x
When Bitcoin first launched in 2009, it promised its users a decentralized digital currency that would be free from the prying eyes of financial authorities. That was possible thanks to the blockchain, a digital stone slab where every transaction could be etched into the collective public record.
Of course, Bitcoin and its look-alikes quickly descended into a haven for grifters, drug sales, and money-laundering, enabling anonymous criminals the world over. Then a few confusing things happened. First, it quickly turned out that Bitcoin wasn’t quite as anonymous as initially advertised, meaning crooks had to take extra steps to launder their ill-gotten gains. And worse, at least for crypto’s most dedicated libertarian acolytes: it also became a legitimate financial vehicle, tracked on the Bloomberg terminal, trafficked by publicly-traded corporations, and increasingly scrutinized by government watchdogs.
Bitcoin going legitimate was evidently a bridge too far. According to new reporting by the Wall Street Journal, cryptobros are now ditching the old currencies in favor of an even more anonymous vehicle: Zcash.
Zcash isn’t new, but the fervor around it is. Launched in October of 2016, the Zcash blockchain protocol was designed by researchers at institutions like Johns Hopkins University and Tel Aviv University to basically add another layer of privacy to the Bitcoin protocol, theoretically making transactions “untraceable.” It’s one of numerous privacy tokens in use these days, meaning cryptocurrencies with relatively small market caps that use advanced cryptography to almost completely obscure their users from sight.
Zcash’s closest rival, Monero, launched in 2014 and has become the preferred privacy token among both privacy-obsessed cryptobros and, increasingly, criminals seeking to conceal everything from ransomware payments and international transactions to drug deals on darknet markets.
That’s not stopping some household name fintech guys from getting in on the fun. According to the WSJ, two of Bitcoin’s biggest original backers, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, are investing $50 million into a crypto startup called Cypherpunk Technologies, which will hold gobs of Zcash as part of its portfolio. So far, the Winklevii — who just injected $100 million of their own Bitcoin holdings to prop up their beleaguered legacy crypto company, Gemini — have stockpiled more than 300,000 Zcash tokens that we know of, with a value of over $157 million at the time of writing.
Accordingly, the price of Zcash soared over the past month, while trading volume is consistently the highest it’s been in three years after a massive spike in transactions late in 2025 — from around 2,000 a day prior to October to over 70,000 in mid-November.
As cofounder of venture capital firm Multicoin Capital Tushar Jain told the WSJ, “Zcash is what Bitcoin should be. It’s what Bitcoin was originally meant to be.”
Zcash comes with plenty of downsides. There’s the crime thing, naturally; some cybercriminals are already accepting Zcash as payment options, while rival privacy token Monero has become the new bullion in those circles. This is probably why at least 10 nations have heavily restricted privacy tokens on regulated exchanges, with countries like Japan, South Korea, and India deploying outright bans.
Beyond cybercrime, the influx of institutional capital into privacy tokens also points to a telling shift among certain players in the finance industry.
The more legitimate money that flows through firms like Cypherpunk into privacy tokens, the more capital overall can hide from tax authorities and regulators, at a time when the ultra-rich are racing to secure their fortunes before the proverbial music stops. Similar to the blockchain currencies that came before, tokens like Monero and Zcash represent a far-right political project which asserts that freedom from democratic financial scrutiny is somehow a human right — a step backward from the already de facto unregulated system of corporate banking.
By design, these same currencies have become indispensable tools for organized crime — revealing that the libertarian fantasy of “financial freedom” amounts to freedom for the wealthy to hide their assets, and freedom for criminals to operate without accountability. Indeed, it’s becoming nearly impossible to tell them apart.
