Bitcoin may have just found a path to private payments without changing Bitcoin itself. Researchers have proposed Shielded Bitcoin, a design that brings Zcash-style privacy to BTC without a soft fork, hard fork, or new consensus rules. Why is this a big deal? Because one of Bitcoin's biggest strengths is also one of its biggest weaknesses: Every transaction is public. Anyone can track wallets, flows, and balances on-chain. Beginner Explanation Imagine sending Bitcoin without the whole world seeing: • Who sent it • Who received it • How much was sent That's what this proposal aims to do. It borrows privacy technology from Zcash and adds it as a layer on top of Bitcoin rather than changing Bitcoin's core rules. Bitcoin stays Bitcoin. Privacy gets added on top. Professional Insight The proposal introduces a shielded system based on: • Encrypted notes • Zero-knowledge proofs • Public nullifiers Bitcoin acts as a data and ordering layer, while separate software verifies shielded transactions. Importantly, the current paper focuses on private transfers inside the system. The mechanism for moving BTC into and out of the shielded environment is still being developed and has not yet been fully specified. So this is a research proposal, not a deployed product. Biggest Lesson For years, many believed Bitcoin needed protocol upgrades to gain strong privacy. This proposal suggests another path: Add privacy as a layer. Not as a fork. Not as a new chain. Not as a consensus battle. If successful, it could become one of the most important Bitcoin privacy experiments in years. What's more important for Bitcoin's future: Maximum transparency or optional privacy.

The privacy trade has been a rare bright spot amid crypto market stagnation. ZEC's September run reached a nine-year high in November, 28x above its 1y low, before tanking when the Zcash core dev team announced they were leaving over a governance dispute. XMR has since taken command of the privacy trade. ~~ Analysis by @punk4307 ~~ Today, we're breaking down how Zcash and Monero actually differ ahead of our episode with Zooko next week.👇 Origin Stories The fundamental difference between these two projects lies in how they got started: @monero was born on forums, while @Zcash was born in universities. Monero launched in 2014 as "Bitmonero" by an anonymous user named thankful_for_today, based on the CryptoNote protocol. The community famously "took over" the project early on. There's no CEO, no office, and development is funded entirely through voluntary donations via the Community Crowdfunding System (CCS). A small Core Team acts as stewards — managing repositories and holding funds — but they don't dictate the technical roadmap. Zcash traces its roots to 2013 academic research at Johns Hopkins University, where cryptographers developed the Zerocoin protocol. The design evolved into Zcash, launched in 2016 by cypherpunk @zooko Wilcox and the Electric Coin Company. Unlike Monero, Zcash has worked alongside regulators rather than against them. These different origins shaped fundamentally different reputations. Monero's mandatory privacy made it a preferred choice for darknet markets. According to @trmlabs, nearly half of new darknet marketplaces in 2024 used XMR exclusively. Zcash, by contrast, is rarely cited in ransomware or darknet reports. XMR's reputation has led to exchange delistings. Binance dropped XMR in February 2024, OKX in January 2024, and Kraken removed it for European users in October 2024. Zcash avoided major delistings: Binance removed its "Monitoring Tag" in July 2025, and OKX relisted it in November 2025. Core Privacy Mechanisms Think of any transaction as a message. With Monero, your message gets mixed into a crowd — you speak at the same time as 15 other people, so an observer can't prove it was you. With Zcash's shielded transactions, your message goes into a locked box that only the recipient can open. Monero uses a three-pronged approach: ➢ Ring Signatures hide the sender by mixing your transaction with around 16 decoys already on the blockchain. ➢ RingCT hides the amount by encrypting transaction values while proving no new coins were created. ➢ Stealth Addresses hide the receiver by creating a one-time address for every transaction. Zcash uses zk-SNARKs to provide privacy, allowing transactions to be proven valid without revealing sender, receiver, or amount. When you send a shielded transaction, Zcash generates a cryptographic proof confirming you have the right to spend the coins without inspecting the transaction details. Mandatory vs. Optional Privacy With Monero, privacy is mandatory. You cannot send a transparent transaction. This creates "herd immunity" — all transactions look identical. The argument: optional privacy isn't real privacy. If only "suspicious" people use the private option, they become targets. Zcash offers privacy by choice. ZEC can be used transparently or moved to a shielded address. While privacy isn't required, the shielded pool continues to grow — around 30% of ZEC supply now sits in shielded pools, up from 8.7% a year ago. Consensus and Supply Monero uses the RandomX proof-of-work algorithm, designed to be ASIC-resistant and optimized for CPUs friendly to at-home miners. Monero has a tail emission — an infinite supply with around 0.6 XMR per block perpetually added. This ensures miners always have incentive to secure the network. Zcash currently uses Equihash — an ASIC-optimized proof-of-work mechanism. It's transitioning to Crosslink, a hybrid PoW/PoS system that brings deterministic transaction finality. Crosslink layers a PoS "finality gadget" on top of PoW: miners produce blocks, but stakers provide confirmation that makes transactions permanent. Like Bitcoin, Zcash has a fixed supply cap of 21 million ZEC with a halving schedule roughly every four years. What's Next Both protocols have major upgrades in development. Monero is working on FCMP++ (Full-Chain Membership Proofs), which would replace ring signatures. Instead of mixing with around 16 decoys, transactions would mix with the entire blockchain history — expanding the anonymity set from "crowd of 16" to "crowd of everyone." Zcash has Tachyon in development, a major scaling initiative that will dramatically increase network speed, plus Crosslink for the hybrid PoS transition and improved user experience through new wallets and functionality like Near Intents integration. One technical note: Zcash's privacy layer is quantum-resistant, while Monero's ring signatures are not. Monero developers plan to address this via FCMP++ and future upgrades. Different Tools, Different Bets A project's success ultimately rests on adoption — and adoption depends on organizational strength and reputation. On organization, Zcash's corporate structure enabled rapid R&D and cutting-edge cryptography, but the ECC departure exposed its concentration risk. Monero's decentralized contributor model is slower to coordinate, but no single departure creates crisis. On reputation, the tradeoffs are stark. Zcash's optional privacy and compliance-friendly features have kept it listed on major exchanges, but at the cost of weaker network-level privacy guarantees. Monero's mandatory privacy made it dominant for darknet markets — driving systematic exchange delistings and regulatory hostility. The "one true privacy coin" debate ultimately comes down to what users are optimizing for. Monero offers stronger privacy today but faces steeper adoption headwinds. Zcash offers a path to broader adoption but requires users to actively choose privacy — and most don't. Both have returned to relevance after dormant years, but each must now demonstrate they can keep the spotlight and that their architectures can outcompete and outlast the other.

