building stuff for Zcash. Um and then there's the bridges that are happening. So somebody's working on an avalanche bridge currently. Um so I expect that will happen before not too long. the the token there's a a wrap token on Salana um that wraps token it doesn't provide privacy but it provides some exposure to uh to defy services um then some are like digging starting to dig in even deeper so there's uh somebody at Aztec uh that's that's um building some um some interoperability

and working on that there's uh somebody at Starkware that published a paper on potential interoperability Um, and it's just it's been a massive I think one of the really cool things this great relationship we've had with the near team and we're really tight with the near team. Um, people are starting to see this is not a zero sum game in terms of these chains. If we're going to build a web 3 ecosystem, there's not one chain that's going to own all things. Like we we we're in our lane. We do what we do. We do it very well. We keep it narrow and not try to be what somebody else does very well. And then we interop. And when we interop, it starts to unlock all these kind of amazing things. Um that's what we're seeing in

the Zcash ecosystem. I think um it's just going to exponentially grow from here. >> Yeah. Incredible. Um you guys were building a very unique product early on. Now the ecosystem of applications is building on that foundation. We're building interop with all these chains. We're building more apps that can reach consumers. But early on, privacy was I mean it it it wasn't just an outcast. It was targeted by governments. It was targeted by regulatory agencies. Um and given that the ecosystem of builders wasn't as vast and vibrant as it is today, it was really electric coin. It was it was you guys that were leading the charge, but you were you were you were in the limelight,

right? And and you kind of had a target on your back. How did how how were you able to navigate that landscape, right? You guys stayed innovative, continued to build and stay stay ahead of the charge, but you wanted to always make sure regulation, compliance, you know, you guys weren't weren't doing anything egregious. Well, could you just describe what that balance was like in the early days of Zcash and and maybe how that's changed in more recent days? >> It's it's been really hard. Um, I think it's I think it's a great question. And I think it it's maybe underappreciated how hard it is. So number one, we write code and we publish the code and in the in the US that's protected speech. Um

and that that's that's been a really important thing and that's what we've done. But we had to make a decision. I made a decision. We're not going to run infrastructure. Um because you can run infrastructure and some politicians or some um believe that that makes you a money services business. I do not. if you're not cussing funds according to the fencing guidance, um you're not an MSB. But they've taken that, some folks have taken that position in the DOJ. Um and so some of these it's like even you're not even sure what the rules are. Um I know that I can write code and speech, but that's about all I know. Um so yes, it's getting more clear.

certain countries like and I'm just talking about the US but I spent a lot of time on the road to Washington DC to uh to Tokyo to Singapore um and met with regulators reg you know in some jurisdictions where Zcash is uh either banned or choked out um there's a recognition with regulators that actually transparent blockchains are national security problems um there just haven't been good tools for them to figure out how to fix it.

And you can't fix it by backdooring code. You can't fix it by forcing KYC on um decentralized global public goods. Um and so I think we still have some challenges ahead. Um but I I do feel a little bit safer. I don't have a fear today that the FBI is going to show up in my front door um like I did uh in during some of some of these, you know, dark years in the past. >> No, we don't we don't want them at your door. There's there's real criminals out there. We want we want Josh, we want you you and Electric Coin to just keep keep building private money. Keep keep helping people worldwide. Um, you know, on on a similar note,

different but but but related, Tucker Carlson recently went on stage, I think it was at Turning Point a couple weeks ago. He said uh he's not interested in Bitcoin because he thinks it was built by the CIA. Do you think he would be interested in Zcash, >> Tucker? >> Yeah, I think he should be interested. I've heard him talk about it before that he couldn't use Bitcoin because it it's effectively creating a panopticon. Um, and I 100% agree with him. It's um it is the it is a preferred tool for um uh for law enforcement and for governments to be able to trace and track. The problem is the problem that they have is like in

conversations I've had with our US government is um if you have full visibility into people's transactions and their transaction history, so do your adversaries. >> Um right, so do hackers. So do even if you believe you're the good guy, um there are bad guys that that um that can also see that stuff. And so I think Tucker's right to call that out. Um, I don't know about the CIA rumor, but um, it's a little salacious, but the the notion that it is a great tool for tracking people is it's absolutely true.

