In it for the tech. #DeFi enthusiast. privacy is normal. This is no financial advice! DYOR trading @ partner.bybit.eu/b/austriaby…
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Kügi retweeted
Zcash is the easiest sale I've ever done.
I'm not actively trying to get people to buy it. But when people ask what I am investing in, I tell them it's like Bitcoin but private.
They say Bitcoin isn't private? I had no idea!
I then tell them all the work arounds that I went thru as a Bitcoiner to spend Bitcoin.
Buying something like a car or a coffee is very risky with Bitcoin L1. Someone can see your balance and attack you.
I often washed my coins through an exchange or a custodian.
For a long while I ran my own Bitcoin node and lightning node. I felt safe paying with lightning until I realized my channel partner could kick me off the network if they wanted and steal my coins.
To fix that I'd need another service called a watchtower!
Also a ton of my lighting payments failed. I used to frequent PubKey in NYC and eventually started paying in cash (like most customers) because lightning was so unreliable.
I also tried different mixer wallets a few times. But it took hours or days and was very expensive.
It was just service after service adding up to use Bitcoin self custodially and privately.
I will say: I don't really consider myself a huge "privacy" guy. But I definitely don't want someone to see my bank account balance or my email. That's above my line for sure.
When I was about 15 I started working with some cypherpunks in Costa Rica.
One of them told me over a DM that he forsaw a future where anyone could talk to anyone or send money to anyone in the world with no one watching.
That felt wild at the time. Turns out it's now -- just 20+ years later.
We have already seen the big positive impacts of free speech over the last decade with E2EE and uncensored social media.
We are about to see the impacts of free commerce. Zcash legalization and crystallization through the ETF is a major step forward for humanity.
I was late to Zcash. My average cost basis is probably a lot higher than yours.
But I'm glad I changed my mind about it and did a lot of my own research.
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Kügi retweeted
As of 25 September 2026, one ZEC buys 0.01874 BTC — up 7.3× over five years, up 37× on the year and up 169% over three months. Five years ago it bought 0.002572 BTC.
In dollars that is $1,585.01 a coin (up 29× on the year and up 279% over three months), a market cap of $26.9B — 1.6% of Bitcoin's. Spot sits 4.8× above the realized price of $332 — the average price at which a ZEC last crossed a pool boundary — so the typical coin is held at a gain.
Behind it: 28.9% of all ZEC — 4.91M ZEC, $7.8B — sits in shielded pools, against 23.5% a year ago and 7.7% five years ago. Ironwood, the current shielded pool, holds 4.00M ZEC, with 384k ZEC still in Orchard, its predecessor, crossing the turnstile.
Transactions average 22,371 a day (up 8.2× on the year and up 5.1× over three months), of which 12,586 — 56% — are shielded, against 22% a year ago. Transparent addresses are being paid for the first time at 4,851 a day (up 6.9× on the year and up 309% over three months). An address is not a person: wallets derive a fresh one per payment received.
17.0M of 21M ZEC has been issued, 81% of the cap.
Network security: the hashrate is 29.4 GSol/s, up 5.4× over five years and up 252% on the year. Block rewards run $2.4M a day — 1,519 ZEC of coinbase, of which 5.8 ZEC — 0.4% — is transaction fees rather than new issuance.
zecstats.com
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Bybit team is standby to help in any ways that we can. Bitget helped us when we had the hack.
we are updating lazarusbounty.com/en/ to help Bitget to capture and trace the stolen fund movement.
Here is what we can confirm at this stage:
On the attack:
Our security team has made initial progress in tracing the source. The attacker compromised a critical backend system within our wallet infrastructure, used it to spoof transaction data, and triggered our authorization process to move funds out. Private key compromise has been ruled out — this excludes the more severe risk scenarios. Loss containment is confirmed. No further unauthorized transfers are possible. The specific method of system intrusion remains under active investigation. A full technical report will follow once confirmed.
On withdrawal restoration:
Multiple technical teams are working in parallel on system remediation and security hardening. Withdrawal restoration is being prepared in parallel. We will announce a timeline as soon as one is confirmed — we will not commit to a window we cannot guarantee.
