Latest / CRYPTO 101 / Ep. 726 The Future of Privacy: How Zcash and Cypherpunk Are Reshaping Digital Rights with Will McEvoy

Transcript

Ep. 726 The Future of Privacy: How Zcash and Cypherpunk Are Reshaping Digital Rights with Will McEvoy · CRYPTO 101

0:09
[SPEAKER_01]: All right everybody welcome back to another action packed episode of the crypto 101 podcast today I am your solo host my my good buddy Mr. Brendan Veman my co-host he has become ill He was on a cruise he came back
0:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't want to say that the H word, the hunt of virus word, but uh, I don't know.
0:30
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't look good.
0:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So prayers up for Brendan.
0:33
[SPEAKER_01]: We hope that he's healing up, but man, I've got an incredible guest.
0:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I am so excited and looking forward to this all week to speak with you, Mr. Will McAvoy, uh, who?
0:45
[SPEAKER_01]: you are running Cypher Punk this yeah the CIO at Cypher Punk as well as running Winklevoss cap the investments over there Winklevoss capital will how are you doing today?
0:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing well.
0:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me.
0:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I am very excited.
1:00
[SPEAKER_01]: So CypherPunk is a publicly traded company under the Tech or CYPH, and it is all about Z-Cash.
1:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And so if you guys who are listening, have heard about Z-Cash, maybe you've seen the price charts go completely vertical and Q4 of last year.
1:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're curious about what it is.
1:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, make sure you stick around for this episode because we're going to really unpack exactly what Z-cash is, what CipherPunk is, and what this opportunity looks like.
1:29
[SPEAKER_01]: But before we get too deep into the weeds, will we just want to get acquainted with you, the audience?
1:34
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to know a little bit about who you are, why are the man for the job, and high level what you're working on?
1:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
1:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
1:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you summed it up, CIO, Cypherpunk, we're privacy technology company.
1:49
[SPEAKER_00]: So what that means is, I mean, we like to call ourselves public privacy.
1:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're the only public company that's entirely focused on privacy technology.
1:59
[SPEAKER_00]: which is really crazy when you think about how important privacy actually is.
2:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It's truly like a prerequisite to many of the fundamental rights that you would cherish as an American, like freedom of speech and so on.
2:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So we launched that business at the end of last year.
2:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Our first goal is to accumulate at least 5% of the Z-cash network.
2:24
[SPEAKER_00]: We're at just under 1.9% today.
2:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're conducting a...
2:30
[SPEAKER_00]: a fairly straight forward treasury strategy to accomplish that, but we're not stopping there.
2:36
[SPEAKER_00]: We think there's a ton of white space to operate in the privacy tech landscape, right?
2:41
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to want privacy tooling for every part of your life, right?
2:46
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to want to be able to trust it in the same way that you can trust Z-Cash for your for that lane of financial privacy that it offers.
2:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So we launched that business towards the end of the last year.
3:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm also a principal at Mink of Lost Capital working close to you with Cameron and Tyler on their investments.
3:10
[SPEAKER_00]: We're reinvest in a wide range of technologies, not just crypto or not just privacy tech.
3:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so we've obviously spent a lot of time in, in AI and robotics.
3:22
[SPEAKER_00]: We've done a bit in defense tech and health care and longevity.
3:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so that's what we've been doing at Winklevoss Capital for, for about four years now.
3:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, before joining up with Cameron and Tyler, I was at Funstrat, work with Tom Lee, the man.
3:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Friend to the show.
3:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Who's awesome.
3:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Tom is great.
3:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell me a lot about crypto research and macro research.
3:49
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was really great learning experience and and then yeah, here we are, here we are today.
3:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Incredible.
3:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, some great folks to work with and you kind of hit the nail on the head that privacy is kind of just this fundamental human right that without it.
4:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, what what would our life be?
4:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It would be very, very different, very interesting, but also.
4:15
[SPEAKER_01]: kind of at the top of the call I'm like is privacy just an illusion like does it actually exist in America?
4:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I obviously we have like the PayTree Act and we've got you know the NSA and the CIA everybody's always you know saying oh you know none of your texts are private all of your stuff even if your social media says it's private people can still look at it your chatchipi t history could get subpoenaed by the government so is privacy actually an illusion or or can you actually
4:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I certainly think that you can't actually have it.
4:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's an important goal that we should always strive for, that we should continue to strive for.
4:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And the way we strive for it is building technologies that actually preserve privacy.
4:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I, to your point though, it is clear that we've been on this steady decline since I don't know call it the advent of the internet, right?
5:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Where we've had less and less privacy every single year.
5:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, internet comes out a little bit of time, smart phones come out, that's kind of kind of a core stepwise decrease or step down in privacy.
5:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So social media comes out.
5:26
[SPEAKER_00]: That's another step down.
5:28
[SPEAKER_00]: AI, I think is a is the latest step down in privacy.
5:34
[SPEAKER_00]: It's I think the largest
5:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And the core reason for that is that AI is sort of inherently anti-privacy from the perspective of
5:52
[SPEAKER_00]: the systems work much better, the more data and information they have about you.
5:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, the memory.
5:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the memory, and, and, and, and, and so maybe today people are just thinking about it.
6:05
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, like, your chat, your BT history.
6:07
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, you know, asking, you know, it's, it's like the research you did on crypto or something like that.
6:14
[SPEAKER_00]: but you're in the future and even starting today, you're really going to want to give a lot of information to AI to at the very least make it the absolute best assistant business partner colleague for you, right?
6:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So in that dynamic, you're also going to want
6:33
[SPEAKER_00]: to at least try to retain a bit of privacy.
6:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the lane that these privacy-preserving technologies can play in.
6:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Almost acting is like the other side of the coin to AR.
6:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's interesting and, you know, we're hopeful that with a technology like Z-Cash or with some other privacy preserving technologies, we can take back a little bit of that that power and it almost seems like, you know,
7:11
[SPEAKER_01]: censorship resistant, issued outside of any centralized government, but close to the end of his reign, he did realize that it kind of lacked privacy.
7:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And there was some comments and stuff between him and how Finnie about how, you know, kind of the perfect version of Bitcoin would have zero knowledge proofs and it ended up becoming
7:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Z-cash, and so how did you kind of discover Z-cash and what made Cypher punk, you know, want to go all in on Z-cash as the, you know, you know, the end all be all of privacy, if you will, beyond just money.
7:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I imagine in the future, like how there's apps built on Ethereum, you got to have apps built on Z-cash and stuff, but what made you guys decide on Z-cash is like, all right, that's the one we're going to dedicate our careers to.
8:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
8:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, obviously Cameron and Tyler have spent, um, had been around crypto since the beginning of Bitcoin.
8:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so they were there.
8:12
[SPEAKER_00]: They observed the launch of of Z cash.
8:15
[SPEAKER_00]: They've been following it since 2016.
8:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So they've been following it for a decade, right?
8:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So they've been thinking
8:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, when I joined a few years ago, we were sort of playing around.
8:30
[SPEAKER_00]: We were sort of in the early innings of like, you know, how do we turn this into a business?
8:34
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, what, what is actually the importance of privacy?
8:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And then a couple of years ago, when, when AI came out, it was very clear that this is a major catalyst.
8:46
[SPEAKER_00]: for the first sort of a pro privacy movement.
8:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Because AI is going to decrease privacy so significantly, you can sort of think about privacy as a scarce resource, right?
8:58
[SPEAKER_00]: If the supply of that resource continues to decline,
9:02
[SPEAKER_00]: you can sort of expect that the price is going to go up, right?
9:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Sort of simple supply and demand.
9:08
[SPEAKER_00]: We also have a lot of confidence on the on the demand side of the equation such that when people start to realize that they have no privacy, they're going to want to demand it.
9:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So we were sort of tinkering around with these ideas.
9:25
[SPEAKER_00]: It was also obvious to us that like
9:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Z-Cash was really cool from a technology perspective.
9:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It was also really cool from a talent perspective.
9:34
[SPEAKER_00]: It has like some of the most established and
9:39
[SPEAKER_00]: world class cryptographers and engineers working on it.
9:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it was simultaneously completely overlooked, right?
9:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was trading in the mid teens at one point, mid teens of 20s to 30s.
9:55
[SPEAKER_01]: There were things about it that there was nothing heavier in the universe than a black hole
10:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So I mean, from that perspective, it was just, it was very contrarian because what we were observing was contrary to how the market was valuing it.
10:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And then last year, we were also thinking about sort of, you know, what is actually the evolution of these digital asset treasury companies, right, that there is this arbitrage that they're that they're utilizing where, you know, you can economically and in sort in a very economically positive way raise equity by tokens and it's it's this beneficial flywheel.
10:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So we sort of, last year, put all those ideas together and launch Cypher Punk.
10:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Incredible.
10:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And kind of on the, you know, kind of sticking with, you know, the mispray scenes, if you will, of Z-Cash.
10:54
[SPEAKER_01]: What do, you know, obviously it's, it's had a very big run-up from, like you said, kind of the, the $20 range to now sitting around $500 per token.
11:02
[SPEAKER_01]: But would you say that this is fair pricing, and again, not giving investment advice or anything, or do you think that there is still some kind of mispricing in the market?
11:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's still a very small asset.
11:16
[SPEAKER_00]: As far as crypto assets go, as far as just global assets go.
11:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's a couple billion dollar market cap, right?
11:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Relative to like bitcoins like one trillion.
11:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I think it's a little bit higher.
11:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's closer to 8 or 10, 8 or 10 billion as of we're recording this.
11:34
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I mean, Bitcoin is so much larger in the trillions, like you said.
11:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, that just pales in comparison to other sort of these other groupings of assets.
11:49
[SPEAKER_00]: If you just take sort of offshore wealth, which is maybe just like,
11:53
[SPEAKER_00]: art that people are buying to hold their value in like some warehouse somewhere or or things like that, maybe other precious metals that are on account for, maybe precious metals themselves.
12:07
[SPEAKER_00]: that's tens of trillions of dollars, right?
12:10
[SPEAKER_00]: So if investors and individuals are using those assets to have a private store of value, if you will, to me, it's pretty reasonable to think that Z-Cash can be one, two, three percent of that larger market, which puts it at a much higher
12:36
[SPEAKER_01]: unlock that value or that appreciation is going to come and I'm not sure it's a little nebulous in my mind right now, but some kind of like regulation that gives it the OK or some kind of like court rulings that give it the OK because I know there it's been stymied by like some of the tornado cash stuff and the samurai wallet stuff and there's been these things and so I'm curious if like and also like um
12:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I run a fund as well and they ask like when you're signing up with brokerages, they're like, do you trade privacy coins?
13:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, if you say yes, it's going to ask more questions and so on and so forth.
13:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you kind of just can't trade them and a lot of the brokers won't trade them with you.
13:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And so is there like something in the clarity act or something that's, you know, maybe a little bit more under under the radar to most people, but that you're focused on that will unlock some of that regulatory acceptance of these kind of investments.
13:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think Clarity specifically is focused on a few other parts of sort of the crypto regulatory stack.
13:35
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't think it's super focused on privacy.
13:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I am though, extremely.
13:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I am extremely optimistic on sort of the regulatory environment around privacy generally and I think that would encapsulate privacy coins as well.
13:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
13:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the sort of the anecdotes that you're pointing to which you're super valid.
13:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's just sort of everyone, you know, covering their backs because they don't know, you know, what actually the lay of the land is.
14:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I am optimistic that there is going to be a constructive regulatory environment around privacy coins, at least in the United States.
14:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I think an interesting example to point to on this is what the U.S. did with HTTPS, versus HTTP, and secure internet browsing.
14:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
14:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone was browsing via HTTP, it's, you know, it's unencrypted, right?
14:29
[SPEAKER_00]: HTTPS gets developed.
14:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Initially the government was against its distribution and use, right?
14:38
[SPEAKER_00]: That was sort of their knee-jerk reaction.
14:41
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't only took them like a few weeks or a few months to realize that actually having the entire population of the United States, browsing the internet and conducting business in a fully unencrypted, transparent way is just like this massive national security issue.
15:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's it's it's it's crazy.
15:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So so they flipped on it and now they are like essentially mandating that all all websites are secure with HTTPS.
15:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a sense that the same thing will happen with money.
15:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So in this case, privacy coins.
15:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, it definitely kind of, you know, I wasn't really, you know, an investor in the markets back in 99.
15:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I was too young.
15:27
[SPEAKER_01]: But I've read about like the crypto wars, right, where kind of to your point, the government was like basically saying, like anything with encryption is like banned, because it's like military grade stuff and like, you know, bad people could get their hands on it and do bad things.
15:43
[SPEAKER_01]: But technology, you know, eventually the good guys won, and like you said, you know, encryption proliferated and it allowed people to use credit cards online and store data and pictures online and like do all these like great things that like we all know about have passwords.
15:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And internet, you know, just protected accounts and all that kind of stuff.
16:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, I think definitely like over time, the government is really going to be, you know, accepting of this, they'll have another sort of aha moment and realize that, you know, privacy is for everybody.
16:15
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a fundamental right and it's agnostic, right?
16:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Bad people do bad things with technology.
16:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Good people do good things with technology, but the technology in and of itself is not
16:25
[SPEAKER_01]: bad or good.
16:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm really excited about what you guys are building.
16:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And before we like, you know, dive deeper into in decipher punk, is there any other sort of like outside of the privacy stuff that you guys are focused on?
16:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know you, you know, you mentioned defense tech, and some other sectors, are there any other sectors of crypto that are like kind of catching your eye?
16:49
[SPEAKER_00]: In crypto, we are certainly on the Cypherpunk side.
16:54
[SPEAKER_00]: We are super focused on privacy.
16:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
16:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I do think that privacy is this next way of innovation, right, where you had
17:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Bitcoin as sort of the first one it was focused on store value then you then you shifted to programmability right that's Ethereum and then you you shifted to programmability with with scale and that's Solana and you know three dozen others and so now the market is is dialing privacy so that's where I think most the innovation is is going to be happening
17:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
17:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And so with Cypher Punk, are you guys, you know, I know the goal is to get to five percent of the overall total supply of Z cash.
17:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Are there other privacy related assets that you guys are accumulating?
17:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you guys also accumulating Bitcoin?
17:48
[SPEAKER_01]: What is maybe like the balance sheet or the portfolio of Cypher Punk look like?
17:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so today the vast majority of it is Z-Cash.
17:57
[SPEAKER_00]: We hold something like 313,000 Z-Cash, like I mentioned earlier, it's just under 1.9% of the market.
18:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, over time, as we continue to accumulate more and more Z-Cash,
18:11
[SPEAKER_00]: We're also going to be making other privacy bets, right?
18:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So the first one, and I think probably the first handful, will be largely around Z-Cash, right?
18:22
[SPEAKER_00]: There will be things that make Z-Cash more usable, more accessible, just a better experience that will contribute to adoption in a way that increases the value of our treasury.
18:34
[SPEAKER_00]: In addition to being a good venture investment or growth investment, whatever they end up being.
18:40
[SPEAKER_00]: The first one we've done, which is an example of this, is into Zodil.
18:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So, Zodil is the, essentially, the most widely used and popular Z-Cash wallet and app.
18:53
[SPEAKER_00]: They just raised pre-robust fund raise that we participated in, and we invested several punk invested $5 million.
19:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're super bullish on that business because we think it can be the front end for privacy.
19:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
19:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you have this back end infrastructure, which is Z-Cash, right?
19:14
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to need a really good front end interface.
19:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's what Zada will provide.
19:20
[SPEAKER_00]: in a very similar way to how the exchanges, Gemini Coinbase and the like, acted as the front end for Bitcoin, right?
19:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Bitcoin is the back end, the exchanges were the front end, they contributed to adoption, without the exchanges, the adoption were much slower.
19:38
[SPEAKER_00]: We feel like this is going to
19:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Outside of Zodil, we're certainly evaluating the landscape of other privacy technologies into it around Z-Cash, but also outside of Z-Cash.
19:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I just think that you're gonna want privacy preserving technologies for all parts of your life, right?
