What Has Kept Zcash Going for a Decade

Transcript

Hello. Thank you all for coming and uh being here listening to this. So I don't have any slides. I haven't really prepared a talk and we only have five minutes. So I'm just going to say whatever comes to mind. How does that sound? Thanks. Thanks. Okay. So I want to talk about Zcash. Zcash. Zcash. Zcash. Um, some people might have noticed that the price of Zcash has skyrocketed in the last three days. Like, yeah, well, about three days ago it was worth about $40 per Zcashcoin, and then today it was worth something like $140 per Zcashcoin.

So, that's cool. Uh, but why? Um, well, I'll tell you why it's cool, but first, people keep asking me a thing I don't know, which is why is it going up? Um, and I have two ideas. One is simple math, which is that the Zcash network cloned the Bitcoin supply schedule where you get a whole bunch of new coins issued for the first four years and then fewer issued for the next four years and so on. So that eventually there's only 21 million ever, just like Bitcoin. There's only 21 million Zcash coins ever, just like there's only 21 million Bitcoin coins ever. And Zcash is 9 years old. Um, so that's my my first answer is that there's not as many Zcash coins

being created nowadays as there used to be. So if you wanted to buy one, where could you buy them from? Uh, you could either buy them from a minor, but those are the people who are getting fewer and fewer nine years in, right? Or you could buy them from a Zecoin holder. And let me tell you, those people are insane. They are like people in crypto often talk about like community and I kind of think a lot of times that's a bit of a sham like people could get bonded together by a shared pump, right?

But these e-cashers have been bonded together by nine years of a shared slump and they're not they refuse to quit because of the values that it means to them. And like Josh Reyhart just said, it's simple. The values are just human agency, human dignity. And the the consequence of that for society and uh which is which is good. Like some people think or talk as though there's a trade-off between like safety and freedom. like do you do you want do you want stability or do you want uh chaos or or whatever? And I think that's

totally backwards. Um and apparently the Zcashers think so too. A safe and prosperous and stable society comes from the people. a whole bunch of people who each have their own individual dignity just because that's right and because that's what's best for humans to live together. So, um I wanted to I I was throwing my mind back to like early days because I think it shows you how 9 years is nothing for us ecashers. Um Oh jeez. Wow. I only have a minute and 40 seconds left. This is awesome. It's

almost over. Okay, real quick. I want to tell you a story about my friend Hal Finny. Hal Finny, as you might know, is was one of the first contributors to Bitcoin and he was a very inspirational guy. And a lot of people think that he was Satoshi. And I really don't like Satoshi hunting. I really don't like whenever people ask me questions about Satoshi's possible identity. I just don't answer out of respect for Satoshi, right? But I want to tell one story because of because of how which is he died 11 years ago. Or maybe he didn't die. He was kind of frozen in carbonite like Han Solo.

But anyway, 11 years ago he left us and I miss him. He was um a mentor to me. He was older. He was more experienced. He was a lot smarter and Howl was super patient. Um he would teach me things even if it took a long time. Um, oh, the story is I asked him as he was dying. I said, "Are you Satoshi?" And he said, "No, and I have no reason to lie to you because I am literally on my deathbed." So, let's take his word at that and leave his family alone and stop Satoshi hunting, but carry on his work because Hal said something really important. He said many years before Bitcoin, like a

decade or something before Bitcoin was invented, how said, if you see a proposal for an electronic money system, check to see whether it has the ability to preserve the privacy of financial transactions the way paper money does today. If not, realize that the proposal is designed to harm, not help, individual privacy. Howal was the first Zcasher. And I'm out of time, but I have to make it plain. Bitcoin has failed at that.

Use the Hal Finny test, apply it to Bitcoin. Maybe it's useful for nation states to trade with each other or whatever, but it is not a payment system that can empower individuals the way the Zcashers and HAL would have wanted. Thank you for listening. Zcash, Dcash, Zcash.