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Kügi retweeted
The Bitcoin social layer has become so confused that they rather solve witness encryption than upgrade Bitcoin, and are proud of it.
I love Bitcoin for that, but at some point you have to admit you are working with constraints that are most likely not overcome, or if they are, it will take many many years to figure out how to adopt it such that it becomes useful and easy to use, because you have to invent so many weird quirks to make it work.
Realistically this solution won't turn useful, and will require years to validate security assumptions. It works vs it's useful are two different planets.
The discussion should shift to consensus upgrades, something I have been saying for some time now. Meanwhile, on planet Z, things are moving at the speed of light and much of what's required is already in place.
Last year, for the first time ever since joining this space in 2016, I realized there is actual competition to Bitcoin's moat. I never thought this would happen, but I also never thought that, 10 years later, Bitcoin would still struggle to enforce meaningful upgrades to its base protocol.
I truly understand the hesitation to make upgrades. Bitcoin's strength is derived from exactly that. But its strength has become its weakness. Rome fell out of arrogance. I hope the ship will correct its course. In the meantime, ZCash is our hope, especially if Democrats win the mid terms and the Presidential election in 2028. With AI taking over the world, privacy becomes a necessity, even more so depending on who makes the rules.
Fwiw, ZEC and NEAR intents can serve as the privacy layer to Bitcoin, today. The most logical allocation is to own both. Bitcoin for the highest security assumptions one can make, ZEC as the SoV hedge Bitcoin will remain stagnant, private chain agnostic spending account and privacy becomings a necessity before Bitcoin can see the light.
The self sovereign individual is gravitating to a $ZEC x $NEAR x $VVV x (some to be decided crypto x AI behemoth 10000x coin) x $HYPE etc stack
Shielded Bitcoin vs Zcash:
Shielded Bitcoin is pretty clever tech given the constraints, but there’s a big gap that Zcash provides.
- Zcash: zk-proof of shielded transaction is validated by the miner at block inclusion. Invalid proofs are not included in the block, therefore you know any proof onchain is valid.
- Shielded Bitcoin: zk-proof is just stored on Bitcoin without checking for validity. A separate network is needed to determine if the proofs are valid and reconstruct the Sheilded transaction state. You can’t use the Shielded pool with Bitcoin Consensus alone, very much how most L2s function. Interestingly, this seems to be a massive technical improvement over the Lightning Network!
Am unclear on how or why the secondary network would function without PoW rewards.
An important detail is left to research, which is how the lock/unlock of L1 transparent BTC will work in practice. Look forward to seeing what they find here.
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Hey @bitvestis , love the design. Any chance we can get this as a real shirt, not polo or t-shirt?
(And for x-mas one with $ZEC ? a man can dream, right?)
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All the discussion about shielded bitcoin is awesome.
True Privacy should be normal. But trying to explain that to a hardcore bitcoiner just result in "don't shill me shitcoins!" resentment.
This paper opens up the discussion so that even them can start looking deeper into the topic without "loosing the path of pure bitcoin". And many will understand the importance and benefits of privacy in the way.
Now I do believe that this shielded bitcoin approach will not be ready for production anytime soon. And bitcoin won't adopt it. And it's technology wise inferior to zcash.
But I truly celebrate any step toward wider adoption of true privacy.
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Kügi retweeted
While I deeply respect the cryptographic research that @nemothenoone and the @allocinitxyz team are pursuing to enable covenants on Bitcoin without a soft fork, it’s worth emphasizing that the cryptography underlying this approach is still highly experimental, and its security assumptions are far from established.
It will likely take years of research and scrutiny before there is enough confidence in these constructions for use in Bitcoin applications — and realistically, that confidence may never materialize.
I love the boldness of their vision and I’m impressed by the progress so far. At the same time, I think it’s important that the community has a clear understanding of where the research currently stands and how uncertain its practical viability remains from a cryptographic perspective.
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Kügi retweeted
What if Zcash is the shielded pool Bitcoin always needed... Peg in and out through NEAR. We might estimate Zcash takes 29% of Bitcoin value -- same as shielded pools take of ZEC value today. That'd be roughly a 500B asset, a 25x from here, a $37,500 ZEC price.