20:03
[SPEAKER_00]: You're gonna want better privacy when you're browsing the internet, when you're communicating with friends.
20:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of these things already exist.
20:10
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll be looking to invest in them or acquire them.
20:14
[SPEAKER_00]: For things that don't exist, we'll be building them ourselves.
20:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So, if you were to fast forward 5 or 10 years out, we think we will be a diversified holding company of privacy technologies.
20:31
[SPEAKER_01]: That's incredible.
20:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And it sounds like, you know, when you look at the surface, like, oh, a digital asset treasury company for Z-Cash, it's, you know, micro strategy, but instead of forbid coin, it's for Z-Cash, but it sounds like it's like, you know, a lot more.
20:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you guys are making acquisitions and investments to an entire sort of ecosystem of privacy.
20:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm curious in terms of like,
20:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Like how you guys generate the money to buy these different assets, are you guys issuing stock to then go buy assets like Z-Cash or you guys doing like the convertibles or fundraising from other other sources.
21:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so today we've been selling stock with raising equity to accumulate Z cash and make other investments.
21:22
[SPEAKER_00]: We have zero debt on the balance sheet and that's not to say we'll never sort of use it convert or debt in the future.
21:32
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to be super opportunistic about our fund raising our fund raising mechanisms or
21:41
[SPEAKER_00]: sources of capital.
21:43
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a ton of demand for the stock in the public market.
21:46
[SPEAKER_00]: We also have a ton of great institutional friends and other investors that could be great fits.
21:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's to say, I think everything's on the table when it comes to fundraising and raising proceeds to deploy into privacy assets.
22:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I love it.
22:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And in terms of like, I've heard this term that you've used called pro-entropic investing.
22:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this idea that Bitcoin and Z Cash are chaos hedges.
22:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell us a little bit about what that concept is.
22:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I stole this term, no shame, from Antonio Grossias, who's a wildly successful investor.
22:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I've learned a lot, I've never met him, but I've learned a lot from him from his content on the internet.
22:44
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea is that you want to hold assets that do very well during times of chaos, right?
22:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So you don't want to hold things that at the, you know, as soon as something bad happens, they just crumble.
22:59
[SPEAKER_00]: At the very least, you want to hold assets that when bad things happen, they they can, you know, whether the storm.
23:06
[SPEAKER_00]: In, in sort of the version that we're thinking about, we want to own things that during chaotic times do even better, right?
23:13
[SPEAKER_00]: They outperform when there's chaos.
23:18
[SPEAKER_00]: If I were to marry that sort of strategy to just kind of an observation, I think a lot of us have had, is we are living in a period of time, which is extremely chaotic, right, I'll speak for myself and say, like my family, there's more chaos in the world today than there has been in like my parents lifetime, right, and and certainly my lifetime too.
23:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
23:44
[SPEAKER_00]: in the world where entropy and chaos are increasing, you really want to find these assets that are going to survive, but also do very well.
23:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So Bitcoin is the cash, I think, or certainly pro-entropic investments, right?
24:00
[SPEAKER_00]: They are assets that I think will do very well at this point in time, and that's been showed by both of them.
24:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they wouldn't have done that well in the 1950s and 1960s when chaos is much lower in the United States.
24:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So that really just attracts us to other types of assets, I think defense falls in that bucket.
24:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's some applications of AI that fall in that bucket.
24:33
[SPEAKER_00]: We're super interested in things that fight biological entropy, which has been getting popular over the past year or so.
24:39
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we how do we stay off sort of the chaos in our own bodies sort of the longevity stuff maybe?
24:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the longevity stuff exactly, right?
24:50
[SPEAKER_00]: So we spend a lot of time thinking about that space.
24:53
[SPEAKER_00]: We are one of the only institutional investors in blueprint, Brian Johnson's company, which we think will be a massive player and in the sort of,
25:05
[SPEAKER_00]: pro-entropic or the the longevity space that is sort of staving off biological entropy.
25:13
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's sort of that's sort of how how I would frame it.
25:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I love that guy Brian Johnson.
25:21
[SPEAKER_01]: He's got just such a wildly entertaining Twitter feed.
