Monk 🛡️

The rise of ZEC and Privacy: As co-founder of @Zcash I've been following it since inception. (note: I later on co-founded @Starknet, and today I am admiring Zcash from afar) For the past 3 years or so, ZEC price was in the $20-$50 area, and the chain was not even on the top 100 count. All this changed roughly starting October this year, and as I'm writing this, ZEC is $500+ and top 30. Fueled by the surge of Zcash, Privacy became a super-hot topic. As I'm writing, it seems to be the hottest topic in crypto today. This is good because privacy is not only normal, it's important. One important question is - why now? The best explanation I heard was that it's a combination of 3 factors, in decreasing order: 1. Good product -- the combination of the shielded Zashi wallet and Near Intents makes it easy for users (especially on Solana) to get good UX with good privacy. 2. Scarcity -- the halvening that took place one year ago made the inflation rate lower and new issuance more scarce. 3. Regulatory atmosphere -- this is the most favorable US administration to crypto, so this fueled interest in privacy tech. All these factors led to investors being interested in Zcash, and CT, along with KOLs, talking about it. According to this explanation, substance comes first, and the public chatter boosts that. I'm reading now the excellent book on Common Knowledge by Steven Pinker, and he talks about the ability of humans to reach common knowledge: Everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows (and so on ad infinitum). Within crypto, we've now reached Common Knowledge that Privacy is normal, needed, and an essential part of crypto infra. What about Privacy and Starknet? Privacy will be a focus in 2026. Stay tuned.