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Kügi retweeted
Bitcoiners retweeting a quirky, non consensus integrated, clunky & slow in research phase privacy solution for Bitcoin, that has no chance to be usable at cash scale and that will take years to get somewhat usable UX...
is basically writing ads for ZCash
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#ZCash adding a new step to the classic ladder:
first they ignore you,
then they laugh about you,
then they fight you,
-> then they try to copy you,
then you win.
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Kügi retweeted
as tragic as it is, most such cases will go unheard.
what happened to Hsin-Ju, and what remains to be investigated, is the final degree of inhuman treatment. we're sadly getting used to news of somebody being blackmailed or, worse, kidnapped, while barely knowing our legal remedies
since my first days in crypto, i met people working on the edge of mental and physical exhaustion, who were forcefully medicated or drugged (and i don't mean BD'ing into closing a deal), or well, borderline suicidal after everything they'd seen. everybody who's been in the space for at least a few years has enough to write a column for coindesk. the higher the stakes, the darker the stories
that said, please always check on your friends and befriend a lawyer or two
rip Hsin-Ju, it's a shame nobody could protect you
1/ gm. gm. Name is Hsin-Ju.
I have a dark, kinda tragic personal announcement.
I've decided I'd rather take $0 than accept a settlement that requires me to stay silent about what happened to me. I have since fired my lawyers at @sanfordheisler & will be releasing all the evidence from my time @hack_vc on Wed 8/26.
INTRO: I've been in crypto for 9 years. Most recently I was a partner & head of platform @hack_vc which is a $600-700M crypto VC firm. Many of you may know me from my time as Head of Growth at @StellarOrg in 2017 (worked w/ the Mt. Gox founder), @Solana in 2018 (joined under ~10 ppl, but quit before my cliff), & @Fhenix in 2024. Or have attended one of my @DystopiaLabs ETH events (2019-now).
Last year, I was forced to work through a serious medical emergency while at @Hack_VC due to threats by @alpackaP @dbulaevsky, saying that they would blacklist me from the space if I quit before finishing the hacksummit conference & side events that I was helping with during @kbwofficial. I was working 13-14hr days, 6 days a week, sleeping 0-4 hrs a night, and had documented Graves' disease, hyperthyroidism, and severe insomnia. I repeatedly asked to quit. Hack VC refused. This + other threats and intimidation went on for almost a month.
The conditions got so bad I attempted suicide.
The fucked up part is that, even after the suicide attempt, I told everyone at Hack VC (in writing) that I had no plans to sue. I was scared & extremely sick. I just wanted to leave. I told them that as long as there was no retaliation or badmouthing - I had no plans to sue.
@Hack_VC chose to retaliate.
After just 1 month after my near suicide, Hack VC mishandled my COBRA health insurance, refused to fix things, kept shooing me to customer support (when it's legally Hack VC's responsibility to fix this), and my insurance had issues and was not fixed for almost 4 MONTHS. Hack VC did not fix everything until I hired lawyers and had them force Hack VC to adhere to the law & fix my COBRA insurance issues. The sheer cruelty of an employer harming someone's health insurance almost immediately after they nearly committed suicide is extremely fucked up.
And, even during the legal engagement, Hack VC continued to lie & attempt to harm me through their lawyers and other employees/partners (multi-million dollar carry & clawbacks can make even the nicest ppl willing to turn the other way or lie). @0xRodney @IsTheBaron @roshunpatel @Alex__Botte.
Now. Almost an entire year of engagement & my near suicide anniversary coming up, our lawyers (mine & Hack VC's) have reached the point of preparing for private mediation and settlement. And...I realized that I just can't do it. I don't want money in exchange for silence. I'd rather speak.
I fired my lawyers yesterday.
In case it needs to be said, I did a good job at Hack VC. I was only there full time for 7 months; been part-time since 2021. I got a $50k raise to $300k, $30k bonus, and promises of additional carry that would have been implemented about a week or so after my last day. I was also offered admission into the GP entity (but not sure if admission was actually completed bc it was during my medical emergency). This + my resume, should show that me suing is not a money grab; I was genuinely harmed.
