About this episode
Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox joins Bankless to argue that privacy is back on the critical path—because AI turns chain surveillance into pattern-recognition at scale—and that the real bottleneck for cypherpunk tools has always been UX and onboarding. We dig into Zcash’s “encrypted Bitcoin” meme, the dev fund’s evolving design (and why it helped Zcash survive), recent ZEC momentum, and the wallet/intents stack that makes private spending actually usable. Plus: why “value at rest” beats “value in flight,” what it would take for Ethereum to get meaningful privacy, and the debate over strengthening the 21M cap (and whether Zcash should add new security mechanisms without losing the meme).------?POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKEThttps://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast?BITGET TRADFI | TRADE GOLD WITH USDThttps://bankless.cc/bitget-futures?BANKLESS PREMIUM | AD-FREE & BONUS EPISODEShttps://bankless.cc/spotify-premium?THE DEFI REPORT | ONCHAIN INSIGHTShttps://bankless.cc/TDR-pro?ICO WATCH | UPCOMING PUBLIC TOKEN SALEShttps://bankless.cc/ico-watch ------TIMESTAMPS0:00 Intro0:46 What Failed3:58 What Succeeded5:04 Institutional Adoption6:53 Areas Neglected10:51 The Cypherpunk Vision18:53 Can The Cypherpunks Win?23:19 Crypto’s Path to Success27:44 Crypto vs Linux30:39 AI Cypherpunks?33:05 Optimism35:49 AI Surveillance37:10 Zcash43:02 Zcash Dev Fund51:45 Zashi Governance Drama56:32 Zcash Privacy Practices1:15:56 AI Privacy Consequences1:22:31 Is Zec a Store of Value1:26:01 Encrypted Bitcoin?1:29:01 Ethereum Privacy & Anoma1:33:14 Closing & Disclaimers------RESOURCESZookohttps://x.com/zooko Zcash