I think @zooko @Zcash @jonrouach @Avivz78 @qeditzkp will love this for the first time, a solana coin can live on zcash as a private shielded token basically: every coin launched on sapling gets its own private version on zcash. move your bag over and hold it or send it fully shielded, like ZEC itself we burned 10 tokens of a coin on solana and the same 10 came back on zcash as a real zcash asset (ZSA). send it, hold it, all shielded like ZEC itself every token on zcash is backed by a burn on solana, and anyone can check both chains with one command right now it's on testnet. when ZSAs go live on zcash mainnet, every coin launched on sapling can have its private twin on zcash from day one 🌱 we're building this fully open source and in public, regular updates coming as we hit milestones repo: github.com/saplingcash/zsa

They're not confessing, they're bragging.

₿ 2014 → 5 BTC → bc1q7f…8k8 ₿ 2021 → 12 BTC → bc1q4d…2p7 ₿ 2026 → 30 BTC → bc1q6l…8k8 ⓩ ████ → ██████ → ███████ ⓩ ████ → ██████ → ███████ ⓩ ████ → ██████ → ███████

Every transaction defended by @Nym mixnet Live now in @ZingoLabs and Zkool wallets

Plant conviction Let time do the rest 🌾

weekend reminder: always on. 24/7.

Cake Wallet vs. BitBox in the HODL Challenge. 😂 Is your money on Lea or Laura?

A new version of Monero Ecosystem has been released!

🚨𝗠𝗔𝗝𝗢𝗥 𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚: Barcelona are ready to pay €45m for Erling Haaland if Manchester city gets removed from the premier league The player has been on Barcelona's list for a long time and the club feels this is the right time to get the player, Erling Haaland will leave if Manchester city gets removed from the league.

🚨🇹🇷 Jerome Boateng has agreed to sign at Trabzonspor as new assistant coach, deal done.

Fan sells his Cooper Flagg rookie card for $8 million after turning down the Mavs’ offer of 32 years of season tickets for a card he originally got for just $515 💰🔥

Important update, the following wallets will be used to stock our hot wallets. ~8M 2000 ETH + stables 0xB62C7836500A4E13dAeF19Da7a25D04c8a5F7eC0 5000 SOL + stables ANh1jaSqmhSzCX2YBsvNBecBNRBqcJuztgzv1gzMXiNy BNB + stables 0x304715b278a2f9B08c1944B1E7e2750ba5Bf0b70 Some of the new comers in the industry seem to discount Duelbits being a 6 year old brand. We've been here for more than half a decade and we can't wait to show you guys what we've got for Duelbits 2.0. The community has been so supportive, thank you to all the supporters and haters. Without the hate, we'd think we're doing something wrong. The Duelbits team who've been online for the majority of the past 24 hours, thank you. Without you, we wouldn't be here! Joe

Mighty Mike Plays' dad reportedly owns two homes worth $4 million YouTuber Scott Shafer also says Dave owns the company he claims he was fired from for spending $118k on Minecraft video ads

Tough day for Bitget. I expect and know @Binance, the @BNBCHAIN ecosystem, and the community will do everything we can to help. Stay SAFU! 🙏

BREAKING: 🇺🇸 SEC issues new guidance making it easier for crypto projects to operate without their tokens being treated as securities. CLARITY IS COMING!

JUST IN: 🇺🇸 U.S. Spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen $2.84 billion in net inflows over the past 6 trading session 🚀