I'm aware that I'm just one person (who is not rich) facing a $600-700M VC institution. I've been told by @alpackaP that he's known most of the managing partners at most VC firms for almost a decade and he could absolutely blacklist me.
I'm also painful aware that the conclusion of this will probably be extremely poor for me or death - but I've accepted it.
Sharing with other web2 & web3 VCs:
@paulg @ycombinator @500STARTUPS @a16zcrypto @PanteraCapital @dragonflyvc @RaceCapital @hosseeb @haunventures @hiFramework @ElectricCapital @blockchaincap @Delphi_Digital @variantfund @1kxnetwork @archetypevc @shimacapital @robotventures, etc.
TLDR; I’m done with continued threats, pressure, and intimidation. I'm not going to take a payout and allow Alex or Hack VC to walk away from harming me. As mentioned, I'll be dropping the evidence from my case on Wed 8/26 (or before) -- privacy be damned.
Support here (or DM) please:
ETH: 0x68c10776C5c05Cbf5B4C2318bE02D61B9f06B875
SOL: B7S8TPcWWJXTsmgG8ShoTmy8sNPuJ3Dbmt7z5gLFAveq
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Kügi retweeted
I had a major shift in my worldview recently. The first topic I want to unpack: transparency vs. privacy.
I’ve been in crypto 8 years, helped 2 privacy projects (@EspressoSys when it was a ZK L1, @fhenix back when it was an FHE L2 on ETH) and put on a number of privacy & encryption focused events. I supported privacy, but TBH, I only understood it in a “cute,” abstract, and intellectual way.
I grew up middle class in the US (yes I'm a citizen). I’ve always operated under the assumption that most people in the world (US + abroad) are good / kind and just want to do right by their loved ones. As long as you don’t give anyone an incentive to harm you, most people will leave you alone (or even help you if they like your vibe). I’ve been to 22+ countries solo, hung out with everyone from fish farmers to billionaires to government officials — never once had a bad interaction with anyone. I was never harmed. Never saw or was exposed to any bad behavior.
I naively thought the horror stories we hear about in the news were outliers & rare exceptions. No system is perfect. Bad actors do exist. And bad things do happen to good ppl. But even then, I still operated under the belief that most ppl in the world were good/ kind. I thought in bad situations, someone would step up and do the right thing when it really mattered.
I was wrong.
What I didn’t realize:
- Transparent systems can be weaponized.
- Bad actors can hijack even government compliance tools to monitor, threaten, and force obedience.
- When every conversation and transaction is tracked, how do you fund defense or even ask for help?
- When people in power are willing to risk everything to win, where do you go?
I always thought: I’ve never broken the law, I have nothing to hide. Now I realize privacy isn’t just for people with “something to hide” — it’s for the vulnerable. It’s the only way for ppl who are in need to get help without being punished for it.
And here’s the other hard truth: most people are “good,” but strong enough incentives will make them look the other way & even support bad actors. Very few will walk away from money or put themselves at risk for what’s right. That’s why bad actors win. Me? I have an abundance mindset. There are infinite ways to make money. Infinite ways to lead a good life. I’ll never compromise my values — why waste years of my life and reputation chasing something misaligned? There are opportunities everywhere.
Takeaway:
- Privacy matters because the world has far more vulnerable people — and far more abuses of power — than I ever realized.
- Transparency still matters too. It keeps a spotlight on bad actors.
- Compliance tools? Necessary at times, but too easily abused. No perfect solution, but the tension between privacy and transparency deserves way more attention.
Shout-out to @charleslu1 @benafisch @benediktbuenz @jillgun @m_mosier_ @guyitz @GuyZys @clairekart @Zac_Aztec @zooko @jswihart @PrivacyEthereum @web3privacy @privacyguardia @VitalikButerin @ameensol @RAILGUN_Project for advancing encryption and driving the privacy space forward. I'm sure there are a gazillion other ppl to thank as well, but starting here. I don't know all of you personally, but just wanted to say thanks.
I didn't understand privacy before, but I'm starting to.
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