25:26
[SPEAKER_01]: He's great.
25:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you met him?
25:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, certainly we keep in touch around around the business considering investors.
25:38
[SPEAKER_00]: But he's great.
25:39
[SPEAKER_00]: He certainly an end of one thinker.
25:41
[SPEAKER_00]: There's really zero people like him.
25:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
25:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And we'll make it super important.
25:47
[SPEAKER_01]: the most measured man in history, super cool.
25:51
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, going back to privacy to Z-Cash, like what would you say are some of the biggest misconceptions that like the average investor maybe has about privacy or has about Z-Cash in general?
26:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think the average sort of investor doesn't
26:12
[SPEAKER_00]: or put it this way, like the importance of privacy, I don't think is talked about enough, right?
26:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this is true for all privacy technologies, including privacy coins, right?
26:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Privacy truly is a prerequisite to many of the freedoms that we value, right?
26:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So.
26:30
[SPEAKER_00]: In the same way you value easy transportation and like delivery of goods and comfort in your home, all of those things have technologies and companies focused on them.
26:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Privacy, despite the arguably more important than any one of those things, has a very short list of groups and companies and technologies focused on them.
26:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would sort of think about that, you alluded to one earlier, which is like, just because a technology can be used for a negative purpose.
27:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't mean we should throw it out and ignore all the benefits, right?
27:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at guns, right?
27:17
[SPEAKER_01]: It's pretty at the second amount.
27:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Certainly guns, but also like there's there's plenty of examples, right?
27:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you go back throughout history, it's like,
27:24
[SPEAKER_00]: when the automobile first came out the headlines were like oh we can't we can't allow cars or automobiles wherever they call them we can't allow cars because it's going to give the bank robbers an edge and the bank robbers are going to get away too fast how could how could the police ever keep up with the bank robbers when the police are just on cars
27:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, or the police are just on forces, the horses are going to get tired and the bank robbers are going to get away.
27:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's just a recurring story in sort of between society and technology and government.
28:00
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that those are a couple things out of highlight.
28:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, a tail as old as time, you know, people are always scared of the unknown and things that are new and, you know, kind of going to like your portfolio and, you know, of course, your, your principal at Winkle Boss cap and, you know, there's, there's a very clear division there, but on the Cypher punk side of things, are you guys doing active yield generating strategies?
28:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it, you know, are there, is there hedging?
28:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what does that kind of look like?
28:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Or is it, you know, buy and hold and just kind of sit there on on the coins?
28:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, right now it's, it's buy and hold.
28:41
[SPEAKER_00]: We're well capitalized.
28:44
[SPEAKER_00]: We can, we're in a strong financial position such that we can buy Z-cash and and hold it for a decade or two decades or, or we can hold it for the long term.
28:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, certainly everything's on the table.
28:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
28:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I, I, I love the analogy.
29:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the, the sort of the early Berkshire halfway day days analogy, which is Warren started with,
29:10
[SPEAKER_00]: One or two or three assets, they were insurance companies, they sort of provided the base of capital.
29:18
[SPEAKER_00]: They appreciated and value.
29:19
[SPEAKER_00]: They also spit off cash flow.
29:22
[SPEAKER_00]: But he used his initial set of investments to act as a hub for to build what we know as birch your out the way today.
29:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's an opportunity for us, and quite frankly, all debts, if they sort of evolve in this way, to use their initial treasury, whether it's in Bitcoin or Zack or other asset, to use it as sort of the springboard for a much larger organization.
29:53
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's really, that's the vision, and that's what we're focused on.
29:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
29:57
[SPEAKER_01]: No, that makes it ton of sense.
29:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, like you said, you guys have maximum optionality.
30:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's everything is on the table.
30:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And you guys will kind of use your discretion.
30:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I'm curious, like in terms of like the Z-cash ecosystem, I know you mentioned Zottle.
30:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's all sorts of different applications and stuff out there.
30:20
[SPEAKER_01]: What is kind of like the
30:27
[SPEAKER_01]: More like Ethereum or more like Bitcoin and maybe you could kind of like just paint your guys's vision of what it's going to be Yeah, so
30:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I do think it will be more like Bitcoin in the sense that the focus is on chiefly store of value, a private store of value, and then maybe secondarily private payments, right?
30:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I think today the focus is on store of value.
30:53
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of work being done under the hood, for example, project tacky on is focused on scaling.
31:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Z-cash such that the transactions per second are higher and it is better for better for payments.
31:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't envision a lot of programable applications being built on Z-cash.
31:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I think those things can be built separately and sort of integrated in.
31:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I do think if it is core that the core would, would Zcash's best at is the private store of value and it should focus on that and I think that's how it'll play out and then also payments.
31:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, awesome.
31:36
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not going to be like a tour 2.0 where it's like you could browse the web over Zcash and have all these different applications.
31:42
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really going to be just be like private money.
31:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, that's not to say that it won't be integrated into tour or another mix net or a super private VPN.
31:54
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not to say that ZCash won't be integrated into private communications applications like signal or pick your own like ZCash is the private digital money, right?
32:07
[SPEAKER_00]: So it stands for reason that it should be integrated into the other private digital applications.
32:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and actually one thing on that point, one thing that's interesting about Z-Cash is privacy is actually optional as far as I understand.
32:19
[SPEAKER_01]: They have like shielded addresses and unshielded addresses, I guess you would call it, tell us a little bit about, you know, I guess that decision, I mean, I don't, I don't think you were, you were coding that decision, but maybe you could give us a little insight into like why that is.
32:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And then do you guys hold shielded or unshielded Z-Cash and tell us a little bit about, about all that.
32:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so so it's it's shielded and transparent wallets okay and over or transactions and that's sort of a massive differentiator between z-cash and other privacy coins like Manero right it is not privacy for the for the safe of like secrecy
33:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, it's not like I can send a totally secret transaction and like, you know, no one can ever know about it.
33:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And like the implication there is that there's like some sort of like nefarious purpose in involved in the transaction.
33:16
[SPEAKER_00]: With Z cash, everything's optional, right?
33:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So I can hold my Zack shielded or or or on shielded transparent.
33:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I can do a transaction shielded or or transparent.
33:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So what that means is it's just a much more flexible platform for just a normal a normal person who just wants a normal amount of privacy right I can send you Zach shielded because like why should anyone have to know that you know I bought a sofa from you or whatever.
33:54
[SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time, at the end of the year, when I need to show my accountant that I bought the sofa, I have the ability to still show them that transaction, right?
34:06
[SPEAKER_00]: These transactions aren't totally secret.
34:09
[SPEAKER_00]: They're just private.
34:11
[SPEAKER_00]: They're the way financial transactions should be.
34:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
34:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you foresee like institutions getting on board meaning some of these large banks or other funds, even nation states wanting to transact in ZECASH?
34:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that part of the goal or is it just sort of like for the everyday person?
34:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I think everyone demands some amount of privacy, right?
34:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, whether you're with your country or an individual or company, you're gonna want privacy.
34:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it is sort of funny to think that over the past handful of years, like people have been really pushing, for example, like stablecoin payroll for companies, right?
35:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Like payer employees and stablecoins.
35:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems like super rational, super normal.
35:07
[SPEAKER_00]: but actually it's like not normal at all because they need you just think like oh well I can't do that because I just be broadcasting everyone's salaries like obviously I can't do that right so there is a there is a place for privacy for for everyone
35:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Are there other so like in so far as like a theorem has like all these different little tokens and they have stable coins on top of the theorem are there stable coins on top of Z cash or with that kind of defeat the purpose.
35:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there are no, it would certainly I think like if you want to be swapping between Z cash and stable coins, that's fine.
35:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, stable coins like have a ton of attack vectors.
35:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they're essentially like sanctioned, um, I know there's sanctioned government coins or like CBDC right the government can still just shut them off.
36:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe there's a couple intermediate intermediaries in between, but no, yeah, Z-Cash Z-Cash is sort of stands on its hand.
36:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, man, that's awesome.
36:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And then just kind of in terms of like how you guys are looking at You know, the rest of twenty twenty six what your guys as plans are at Cipherpunk.