Um, so I suspect if he looks into what he would get with with Zcash, it would the perspective would be different, but um, maybe one day, maybe soon. >> Yeah, >> maybe all this will get his attention. >> We'll see. We'll see. Um, and and you mentioned that you've had conversations with reg regulators, you've had conversations with with governments including the US. What how how do those conversations tend to go, especially after building in the space and and recognizing Bitcoin's properties as kind of the preferred uh use case for for some of this activity uh that that you mentioned that is, you know, quite a bit different from the activity that we're actually looking for. Um, h how do those conversations tend to go even when

they're, you know, they're they're potentially trying to choke choke you guys out? Is there a is there a convincing case that you make? Is there really is there an open-mindedness and an an intent to learn about Zcash and what value it has to offer, or are they intent on shutting it down? H how do those conversations tend to pan out? Like with anything else, it depends on the person and kind of what their motives are. Um, so one of the things though that I think is really important that we did is, um, there's a person on my team named Paul.

Um, and Paul is based in Washington DC. Um, background in computer science, uh, and law from Georgetown. Um, and he taught me this. He taught me essentially you just can't just fly in to some of these places to you can't for let's we'll just use DC, but this would be true of any. You can't just fly in and walk in the door and speak with a regulator and assume they're going to trust anything you have to say or they're going to care. It takes years and years and years and years of relationship building. And and so uh Paul has been out there in DC building relationships, creating a program called Pretty Good Policy that brings

um regulators, policy makers, industry together for dialogue. And we do that and we have these kind of dialogues and events, get to know one another, build trust over time, even though we have vastly different agreements. like I was just out there at a round table, people from the CIA, the FBI, um and then people like me who want completely free private money um talking about the issues um and and again it just um that's the approach that we've taken and so then that has given us kind of an opportunity to speak truth where we need to speak truth. Asset management redefined. Built on ERC7621.

Standardize how you launch, manage, and trade onchain baskets. This is Alvara, the standard for onchain asset management. Habachi provable. Trade pers with speed and security. Earn rewards. Visit hibbachi.xyz. Trading on fire. >> I'd like to think that we're not so different. These guys, they want to shut crime down. They want to shut down terrorism. They want to do all these things. Um, they also want to enable and empower people. Um, I would hope I would I would like to think so. It's just a matter of >> some do, some don't. Like, yeah, some really don't want to empower people and some are looking for, you know, looking for a job promotion, >> right? They're looking out for their own

career, so they want to, you know, >> so it it just depends. Um, but you find the right people, you build the right allies, and and that's what's important. >> Absolutely. Um, you guys have a upcoming hackathon appropriately named Ziper Punk. Uh, I I do believe Ccash has one of the one of the few remaining uh crypto punk uh cipher punk ethos in the space. Um, not just looking for promotion, looking to change the world. What are you hoping comes out of that hackathon? What are some of the projects or apps that you think are now uniquely enabled by the updates that you guys have done as of recently?

>> Yeah, Merk's driving this hackathon. Uh, so it's like not coming from us, which is awesome. It used to be, you know, back in the day it was everything kind of came out of ECC and nothing got done unless we drove it. And now like >> I'm just like seeing these announcements all over the place and um no idea what's going on because there's just so much activity in the ecosystem. So um it's great. I'm not sleeping as much. But with the hackathon um gosh I don't know like I I I saw the you know the full announcement yesterday.

Um, so I really haven't thought about it, so I'm probably just the wrong guy to ask. >> Man, that's okay. I think, you know, you guys are working so hard on on Zashi, which is is another really key driver of of the adoption and and innovation as of recently. Uh, you're mentioning interrupt. Ultimately, you want to you want to interrupt between all of these places. And I I really do feel like ZK is this zero to one innovation here where uh it makes things if you can verify a signature on a on a different uh on a different network you can you can accept the the state of that chain.

Um what what do you think is is not necessarily the most uh wide the most uh the misconception that you think people have but you know I I think there are a lot of Zcash curious people out there now uh and they're on the outside they're looking in. What do you think is sort of the first entrance the forier that that they should what what would be the first thing that you would want them to know before they enter the ecosystem? >> Yeah, I would just I would download I would download a wallet and start using it, right? You're going to learn the most by using something. Um there's a there's a lot of FUD and misinformation about Zcash. Um some of it is very highly intentional. Um there's some good kind of FUD responses, right, where

people have said, you know, this is untrue and here are the facts and some of those same people continue with this the same FUD in spite of seeing the facts which just tells me um so like yeah, follow the right people on Twitter or whatever and you'll be able to kind of get some information, but download the Zashi wallet. Um go out on Twitter and post say, "Hey, I'm new to Zcash." post your unified address, your shielded address out on Twitter and watch what happens.

>> Um because what's going to happen is you're going to start to get um some Zcash in your wallet along with um encrypted notes. So, one of the things that Zcash supports is the ability to send a message along with money. And you can send a zero zero Zcash transaction with a a message to somebody. And so then you'll see people start to post the messages um that other people are are sending them. Um you can't necessarily as the wallet holder, you can't see where it came from unless they tell you in the message.

