Zcash & Communism

Network State Conference 2026 · 9 Oct 2026 · 2:44

Tom Howard, CEO of Zcash Labs, argues that communism depends on surveillance because central planning needs control and control needs information. He says self-custody alone does not protect savings that others can see, presents encryption as the defence against both surveillance and seizure, and describes Zcash as freedom money for everyone, at Network State Conference 2026.

Speakers

Tom Howard

Topics

From Network State Conference 2026, hosted by Network School.

Transcript

Hello, network states. Raise your hand if you like freedom. Anybody like freedom here? All right. You like communism? I think it's kind of anti-freedom, right? So, the problem with communism is that it requires surveillance to work. So, as communism wants to grow, it is always seeking to acquire new information via surveillance. It's trying to surveil every part of your life. Now, why is that?

Surveillance equals control. The more information that you have about somebody's life, the easier it is to control them. In a communist economy, every asset of the economy is top-down planned, which means you have to have a lot of control, which means you need a lot of information, which means you need surveillance. So, surveillance and freedom are opposites. Now, Bitcoin was created to create a seizure-resistant asset from the state, right?

But, your keys, your coins, seizure-resistance is not enough. Because if they can see what you have, that means they can surveil you, they can find you, and they can take it from you through coercion. Right? So, if you want to prevent surveillance and communism, you have to defeat the surveillance in the first place. So, surveillance empower or or encryption defeats the surveillance, which is a necessary prerequisite for communism and seizure, and empowers freedom for all individuals.

So, that's what Zcash is. Zcash is surveillance resistance, which makes it also seizure-resistance. If they can't find your coins, they can't find your keys, right? So, Zcash is freedom for all humans. So, raise your hand if you like free money. Anybody likes free money? Do you like freedom money? Okay, today we have free freedom money. So, go to the Zcash booth and there's a QR code.

You'll get about what you paid for the ticket price to come here today back for being here today and you'll get free freedom money with one of these QR codes. It's a pretty neat little trick. And yeah, Zcash not communism. That's the thing. All right, thanks everyone.