36:22
[SPEAKER_01]: How much can you share with us here on the show of what the next six months are going to look like for you guys?
36:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I can't sort of give the full road map.
36:33
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of people on X that then message me looking for the full road map.
36:37
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like just join the public earnings calls and then you'll be able to find out what the rest of the world.
36:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
36:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I think it's going to be a very exciting year.
36:46
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to continue to march towards our goal of accumulating at least 5% of the Z-cash network.
36:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there will be other super exciting investments that we make.
37:00
[SPEAKER_00]: We're really canvassing the whole privacy landscape.
37:04
[SPEAKER_00]: We're talking to everyone.
37:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's going to be a lot of things to be excited about on that front.
37:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'm just generally bullish on the sector and Z-cash, right?
37:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we are at this point in time when
37:19
[SPEAKER_00]: privacy is being like actually recognized as an important thing.
37:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's just started or unlike the first or the second inning.
37:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, total decline over the past 20 years.
37:31
[SPEAKER_00]: No one's been thinking about it.
37:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're at the early endings of a really cool trend reversal.
37:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And it comes to privacy.
37:41
[SPEAKER_01]: love it.
37:42
[SPEAKER_01]: We're taking back the power, power to the people.
37:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And I kind of just wanted to close on a, I guess a couple of personal questions.
37:50
[SPEAKER_01]: How has it been being part of and, you know, sea suite of a public company?
37:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I believe this is the first public company that you've sort of represented.
38:00
[SPEAKER_01]: What's it like?
38:01
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, being, you know,
38:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Got it.
38:04
[SPEAKER_01]: You got a public ticker now.
38:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure it's life is a lot different.
38:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It is exciting.
38:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, there's a lot of there's a lot of additional things you have to think about.
38:15
[SPEAKER_00]: We got super when we sort of launch Cypher punk.
38:20
[SPEAKER_00]: We partnered with an existing public company.
38:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And the benefit of that is we got executives that have been public market executives for
38:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
38:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So, so I learn a ton from them when it comes to the sort of the internal operations of public company, whether it's audits or public filings, et cetera.
38:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I like to think I'm and I'm bringing sort of the crypto and the investment prowess.
38:54
[SPEAKER_00]: for the business.
38:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So we make a super good team.
38:56
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, to your point, it's a, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's an exciting thing.
39:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It's totally different from from a private company.
39:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Very cool.
39:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And then last question for our listeners who are really interested in learning more about just like the philosophy of privacy that you guys all subscribed to.
39:18
[SPEAKER_01]: What's like one good book or what's a, um,
39:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, like not magazine, but like what's like a piece of media that you guys like listen to and stay up to date on.
39:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like a book and then like a modern day sort of media that like gives good info on all this stuff.
39:36
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll give you a lot of the stuff that I read is sort of longer form on the internet.
39:49
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a really good book.
39:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's called, I've read it a bit ago, called Surveillance Capital.
39:56
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not exactly, that's more sort of the economic rationale for lack of privacy, I think that's important too.
40:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I would get super deep into the sort of the privacy philosophy of like blaggy or novel, or some of these people in the crypto privacy space I've been talking about for a few years now.
40:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Those have been like the most informative for me.
40:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Love it.
40:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And then what links can we put in the show notes for folks to follow you or where's the best place to kind of stay up to date on everything that you're working on?
40:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so, so I would take a look at our website, CypherPunk.com, and then you could, you can find me on X also.
40:42
[SPEAKER_00]: In addition to our Cypher Punk, Axe account.
40:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice.
40:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, question, I was going to ask earlier, what is a Cypher Punk?
40:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So the cypher punks were like the OG cryptographer slash like freedom fighters, if you will.
41:00
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't just focused on cryptography for the tech, they were focused on cryptography and encryption for like the benefit that it would have for humanity.
41:11
[SPEAKER_01]: awesome.
41:12
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's an homage.
41:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
41:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Mr. Will Mac and Boy, we really appreciate your time today coming on the show.
41:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope everybody who was listening enjoyed as much as I did, go to cipherpunk.com, check them out.
41:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And Will, we hope to have you back on again soon.
41:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Cool.
41:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks, Bryce.