Ian is one of the most advanced cryptographers in the world. Shielded Bitcoin is just a bad copycat of 2018 Zcash. $ZEC will be the crypto standard in 2027. Invisible, unseizable store of value.

"Shielded Bitcoin" is 2018 Zcash with all of Bitcoin's baggage. I feel bad for the authors. It's a solid take on Zcash's initial design, hamstrung by Bitcoin's refusal to meaningfully upgrade. The irony is that the people hyping it are the reason it's hamstrung. Every private transaction pays a non-private BTC fee, which severely complicates privacy. Proofs need a trusted setup because newer schemes won't fit in OP_RETURN. And even if you fixed that, the peg runs on actual moon math that hasn't been published yet: witness encryption. Which is legitimately awesome if it works, but a massive amount of complexity and, unless I'm missing something, inherently trusted setup.

Why are Bitcoin researchers looking at Zcash style privacy instead of Monero’s? $ZEC

this is the real reason why bitcoin was able to go parabolic and make new all time highs consistently while monero gets consistently slathered down the most early participants mined at least 80% of the supply in a short period of time and unlike bitcoin, those coins were never taken out of the market like Satoshi did with his coins now on top of that, monero has made its way as a movement and has people doing free propaganda for it because they have tied it to ideals of freedom in the meantime the top holders just liquidate a small percentage of their bag every time the price spikes and live their happiest lives while useful idiots promote this coin as some sort of 'salvation' tool the chain needs to be forked and have a fair launch defund the parasites

Zcash Is a Bitcoin Virus With No Cure Zcash does not infect Bitcoin nodes. It does not hijack Bitcoin’s SHA-256 miners or rewrite its blockchain. Zcash is worse. It is a Bitcoin virus. The infection is economic, ideological and memetic. And there is no cure, because Bitcoin itself keeps manufacturing the people most susceptible to it. Patient Zero Bitcoin teaches a person a dangerous sequence of ideas. Money can be digital. Scarcity can be enforced by code. You can hold wealth without a bank. You can send it without asking permission. For most people, the infection stops there. Then someone asks one additional question: Wait. Can everyone see it? That is the moment of exposure. Zcash does not need to persuade someone that cryptocurrency can be money. Bitcoin already did that. It does not need to explain fixed supply, proof of work, private keys or self-custody from scratch. Bitcoin $BTC has prepared the host. Zcash $ZEC introduces one additional thought: What if this were private? Incubation period: approximately three seconds. The Infection Vector Zcash arrives carrying familiar genetic material. A 21 million maximum supply. Proof of work. UTXO ancestry. Scarcity. Self-custody. The cultural language of hard money. Then comes the mutation: Shielded value. The Bitcoiner recognizes the organism right up until the transaction disappears. You do not have to attack Bitcoin to spread Zcash. You merely find someone who understands why Bitcoin matters and show them something Bitcoin does not natively provide at the same level: financial privacy. Bitcoin therefore performs much of Zcash’s customer acquisition for free. Neurological Symptoms Soon the infected Bitcoiner starts asking questions. What is a shielded pool? What can someone learn from my Bitcoin address? What is a viewing key? Why should my coworkers be able to inspect my wallet? Then comes the standard immune response: “Bitcoin doesn’t need privacy at the base layer.” Unfortunately, this requires continuing to discuss privacy. Zcash does not even have to win the argument. It merely has to cause the argument. Every hour Bitcoiners spend debating whether financial privacy matters is another hour Zcash has successfully occupied Bitcoin’s cerebral cortex. The BTC/ZEC Receptor Here the metaphor becomes almost embarrassingly literal. You can buy ZEC with Bitcoin. BTC goes in. ZEC comes out. The trading pair is the cell-surface receptor. A Bitcoiner does not need dollars, an airdrop or a venture capitalist to become infected. They can exchange the asset Bitcoin taught them to value directly for private digital money. The antibody becomes the delivery mechanism. Bitcoin created the receptor. Zcash fits it. Why There Is No Cure The fundamental problem is that you cannot uninvent an idea. You can attack Zcash. Ignore it. Delist it. Mock it. Argue that Bitcoin privacy tools are sufficient. You can even spend fourteen consecutive hours on X explaining why nobody needs Zcash. This last treatment has the unfortunate side effect of telling thousands of people that Zcash exists. Once someone encounters the proposition— Bitcoin-like scarcity with shielded transactions— there is no intellectual rollback. The sentence exists. The possibility exists. The comparison exists. Bitcoin cannot make people forget the privacy question without weakening part of the reason self-sovereign money was attractive in the first place. The Perfect Parasite A bad parasite kills its host. A successful parasite needs the host alive. Zcash does not need Bitcoin to fail. It may need Bitcoin to succeed spectacularly. Every new Bitcoin holder is another person taught that digital scarcity can have value. Every self-custody advocate is another person taught that cryptographic keys can represent financial sovereignty. Every blockchain investigator is another reminder that transparent ledgers really are transparent.

Before you invest in any other cryptocurrency, make sure you buy at least 1 zcash Worst case scenario, you lose $1.6k But it’s also possible that you 10x your money… while nobody else knows how much you’re holding zcash:native