>> But I think something like that is probably the best way to start to get an understanding of of how Zcash works. It's privacy properties. You can take that transaction ID of that message that you just got. You can plug it into a block explorer. You can see that there's nothing there to see. it's not traceable to you. Um and and you can start to see your effect on the shielded pool, right? How you're you're increasing everybody else's privacy by participating um in in that pool as well. So that's the that's the best way to get started in my opinion.

>> Yeah, I think that I think that's great. Um Josh, man, it it's been a really fun conversation. We've only got about five, seven minutes left. Um, and there's sort of this privacy endgame that is just orbiting around in my mind. AI is part of this. Um, ZK is obviously part of this. Private money is part of this. The what I feel is potentially inevitable transition from stable coins to nonstable coins as our primary form of money, whether that be Bitcoin or Zcash. Um I I'm curious in your mind, what is your vision? You know, a lot of founders come on here, we ask them, you know, what does six months to a year look like? I want to know what three three to five

years looks like in your mind when you forecast out what what this landscape is going to look like as it evolves. >> Yeah, I think we have an interesting window in time to get the the world's attention. Um so I I'm terrible at predictions, but I can tell you what we're trying to do. >> Okay. Um, so we want to be able to bring this technology, this capability to have secure um, secure money and protect people's agency, you know, around the world. In order to do that, it has to be able to scale. Number one, at the base layer, there's a cryptographer, an engineer, Shawn Bo, um, he's creating, he started

something called Project Tachion. So Sean is um uh he's he's a goat and um and so what Takon will do is it actually fundamentally changes um how the underlying technology works in terms of how um there's something called nullifier I won't go into that whole thing but that will allow us to scale to billions of users that will be done that will be out there he's got a very ambitious goal of trying to get that out there in the next 12 months um and then we can have super fast transactions um and things like that. So it will not only be a better product than Bitcoin as it relates to

um privacy but it will scale. Um the other is building a whole set of robust tools to allow people to easily use their ZX. So the goal with Zashi is to make it really easy for a normal person uh to get started to get using to get exposure. It's not like walking into another multicurrency crypto wallet where there's all these kind of shiny things going on and you're not sure and it feels like a casino. Um it's very simple, very uh intended for purpose, but we also need capabilities that are richer in capabilities. So, what happens if I'm storing a large amount of Zcash um and I pass away? Um can that uh can

that Zc can my family get access to my keys uh if they don't know where they are? Um things like that. And how do you make that super easy so somebody um not easy to kind of get to but easy to kind of understand a process for getting to? Um there are use cases like that that we will unlock over the next um bit of time. Um and I expect you know in in my opinion uh it it is a better Bitcoin. Um and at some point and bit and in my opinion Bitcoin's been captured by fintech. Um, and that will be the kind of the

battleground is you're going to choose fintechcoin um or you're going to choose freedomcoin. And uh the goal is to to be that option for everybody in the world. >> Wow. When you put it like that, it's a no-brainer. Um, one one of the things that I've seen recently and it and it's kind of just coming to me now is that um one of the former founders of Zcash uh was Ellie, right? Ellie Ben son and also one of the the scientists in that room inventing ZK. and you know he's gone and he's done starknet but one of the primary things that starkware and starknet is f is uh is focused on these days is trying to trying to do bitcoin fi right trying to bridge a lot of bitcoin over to starknet and it really only becomes feasible once opcat is

installed into bitcoin does opcat installation into bitcoin pose a risk to zcash No, >> no, >> no. Again, where we if you want encrypted if you want encrypted Bitcoin, you're going to get it on Zcash, you're going to get it with Zcash. Um yes there will be a kind of other mechanisms for kind of moving things around across different chains for different use cases but like what Starknet is doing um like I don't again Zcash is just fundamentally different from Bitcoin itself and Bitcoin will never have these kind of properties and you can try to wrap it in other things

um but at its core it is what it is it's going to be true to its nature. >> Yeah. Awesome, Josh. We uh we got 100 million in flows into Zcash. How are we going to turn that into a billion and then 10 10 billion? >> We're just going to keep grinding. We're just going to keep doing what we do at ECC. Um and uh and again, great to have great friends like Near. There's others that are kind of bridging. Maya is another DEX that now supports um Ccash and and we need more of those kind of options outside of the traditional financial system. Um, so we'll keep building those bridges as well.

>> I love it. Keep building bridges. Keep building private money. Uh, Josh, thank you so much for all the great work that you've done. Thank you for coming on the show and helping us understand Zcash as well as introduce it uh to a wider set of uh the global population. It's really been a pleasure. >> Yeah, thanks so much for having me. >> See you again soon. Cheers. All right.